Losing just one pound means you must eat 3,500 calories fewer than you burn. Trimming too many calories at once, however, makes you feel weak and irritable, deprives your body of nutrition and stalls your metabolism. The most successful rate of weight loss is just one or two lbs. per week according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Losing 15 lbs. in just about eight weeks is possible with complete dedication to a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity that results in a 1,000-calorie per day deficit, to spur a 2 lbs.-per-week rate of weight loss.
Step 1
Start a food diary. Keep track of every morsel you put in your mouth, either on paper or online, to help make you aware of where you can trim calories. Dieters who undertake behavorial techniques like writing down their intake lose almost two times as much weight as dieters who do not, according to a study of over 1,600 people in the August 2008 issue of the “American Journal of Preventive Medicine.”
Step 2
Trim your calorie intake by 500 calories daily to elicit just one pound of weight loss per week. Cut out discretionary calories first. Eliminate one soda, one alcoholic drink, a lunchtime cookie and the butter on your morning toast to save your 500 calories. Reducing portion sizes, switching to lower calorie versions of foods—like low-fat dairy instead of full-fat dairy—and cooking at home are other strategies that can help you cut calorie intake. There is little room for "fun" food when you have an aggressive goal like a 15-lb. loss in just a few weeks.
Step 3
Perform physical activity that burns 500 calories daily. Add another ½ hour to your moderate intensity cardio workout to burn, roughly, 300 more calories. Start an exercise program—going for about 60 minutes most days of the week—if you do not exercise already. Take an extra 100-calorie burning, 15-minute walk at breakfast, lunch and dinner. Increase your effort during workouts: Add cardio intervals between weight training sets to burn about 30 percent more total during your session, according to Fitness Magazine. If you do not want to exercise more, volunteer for household chores, take the stairs, play catch with the kids, walk from a far-away parking space or pace while on the phone or in meetings to burn incrementally more calories every hour. These small activities do add up over the course of the day.
Step 4
Eat often. Go for three meals and two snacks so you remain fueled and hunger never gets the best of you. Choose quality, low-calorie density foods to obtain proper nutrition and feel satisfied. Good meals include whole grain cereal, low-fat milk and berries at breakfast, whole wheat toast and a tablespoon of nut butter as a morning snack, hummus with a whole-grain tortilla, mozzarella cheese and cut-up vegetables at lunch, low-fat cottage cheese with sliced apples mid-afternoon and grilled chicken with a sweet potato and steamed broccoli for dinner.
Tips and Warnings
- The amount of calories you burn during activity depends on your size and the intensity level, but any activity will help you burn calories. If you are already extremely active and cannot add more movement, you will have to trim calories further or accept a slower rate of weight loss. If trimming 500 daily calories makes your daily intake dip below 1,200 as a woman or 1,500 as a man, the minimum requirements as per Medline Plus—a product of the National Institutes of Health—you should seek to burn more calories, rather than starve yourself, to create weight loss. If your weight loss stalls after losing five to 10 lbs., you may need to re-evaluate your calorie intake. How many calories you need daily depends partly on your size: The calorie count that helped you drop pounds at a certain weight-point may no longer be effective and you may need to reduce further or increase physical activity again.
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