While lifestyle-changing diets incorporate meal and exercise plans resulting in a gradual weight loss of 1 or 2 lbs. per week, fast-acting diet plans promote as much as 5 lbs. of weight loss per week. Sometimes, the rapid weight-loss portion of the diet occurs in the beginning with a jump-start or quick-start program and then settles into a more gradual weight-loss plan.
Time Frame
The Mayo Clinic's guide to fast weight loss advises that most people cannot sustain such restrictive eating and intensive exercising for the long term. However, for people who are obese or under medical supervision, a fast-acting diet can help them lose weight quickly and safely for a limited time frame.
Types
Some fast-acting weight-loss plans severely restrict your consumption to under 1,000 calories per day. They may have liquid supplements or protein shakes you use to replace one or more meals. Other rapid weight-loss plans call for reducing your intake of carbohydrates, fats or sugar.
Function
Rapid weight loss comes down to simple mathematics. The Mayo Clinic states you need to burn 3,500 calories more than you consume in order to lose a single pound. The more calories you cut from your intake, the faster you lose weight. Add exercise to the equation and you can burn enough calories to double your weight loss. For example, an hour of running or stair-climbing can burn between 700 and 900 calories, depending upon your intensity.
Expert Insight
According to the Harvard School of Public Health, people following popular food plans such as the Ornish, Atkins and Mediterranean diets managed to lose weight and inches when following the diet. However, the people who were able to maintain their goal weight rather than straying from the diets were those who permanently changed their eating and exercise habits. They chose and stuck with diets that suited their tastes, so following them did not prove as challenging.
Considerations
In a fitness report for "Oprah" magazine, Selene Yeager describes one way to boost weight loss or to save yourself from a dieting plateau. She advocates short, intense workouts, known as interval training. to dramatically increase the number of calories burned during exercise. For example, a person walking briskly for half an hour burns slightly over 100 calories. The same person who combines the walk with eight 30-second sprints of speed-walking or running burns over 150 calories.
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