When you set a goal to lose 7 pounds, each pound you shed accounts for more than 14 percent of your total weight-loss goal. That indicates significant progress, especially when you consider that you can lose 1 to 2 pounds per week by making moderate changes in your eating and activity plan. A crash diet might get you to your goal faster, but a healthy lifestyle change can get you there and keep you there.
Factors
Whether you've gradually put on 7 pounds or you've recently lost weight and plateaued 7 pounds away from your goal, give yourself a realistic amount of time to reach your desired weight. Weight gain occurs when your body burns fewer calories than you consume. As you age, your calorie needs decrease slightly. Even subtle downshifts in your activity level can cause you to put on weight. Likewise, if you've recently lost weight, your body's metabolism might have readjusted to a lower level, causing your weight loss to stall, according to the Mayo Clinic website.
Features
To move past a weight plateau or to shed extra pounds that have crept on over time, you have to create a calorie deficit. You can accomplish this by cutting your calorie intake or increasing your calorie burn. However, you get the fastest results from combining the two. Drastic changes in your diet and activity level might sabotage your efforts because you cannot maintain them in the long term. Once you lose 7 pounds, they might creep back on if you don't take measures to adjust your diet and exercise levels.
Time Frame
To lose 1 pound, you need to cut 3,500 calories through diet and exercise. That translates to a deficit of 24,500 calories to reach your 7-pound weight-loss goal. A loss of 1 to 2 pounds per week is a healthy, sustainable rate of weight loss. A deficit of 3,500 calories per week puts you on a seven-week timeline for reaching your goal. To reach your goal in 3.5 weeks, you need to burn 7,000 more calories per week than you consume.
Process
To accomplish the seven-week timeline, decrease your calorie intake by 250 and exercise for 30 minutes at vigorous intensity or 60 minutes at moderate intensity daily. A 3.5 week timeline requires you to decrease calories by 500 and exercise twice as long at the indicated intensities. These are reasonable goals as long as you're already active and don't have any health concerns that prevent you from participating in vigorous aerobic exercise. If you need to take it more slowly, commit to cutting your calorie intake and gradually adding activity to your schedule. Even if it takes you two to three months to reach your goal, that's relatively fast progress. Consult with your doctor before you start any diet or exercise program, especially if you have a history of health problems.
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