Your caloric intake, the calories you burn, your diet and your activity level all affect how quickly you lose weight. You could lose up to 20 lbs. in a week if you burn enough calories each day and are severely overweight. However, to stay safe and healthy, lose no more than 2 lbs. per week. To lose 20 lbs. you must burn 70,000 calories. Eating right, exercising and staying motivated will help you lose weight quickly.
Calories in and Calories Out
You eat because your body uses calories, or energy, to function, and eating plenty of calories is essential to a healthy body. However, managing your weight relies in how many calories you take in and how many calories you burn. A pound of fat is 3,500 calories, so to lose 1 lb., you must burn 3,500 calories more than you take in.
Aerobic Exercise
To quickly drop pounds, engage in exercise that raises your heart rate and makes you sweat. If you weigh 100 lbs., for example, an exercise such as jumping rope can burn 500 calories per hour and 1,000 calories per hour if you weigh 200 lbs. A 150-lb. person can expect to burn 750 calories per hour jumping rope.
It will take 10 weeks to lose 20 lbs. if you weigh 200 lbs., eat a 2,000-calorie diet each day and jump rope for an hour every day. You can lose weight quicker by reducing the calories you consume and/or by burning more calories through exercise.
Strength Training
Strength training can help you lose weight quickly by increasing the amount of calories you burn while at rest, through an increase in your metabolism. As your muscles become stronger, they also burn calories more efficiently. Engaging in a healthy strength-training routine, you can burn more calories quickly to achieve your 20-lb. goal faster. If you are counting calories, weightlifting with free weights can burn around 273 calories per hour for a 200-lb. individual and 219 calories per hour for a 160-lb. individual.
Diet
It is simple to reduce the amount of calories you consume each day. For instance, you can skip a high-calorie snack such as dessert or vending machine snacks at work. Eat lower-calorie foods instead of higher-calorie ones, and reduce your portion sizes. Increasing fruits and vegetables and whole foods while decreasing processed and high-calorie foods will help you reach your weight-loss goals. Even without exercise, you can decrease your calories consumed by 500 each day and lose 20 lbs. in 20 weeks. If you burn 500 calories exercising and eat 500 calories less per day, you will lose 20 lbs. in 10 weeks.
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