How To Lose Weight In A Week

By: Josephine McCulley

Break Studios Contributing Writer

To lose weight in a week, you really have to buckle down. Because the key to losing a few pounds quickly isn't starving or working out so hard you puke. You want to lose weight, not look like an abused dog. This week is all about back to basics.

Ditch the Booze, the Soda, the Juice and the Latte It's all got to go to get weight to go in just a week. Alcohol (yes, even vodka or light beer) and soda contain empty calories, so you can cut them out of your diet without suffering nutritionally. As for juice, even the extra sugar in 100 percent juice is too much for losing weight quickly. If there's sugar in it, don't eat it. And your coffee? Black, or Americano, with no sugar. The little yellow packets are your friends.
Lose the Salt, Pound the Water It may not seem right to drink water to lose water, but there's a reason you have to use the bathroom so much when you're drinking lots of it. The more water you drink, the more your body is able to get rid of. Losing excess water weight is the quickest, easiest way to lose weight in the short term. Body builders do this to extremes to look cut up on stage. All you need to do, is get rid of as much salt in your diet as you can. The largest source of salt in your diet? Processed foods, according to the New England Journal of Medicine, account for more than three quarters of it. That means lunch meat, chips, cheese slices, frozen dinners, salad dressing, all of it's off limits. Basically, if you didn't make it it's out.
Chicken Breasts and Whey Protein Are Your Friend Our suggestion? Go to a warehouse store, buy a couple big packages of boneless, skinless chicken breasts and a bag of protein powder. For breakfast and snacks, do a protein shake with a little bit of plain fruit blended in. For lunch and dinner, chicken breasts and veggies like broccoli, spinach, or brussels sprouts. No cheating with salt or butter, garlic, herbs or no-salt seasoning mixes to spice things up. It sounds tedious, but no one ever said losing weight in a week was easy. A high protein diet like this works very well in the short term. Keep track of your calories and where they're coming from with an online food journal, shoot for no more than what's appropriate for your weight and activity level. Just be sure not to eat like this for more than a week or you'll lose your health along with the weight.
Exercise Now is not the time to start an intense exercise program if you haven't worked out in months. Choose a cardiovascular activity (walking, cycling, etc.) appropriate for your fitness level. If you're starting out, do 20 minutes of this a day. If you're already working out, add bursts of higher intensity to your cardio workout; speed up, or turn up the resistance for a minute out of every five. Go ahead and continue strength training if you have been, otherwise, don't start now, stick to cardio for losing weight in a week. Whatever your fitness level is, be conscious to add more light activity to your days. Take the stairs, go for a walk at lunch, get up to stretch and refill your water glass often, etc.
How much will you lose? You might lose as much as six pounds or more this way, or as little as two. If you've been living off fast food and cocktails you should see a big difference in your weight at the end of the week. If you're already reasonably fit, your results will be less dramatic. Regardless, if at the end of the week you go right back to your bad habits, the weight will come right back just as quickly as it left. A quick fix is just that, a quick fix. And while you might be able to keep this up for more than a week, losing more than about two pounds a week on average just isn't healthy.