Knowing how to lose weight quickly is something that is not as difficult as it may seem – at least in the short term. Just about any diet that you will find online or in books will probably work for a couple of weeks if you have the motivation to follow it. In that time you might lose anything between 5 and 20 pounds, depending how much excess weight you have and how much extra water you are retaining.
However, the problem with most diets is that people quickly lose motivation, slip off the diet and regain the weight. Often, there is more that comes back on as well. So even though it is easy to discover how to lose weight quickly when you just want to lose a few pounds and do not care if it goes back on again after, it is a whole other question if you have 30, 50, 100 or more pounds that you want to lose – permanently.
So the important thing is to find a diet that you can stay on for several weeks and even months while still providing a solution to how to lose weight quickly.
There are two solutions. You can choose either one depending on your food preferences, although you might want to consult your doctor too. There can be certain risks involved in losing weight fast and especially in taking the first of these options.
1. Low Carb Diets
Low carb diets could also be called high fat diets. They are not necessarily high protein diets. The idea behind them is that eating fat gives you a feeling of being full for longer. This means that you will tend to eat fewer calories because you are not so hungry. At the same time the restriction on carbohydrates ensures that the fat consumed is burned for energy instead of being stored.
2. Low Fat Diets
Low fat diets are more popular with mainstream health professionals but often they do not go far enough. They will tell you to choose low fat dairy products, for example, but most of these (except for milk) are high in either sweeteners or sodium, and so they do not satisfy. It is better to do without low fat cheese and rely on beans, fish and skinless chicken for protein. Avoid all refined and processed foods and limit oils, butter, and oil-based salad dressings to a total of 3 teaspoons per day.
This is the kind of diet that would be recommended for somebody who had their gallbladder removed and it can be very effective for anybody who wants to know how to lose weight quickly. You can add a tablespoon of ground flax seeds to ensure that you consume enough essential fatty acids, and be sure to fill up on non-starchy vegetables and whole fresh fruit so that you do not get hungry between meals.
Many people will tell you that all you need to do to lose weight is to eat a little less of your normal foods. Theoretically of course this is true. We should not need to cut out any food groups or restrict our choices if we ate everything in moderation.
But if you were a person who could eat a typical western world diet in moderation, stopping when full and not eating if not hungry, then you would probably not be overweight in the first place. So you will need to put some thought into adjusting what you eat if you want to figure out how to lose weight quickly and keep it off.