How to Lose Weight in a Week

The key to lose weight and prevent weight gain is to improve one's dietary habits and stay physically active. While it is essential to control one's calorie intake, it is equally important to follow an exercise regimen to burn off the calories. It doesn't matter what your body type or height is, you can lose weight if you religiously follow the guidelines. However, you can easily gain weight if you fall back into your old habits. So you need to be determined and must keep yourself motivated at all times. Many a time, weight gain could be associated with water retention in the body. If your sodium intake is high or you are not drinking adequate amounts of water, your body is most likely to retain water. If weight gain results from water retention, then losing water weight should top the list of things you need to do in order to lose weight in a week. Don't starve yourself in order to lose a lot of weight in the first week itself, follow a dietary plan that is healthy and realistic.

How to Lose Water Weight

The best way to lose water weight is to increase your intake of water. Sounds contradictory, isn't it? But it is a proven fact. When one doesn't drink adequate amounts of water, the body starts storing water. When you drink more water, your body starts releasing the fluids stored within the tissues. So, drink plenty of fluids, especially water. There's an additional benefit of drinking more water, and that is a glowing skin. At times, prolonged use of certain drugs can also cause dehydration. So do check with your doctor to find if dehydration may be caused due to any drug that you may be using. Excessive consumption of caffeinated drinks must also be avoided in order to prevent dehydration. While losing water weight will certainly help, those of you who desperately want to see some changes in just a week, will also have to limit their calorie intake.

How to Properly Lose Weight in a Week

Things to Avoid

Instead of keeping in mind the list of what to eat, be aware of the list of foods that need to be avoided, and automatically, your brain will ring an alarm when you are tempted to grab foods that are 'banned' for you!

Soda increases weight. Drinking soda is present in almost all aerated drinks. So even if you are not consuming soda directly, it doesn't mean soda is not entering your body at all. If you want to lose weight in a week, avoid soda completely. Instead switch to lime water.

Don't skip your breakfast! Breakfast is the most important meal of the day as it provides us with the strength required to carry out daily tasks. So don't skip breakfast, just replace heavy foods with lighter ones; opt for cornflakes, not sandwiches!

I know it is very difficult to say no to delicious cheese burgers, but the same cheese burgers add 275 calories! Imagine what a cheese burger or pizza with meat and extra toppings can do! Avoid eating burgers and other such fast foods. You will need to cut down on the intake of such foods if you wish to achieve quick weight loss.

Foods like red meat, milk and other milk-based foodstuffs like cheese, ice-creams and butter should not be consumed in excess. Even if depression attacks you, resist the temptation of grabbing a bowl of ice-cream; remember, you want to lose weight in a week!

Avoid tea, coffee or alcohol as they contain caffeine, which dehydrates the body and loss of water adds to weight gain.

Things to Do

More often than not, weight gain is triggered by unhealthy eating habits and a sedentary lifestyle. While attempting to lose weight in a week is certainly an ambitious project, if you are very serious and are willing to change your poor eating habits and make the necessary lifestyle-related changes, the effort would definitely pay off. You will come across many crash diets that involve total avoidance of food or minimizing your food intake to almost nothing. Well, the healthier way to lose weight would be to lower your calorie intake, but ensuring that you are not starving yourself. While it would be best to avoid the unhealthy processed foods, follow a healthy diet that includes fruits, vegetables or other foods that will provide the body with all the essential nutrients.

A sedentary lifestyle is a major contributory factor for weight gain. If you really want to lose weight quickly, you must stay physically active. You could join a gym. Aerobics is also a good option for those of you who wish to lose weight fast. Performing cardiovascular exercises or pilates are other options for losing weight in a week. You could also combine exercise with fun. Well, dancing is surely a great option for quick and easy weight loss. If you have a phobia of exercise, you could join a dance class. Dancing for an hour or so burns as much calories as one hour of exercise does. The rule is to keep moving! So if you were thinking of learning belly dancing, go for it! If you are a water baby, swimming is an excellent option to lose weight. Swimming is an exercise for the whole body and burns calories. Another fun way of exercising is cycling or even hiking. Cycling and hiking can help you shed those extra pounds and achieve fast weight loss.

Quick Reminders

Increase the consumption of liquids; and by this, I don't mean beverages and aerated drinks. You should rather go for healthy drinks, and drink plenty of water along with it.

Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Whenever possible, walk short distances and make exercise a part of your daily activities.

Have smaller portions of food and cut down on the intake of unhealthy snacks and fatty foods.

Add fiber-rich foods to your diet. Follow a weight loss diet.

Substitute normal sugar with sugar-free products.

Last but not the least, stop being a couch potato!

While you might not be able to observe the effect in a week, if you comply with the aforementioned guidelines, you will soon be able to lose weight. So if you feel that you have started putting on weight, you must immediately make certain lifestyle-related changes. Don't wait until you become extremely overweight and shedding all that weight becomes a far-fetched dream for you.