5 Steps to Losing Weight in 30 Days
Oct 4, 2024 mindpumpIf you want to lose weight in 30 days, it’s going to take a hands-on, calculated approach. You will need to ensure you are in a caloric deficit, engaging in activity, and making the right choices.
Step 1 – Find Your Maintenance Calories and Deficit
You want to find out your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE). This is (roughly) the amount of calories your body needs to maintain its current weight. While it’s not an exact number, it gives you a baseline to start from. Once you know your estimated TDEE, you want to aim for 500 less from this to create a proper deficit. 500 calories a day for 7 days gives you a total weekly expenditure of 3500 calories. That is roughly equal to losing a pound a week.
Step 2 – Eat the Right Foods
We want to prioritize whole foods since we are in a restriction. The reason for this is processed foods tend to be less filling. They are also designed to make you want to eat more, and a lot more calorie dense for how small the portion is. We want to set ourselves up for the best chance at adherence, therefore we want foods that are large in volume, healthy, and filling. Aim for 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight, and the rest of the calories can come from your preference of fats and carbohydrates. Focus on proteins coming from fish, chicken, beef, pork, and tofu. Fats can come from avocados and healthy oils. Nuts are fine as long as they don’t cause you to overeat. Choose carbohydrates higher in fiber to help with good gut flora and satiety. Foods like oatmeal, quinoa, lentils, and sweet potato are all good sources of fiber.
Step 3 – Exercise
Aim for 3 full body workouts per week to send the appropriate signal to retain the muscle you currently have. Instead of creating a cardio goal, figure out your current step count. Add 3,000-5,000 steps depending on how comfortable you are with the increase. If you’re at 6,000 steps a day, shoot for 10,000. The goal is to increase your expenditure while being a sustainable part of your journey. Go for 10-minute walks after each meal, take the dog for a walk, or take a break at work. Find ways to get up and move more to hit this step count. This is a good habit you should be doing regardless of weight loss. As you progress, try to add 1 more rep or 5 more pounds to your exercises in the gym. Stay 1-2 reps shy of failure and make sure you’re pushing hard enough but not all the way to failure.
Step 4 – Lifestyle
Because we want this to be sustainable, make decisions that you can see yourself doing 12 months from now. Learn to be more mindful of your hunger and fullness cues. Learn to feel what true satiety feels like and not be overstuffed. Get 7-9 hours of sleep, and keep your stress levels low. Exercises like deep breathing or meditation can help alleviate stress.
Step 5 – Accountability
Consistency is the key here. Once you create your structure, stick to it. Have a friend or trainer be your accountability person. It’s good to have someone to report to who can help keep you motivated and on track. It’s easy to fall off and overeat when you know no one is watching over you.
The most important thing to realize is losing too much weight too fast is short term thinking. It isn’t sustainable or healthy. We want to aim for losing roughly a pound a week to prevent muscle loss, which will slow your metabolism. Also keep in mind, once you hit your goal weight, it is a lot easier to maintain than to lose or grow. Make sure to adjust week to week on your calories if you aren’t losing weight. You can subtract 200-300 calories and give it another week or two to see if the scale moves, but make sure not to stay in a deficit for too long, so your body doesn’t have time to adapt to the lower calories. Don’t just rely on the scale. Take photos and measurements to see your progress. Remember not to get too caught up on any one metric. What we want to focus on is trends over time.
