How to Lose 30 Pounds in 18 Days

According to the National Institutes of Health, "weight loss = calories in food taken in < calories used." Almost everything you eat contains calories and every activity, even breathing, burns calories. To lose weight, you must control the amount of calories you eat every day, making sure to maintain the basic minimum nutritional guidelines, while burning off a greater amount of calories. The guidelines for your basic calorie intake and how much you burn off will vary by your height and gender. Make sure to consult a physician before beginning any diet and exercise program. Crash diets or major significant weight loss in a quick period of time is unhealthy.

Things You'll Need

• Calorie counter
• Diet plan
• Exercise equipment or plan
• Record book

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Instructions

• 1

  Weigh yourself, determine your height and record both numbers. Record your target weight. Keep your beginning records and target weight with a calorie counter. Consult guidelines published by the National Institutes of Health to make your plan.

• 2

  Choose a diet plan. You can choose from a variety of calorie control plans ranging from 1,000 calories a day to 2,500 calories a day. To determine how many calories you need to maintain your weight, multiply your current body weight by 10 if you are a woman or 11 if you are a man. For example, a woman weighing 160 pounds will need a 1,600-calorie daily diet to maintain her present weight.

• 3

  Determine how many calories you need to burn to lose the amount of weight you wish to lose. One pound (0.45 kilogram) of body fat equals 3,500 calories. Therefore, you need to burn 3,500 calories more than you eat in order to lose one pound of fat. If you want to lose 30 pounds, you will need to burn off 105,000 calories. To do so in 18 days or roughly three weeks, you would have to burn 35,000 calories in a week, or approximately 5,833 calories per day, and lose 1.66 pounds each day. The general healthy recommendation for weight loss is around one to two pounds a week. Trying to lose 30 pounds in 18 days would not be a healthy goal.

• 4

  Design your exercise program. For a person weighing 160 pounds, an hour of jogging will burn off roughly 580 calories. So, to lose 30 pounds using jogging as your exercise, you would need to jog between 180 and 190 hours in 18 days, or roughly ten hours a day. Since this is clearly impossible, you need to design a program that uses both diet and exercise over a realistic period of time to safely lose 30 pounds without damaging your health.

• 5

  Keep your plan within recommended limits. Using your gender, height, weight, age and current exercise level, you can determine the healthiest way to lose 30 pounds over time.