Whether you have a big event coming up or have just decided that it’s really time to start focusing on losing weight, you want to lose it fast. Quick weight loss makes you motivated to continue your weight loss journey, but it isn’t always the smartest plan. The Mayo Clinic warns that fast weight loss can upset your metabolism, making it harder to keep the weight off. Still, you can lose weight in a week healthily.
Juice Fast
A juice fast is exactly what it sounds like–for a given period of time, you eat no food, but you can drink juice. The juice that you drink should be 100 percent fruit juice with no added sugars. If possible, the best way to follow a juice fast is to purchase a juicing machine and juice fresh fruits and vegetables.
Fasting can help you to break out of negative habits that you have with regard to food. If you tend to reach for the bag of potato chips whenever you’re bored, that’s a habit that you need to break.
Fasting is a controversial topic, with some people claiming that it’s beneficial to the body and others claiming that it can harm your body. If you’re drinking juice–especially a wide variety of juices–you should be getting enough calories to avoid messing with your metabolism.
Mayo Clinic Diet
Though many diets have gone by the name “Mayo Clinic Diet”–including the Grapefruit Diet–there is only one diet that actually comes from the Mayo Clinic. This diet focuses on changing your eating habits, which will promote lifelong success. Initially, your goal is to add five healthy new habits and take away five unhealthy old habits. In doing this, you’ll reduce the number of calories that you eat and lose weight. You can typically lose a lot of weight in the first and second week and then the weight loss will drop to a pound or two a week, which is the weight-loss rate that most doctors recommend.
Low-Carb Diets
Low-carb diets are known for their quick weight loss, which supposedly occurs because the body turns to fat when it doesn’t have carbohydrates to use as energy. Science Daily reports, though, that the real reason is that following a low-carb diet reduces the overall number of calories that dieters are eating. Nevertheless, it can be a diet that works for you. The most popular plan is the Atkins Diet, which has a two-week starter plan that limits your carbohydrate intake to less than 20 g per day. Other plans, such as the Eat Clean Diet, allow you to eat carbohydrates as long as they are whole grains–all refined carbohydrates are eliminated.
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