For those that have ten pounds to lose, and need to lose it fast, there are some ways that a big loss like this can be achieved. However, this type of loss should only be conducted on a short term basis and under the care of a doctor because it involves cutting out quite a few calories and burning a great deal more through exercise. Doing enough exercise to lose ten pounds in a week is possible, but it will not be an easy road and you should expect the entire week to be very difficult and tiring, not to mention expect the exercises to take up a great deal of time.
Fluctuations in Weight From One Day to the Next
You should understand that your weight fluctuates a great deal from day to day. Those that have never weighed themselves for more than one day in a row may be not be aware of this fact, but weight can fluctuate as much as five to seven pounds without any sort of exercise or diet program even being followed. The exact body weight depends upon a variety of factors, including the amount of food left in the digestive tract, the amount of water that the body is retaining and a few other things. You should not rely on these day to day scale numbers because they can be misleading.
Dieting to Lose Ten Pounds in a Week
If you want to lose ten pounds in a week, you will probably want to do part of the work required by dieting. Find out what your resting metabolic rate is, and then design a healthy diet of about 2/3 of what your RMR is. For instance, if you burn 2500 calories per day while at rest, then your diet can consist of about 1600 calories per day. You can go a bit lower if you want, but you should never go below 1200 calories a day, and you should stay away from detox, liquid and fad diets. Once you have determined how many more calories you are burning each day without exercise, and have subtracted the amount eaten, you can determine how much exercise will be required. It is important to note that your body will be burning a great deal of energy by working out, so make sure that you don’t try to cut out too many calories.
How Much Exercise is Required to Lose Ten Pounds in a Week?
If you have settled on an amount of calories to eat each day, and have subtracted that amount from your resting metabolic rate, you are ready to begin. Let’s assume the difference is 500 calories per day, which is 3500 per week. 3500 calories is one pound, so you will have to burn off the remaining nine pounds through exercise.
Since a pound is 3500 calories, you can multiply that number by nine, and then divide it again by seven, the amount of days in a week. The resulting number, 4500, is how many calories per day would have to be burned in order to lose ten pounds in a week. There are a few ways that this can be done, but no matter how you decide to workout, it will take several hours of high intensity exercise to burn that many calories. Here are some examples of different exercises, and the time required to burn 4500 calories doing them.
- Boxing (Sparring or in an actual match) 700 to 900 calories per hour. 5-6 hours to burn 4500.
- Walking at a leisurely pace burns around 500 calories per hour, so nine hours of walking would achieve this.
- Lifting weights burns around 400 calories per hour, so it would take about ten hours daily all seven days of the week to achieve this goal.