How To Lose 2 Pounds A Week: Simple Tips For Consistent Weight Loss
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Introduction
If you want to lose weight, aiming to lose two pounds a week is a healthy and sustainable way to do it [1]. For most people, this will require a few relatively simple changes to their routine.
No need for unpalatable diets or difficult workout regimens that you dread doing – and will probably quit.
You’ve probably read articles on this topic that provide vague recommendations and leave you more confused than before you read them. Not here.
In this article, you will be given a few simple suggestions to help you eat less and move more.
First things first: the need for a calorie deficit
If you want to lose weight, you’ll need to create a calorie deficit of around 1000 calories – the estimated amount required to lose two pounds [2].
To achieve this with an even balance of diet and exercise, you’ll need to eat 500 calories less than your recommended daily caloric intake and exercise more to burn the other 500 calories. But how best to achieve this? What is the best way to go about shedding the pounds? How much should you eat and what exercise routines should you do?
Here, we will suggest a combination of meal planning and brisk walking. These alone should get you results.
But if one or both of these suggestions aren’t for you, or you’d like to step things up a gear, we’ve provided a few more ideas for you to consider.
Plan your meals + snacks
In the modern era, food is abundant in a way that it wasn’t in previous generations. But we haven’t adjusted our eating habits accordingly; food intake has increased as food became more available.
The result: unhealthy weight gain. The solution: plan every meal.
The surest way to maintain a calorie deficit when it comes to food consumption is to plan exactly what you’re going to eat and stick to it.
For the average female this will mean sticking to a 1500 calorie diet. For the average male, 2000 calories (Based on a recommended daily caloric intake of 2,000 and 2,500 calories respectively [3]).
There are no shortage of calorie guides and calculators to help you make your own meal plan. But if you would like it done for you, the videos below are a good starting place.
1500 calorie meal plan
The following video is a good example of a healthy 1500 calorie meal plan. Even if you don’t want to follow it exactly, it should provide you with a few useful tips for making your own plan.
2000 calorie meal plan
This video is an example of a healthy 2000 calorie meal plan.
How to feel full on less calories: the keto diet
Calorie restricted diets often leave us hungry and irritable. One way to avoid this is to eat foods that leave us feeling more satiated with less calories.
A big advantage of low carb diets such as the keto diet is that they can make us feel full on less calories [4].
In addition to the other purported benefits, it’s not hard to see how this alone could help us lose weight.
Not a fan of meal plans? Intermittent fasting might be for you.
If you would rather avoid rigid diet plans, you can alternatively stick to eating within an 8-10 hour window and fast for the other 14-16 hours, consuming nothing with the exception of water during the fasting period.
In addition to other health benefits [5], by reducing the hours you allow yourself to eat you’re less likely to overeat, especially snacking late at night, which is eliminated by this approach.
Intermittent fasting isn’t for everyone, but some might find it less challenging and easier to stick to than a strict meal plan.
Move more: Walk briskly for at least an hour a day
It doesn’t get any simpler than walking. And fortunately, walking on its own, provided you do enough of it, is sufficient to lose weight.
As for how many calories you can expect to burn from walking, this varies from person to person.
The simple chart below shows how much individuals of different weights can expect to burn from one hours walking.
(Calories burned are on the right column)
| Weight | 3.5 mph |
| 125 lbs. | 240 |
| 155 lbs. | 270 |
| 185 lbs. | 300 |
| 215 lbs. | 412 |
| 245 lbs. | 469 |
| 285 lbs. | 527 |
| 305 lbs. | 584 |
Source: Health.Harvard.edu
Ways to increase calories burned from walking
You can always walk at an even brisker pace. And you can pick a walking trail with a steep incline so that you’re walking up hill most of the time. This will make the walk more challenging and, of course, burn more calories.
If you’re doing some or all of your walking on a treadmill this is even easier to do. Most treadmills, even the cheaper models, have the option of adjusting the incline, simulating an uphill walk.
Can't walk outside? No problem
If for whatever reason walking outside isn’t an option, treadmills are a great alternative. And you don’t have to spend a fortune. Cheap mechanical treadmills are more than up to the job.
As mentioned earlier, a great advantage of treadmills is that you simulate uphill walking by simply adjusting the incline, burning even more calories.
Conclusion
While there are many ways to achieve two pounds of weight loss a week, a low calorie meal plan combined with daily brisk walking of at least an hour a day is perhaps the easiest, cheapest and most achievable way to do so.
You don’t have to be an athlete. You don’t have to be nutrition expert. Just be consistent and stick to your plan.
References
1. https://www.nbcnews.com/better/health/why-losing-weight-too-quickly-may-backfire-long-run-ncna841936
2. https://www.healthline.com/health/how-much-weight-can-you-lose-in-2-weeks
3. https://www.nhs.uk/common-health-questions/food-and-diet/what-should-my-daily-intake-of-calories-be/
4. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4873405/
5. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/intermittent-fasting-what-is-it-and-how-does-it-work