Is it even possible to lose weight in just 2 weeks?
Yes, it is. To understand that, to need to understand the concept of both gaining and losing weight. When we eat more calories than we spend, then we gain weight.
And, when we have less calories than what we spend, then we lose weight.
Suppose, if you are having 2000 calories per day and your calorie expenditure is 1800 calories, then those calories will be stored in the form of fat in your body.
So, in order to lose weight all you have to do is cut down on your calorie intake and increase your calorie expenditure.
The thing called calorie deficit
Frankly, the larger the deficit the faster you’ll lose weight. But, this doesn’t mean you eat 100 calories spend 2000 calories and be dead after 2 weeks.
For example, to burn 1 pound of fat from your body the calorie deficit should be 3500 calories. Now, you can try to make this deficit in just one day.
Or you can spread it in a number of days. For example, if you divide it in 7 days, then you need to make a calorie deficit of 500 per day, which is not very difficult.
And, if you divide in for 5 days, then the calorie deficit of each day should be 700 calories. You know the math!
Ideal calorie deficit
The calorie deficit which is ideal for you depends upon many things, including your current weight, your goals, your health.
The deficit between 250-1000 calorie can be considered a safe range.
You can surely go more than that, but it is not advised to continue that way for a very long time.
Let us, for the time being assume that you choose a calorie deficit of 1000 calories. This means after the end of 2 weeks you would have lost 14000 calories.
1 pound of fat = 3500 calories
14000/3500 = 4 pounds
So, even without going to extremes you can lose 4 pounds(almost 2 kg) of fat in just 2 weeks.
Water weight reduction
You might have heard people telling you stories about how they lost 2 pounds or 4 pounds of weight in the first week of gyming.
You might have thought, then, that they were lying. Actually, it is true. You can lose up to 20 pounds of water, depending up on the size of your body.
The concept of water retention is simple, when your body feels that you aren’t getting enough water, then it automatically starts to retain water.
This water is stored all over the body not only making you heavy but also bloated. If you can get rid of this excess water then you can lose lots of weight.
And, this can happens in matter of days. That is why, in the first few days you’ll lose weight very fast, but after some time this rapid pace will decrease, because your body don’t have anymore excess water to shed.
Things you can do to lose water weight:
- Drink water – It is probably the only thing you need to clear 80-90% of the water weight. When you drink lots of water, you are giving a signal to your body that it doesn’t need to retain water. Hence, it automatically starts shedding excess water.
- Cut down salt – There is no need to go deep into it, but when you eat lots of salt, it messes up with the concentration of fluid in your body which causes water retention.
- Cardio – Do lots of cardio. The main thing is to sweat it all out. The water your body is retaining comes out of your body as sweat.
- Steam bath – Like exercise, it makes you sweat a lot, which makes you lose the water weight.
Empty stomach cardio
This technique has been in the debate for a very long time. There are people who say it is the best way to lose fat and there are some who thinks otherwise.
I have heard many professional body builders, including Mr. world, who use this technique before a grand competition to lose weight drastically.
How this technique can help you lose fat in 2 weeks?
To answer that I have to explain how your body works. When you eat food containing carbs, fats or protein they are broken down into small units.
For example, carbs is broken down into glucose, fats are broken down into fatty acids and protein is broken down into amino acids.
Here, glucose is the primary source of the energy and after that it is fatty acids.
So, when there is glucose or fatty acids flowing in your blood, your body utilises that for energy. But, if you don’t eat or eat less than required, then your body starts using fats stored in body as energy source.
In the morning, when your body is in fasted state for 8-10 hours, it is the best time to do cardio, because your body have to tap into stored fat for energy.
Problems with empty stomach cardio
When you do cardio in a fasted state, apart from using stored fat as an energy source, your body als starts breaking muscle protein to convert it into energy.
The solution to this problem is having pure protein 30-40 minutes before the cardio. Whey protein isolate is a good example of pure protein.
So, instead of breaking the muscles for the amino acids, your body utilises the amino acids in the blood to get the energy.
Best exercises to lose weight in 2 weeks
To lose weight the best exercises are compound exercises and weight lifting. So, we are going to see some exercises that can help you lose maximum weight in minimum amount of time.
Note: Losing fat is different from losing weight. Sometime you might lose fat, but not the weight. As while losing fat you can gain muscles.
But, a pound of fat looks much bigger than a pound of muscle.
Deadlift
This is the best exercise if you want to lose weight in a period as short as 2 weeks. And, there are many reasons behind that claim.
First of all, deadlift utilises pretty much each and every muscles in your body, which means to do a single deadlift movement you burn a lot of calories.
Secondly, if you use heavy weights for deadlifting you are breaking lots of muscle fibre all over the body, which means more testosterone is produced for repair work.
Thirdly, when the number of broken muscle fibre is high, more protein synthesis takes place, and you might be aware of the fact that when your body synthesis protein a lot of energy is used.
Planks
There is a big difference between doing planks and doing planks the right way. How to know what is the right way?
If you are able to hold a plank position for more than 30 seconds without any trouble then what you are doing is wrong.
The right way to do a plank is making it so difficult that you shouldn’t last for more than 15 seconds. After one or two sessions you’ll learn to make it more difficult.
Planks is one of those few exercises that has the ability to target almost every muscle in your body. From your shoulder to glutes to core, it targets everything.
If you have back problems or you want to develop a good posture, then plank is the way to go.
Crunches
You might have read in many articles that crunches is not good for losing fat in the belly, as there is no such thing as spot reduction.
Although, it is true that you can’t reduce fat from a particular area, this doesn’t make crunches a bad fat loss exercise.
When you do a normal crunch, you are using abdomen muscle and back muscles. These two muscles are quite large and targeting them helps you lose a lot of fat.
As you are looking to lose fat in 2 weeks, you need to add weights to your exercise. No matter what type of crunch you are doing, there is a scope of adding weight.
Note – You should always keep in mind that you must always use your core only to move your body. Using the momentum or the muscles of upper body will help you do more but it won’t be as beneficial.
Burpees
Now, a good fat burning exercise needs to do two things. Either it should target lots of muscles or it should be a very high intensity exercise.
Burpees is the exercise that fulfils both the requirements. It is actually a combination of a few set of movements that combine together to give you the perfect fat loss exercise.
Frankly, Burpees is the only exercise you need in order to use maximum amount of fat.
Squats
Squat is the staple movement for strong legs and big muscles. If done correctly, it can also target your glutes, abs and lower back.
Many people consider squats as a good way to train your abdomen muscles. The best way to activate your abs while doing squats is to go down really deep.
Again, you have to add weight to your squat to lose maximum fat. If you find it uncomfortable to perform barbell squats you use a smith machine for assistance.
Smith machine not only helps you with squats but it can also help you with many other exercises targeting various body parts. It is a multipurpose exercise machine.
Bench press
It is solely an exercise for upper body. It is a compound exercise and can be very helpful in fat burning process. The rest of the exercise mentioned above only focus on the lower body more.
But, you can really take advantage of training big muscles like chest and triceps.
It is very important to target different muscles from different angles, this give time for recovery and reduce the risk of overtraining.
While doing bench press make sure to engage your core, it will help you to stabilise more weight easily and engage more muscle in a single movement.
What to do in a cardio session?
First I’ll tell you what not to do. Never ever go for very long time at a very slow pace. For example, if you like to walk at 5 km/hr for 2 hours, then stop immediately.
It is not only worthless, but can also decrease the production of testosterone. And, it is a proven thing.
The cardio session should be brief and intense. First walk for first 5-10 minutes, then you need to sprint. You can do interval sprint, where you can sprint for 30 secs then walk for 60 seconds.
Repeat this at least 10 times.
Apart from it, you can run at medium speed for as much time as you can. Running is probably the best fat loss exercise.
This is because when you run you are constantly throwing yourself above the ground(even for micromilli second) and when you do that you break the maximum amount of muscle fibre.
If you get bored you can switch to elliptical machine for cardio. Like, treadmill, try to attain maximum intensity for some time after you get tired, go back to medium intensity.
Strength training and weight loss
It is said if you want to maintain muscles you do 15-20 reps on light weight, if you want to build muscles then you do 8-12 reps on medium weight and if you want to build strength you do 2-6 reps on very heavy weights.
Doing less reps on heavy weights helps you to build strength of your muscles. But, how does that helps to lose weight?
Apart from building strength, strength training is also very helpful in burning fat, due to variety of reasons. The most basic reason is it takes a lot of energy to lift very heavy weights.
Secondly, strength training shoots up your metabolic rate for hours after a workout session. This means, you’ll lose fat hours after completing the workout.
Thirdly, it increases your oxygen consumption post-workout, which helps in burning more calories. Here is a link to a study which tells relation between strength training and fat loss.
An ideal fat loss workout should be an amalgamation of both cardio and strength training.
Dividing the calorie intake
Decreasing a substantial amount of weight in minimum amount of time requires prudence, abstinence and strictness.
Suppose, you are planning to have 1000 calories in a day. You can either divide this in 5 equal meals of 200 calories which is a headache n its own.
The benefit of dividing your calories intake in 5-6 meals prevents you from overeating and storing excess glucose and fatty acids as fats.
Secondly, it prevents food craving. This craving makes you eat junk food which is bad for fat loss.
Or, you can divide it in such a way that the time of the day when the activity is maximum gets the maximum calorie.
For example, if you are walking or cycling to work then your breakfast should consists of major calorie portion. And, after lunch if you sit on a chair for a long time then you should eat less calories.
Eat less carbs and more protein
The most common mistake people make is not cutting down on the intake of carbs while trying to shed weight drastically.
If you don’t cut down carbs your body will never use the stored fat as an energy source. When you provide low amount of carbs to your body, it uses it very quickly.
Now, all your body can do is two things either it breaks down muscle for energy or it breaks down fat for energy.
Fortunately, breaking down of muscles is very less compared to breaking down of stored fat. And, to make it even less you need to increase the protein consumption.
If you are providing your body enough amino acids through your diet, then it will refuse to break muscles for energy.
Eating protein as an energy source is always costlier, but that sacrifice you have to make if you want to see some rapid weight loss.
Foods you should eat to lose weight in 2 weeks
Fruits
Fruits are one of the purest form of foods. As they contain no artificial substance and unlike vegetable you don’t have to cook them.
But, when it comes to losing weight in less time, you have to be very careful about the choice of fruits. As we are lowering the carb/sugar intake the fruit you eat should be low in carbs.
For example, a Banana is very high in carbs, for every 100 gms of banana you get 23 grams of carbohydrates. But, if you take a pineapple you only get 12 grams.
Here are some fruits with least amount of carbs.
Fruits Carbs(per 100 gms)
Pineapple 12 gms
Kiwi 15 gms
Apples 13 gms
Papaya 11 gms
Strawberry 8 gms
Whey protein
It is one of the greatest invention when it comes to health and body building. It not only helps to build muscles, but also keeps you healthy.
If you are on weight loss program then it is a must thing for you. You should should choose whey isolate as it has least amount of fat and carbs.
Whey protein is known to be anabolic, which means, even if you have whey protein without exercise it will help you build muscle to some extent.
The combination of whey protein and weight training is the greatest fat killer.
The best thing about whey, is that, it is very easy to take. You can prepare a whey shake in just couple of minutes. This is very helpful for people who are very busy.
Whey protein is very safe and most of the potential side effects it has can be blamed to over-consumption of it. If taken in moderate quantity it is almost safe as water.
Eggs
With the above two food items you are not getting any fats. Fats are very necessary for your body to function properly.
In order to produce testosterone you need adequate quantity of fats in your diet. You might be aware of the fact that testosterone helps burn fat.
Egg is a natural source of healthy fats. If you are eating just 2 eggs in a day, then you can eat whole eggs. But, if you are eating more than 8 eggs, then you should stick with egg whites only.
You can eat egg yolk of 2 eggs and it will provide enough fats for you. And, you can mix it up with other fat sources to get a complete range of fatty acids.
Eggs have good amount of monosaturated fatty acids, other source of mono-saturates is avocado. It is very low in carbs and high in healthy fats.
Omega-3
Omega-3 is a polysaturated fatty acid. It is vital for your brain and body, but unfortunately most of the people lack omega-3 in their diet.
It is important to have a combination of mono-saturated, poly-saturated and unsaturated fats. You get omega-3’s mostly from sea food.
Salmon and tuna are some great source of omega-3. But, it is tedious to prepare fish everyday. So, you can buy fish oil from the market.
Flax seeds is the best plant source for omega -3. You can either roast and grind them to powder form or buy flax seed oil from the market.
Remember flax seeds powder can be difficult to digest for some people, so, it is better to start with small dosage and increase it after your body starts getting use to it.
Green tea – It provides lots of anti-oxidants and it is known to have enzymes that increase the fat loss.
Meals for 2 weeks weight loss:
Meal 1:
A cup of oats with low-fat milk + 1 Apple + 1 egg Omelett/boiled +3 egg whites+ Green tea
Oats provide you ample amount of carbs and a little protein. Apple is high in Vitamin-a, Vitamin-c and magnesium. Egg provides complete protein.
Meal 2:
1/2 a cup of brown rice + Green tea + 1 cup kidney beans + 1 egg boiled
Half a cup of brown rice gives you 25 gms of carbs. Kidney beans are rich in protein but it is incomplete and to make the amino acid profile complete we add 1 egg boiled to the meal.
FYI – A complete protein source is one which contains all the essential amino acids.
Meal 3:
1 big cup of Boiled vegetables(Spinach, broccoli, peas, sprouts) + Chicken/ Fish 100 gms
Meal 4:
Snacks- Protein bar or dark chocolate + Fish oil/Flax seed oil
Dark chocolate is known to decrease the cortisol level, a reduction in the level of cortisol results in increase of testosterone.
Meal 5:
Whey + Green salad + Chicken breast/fish
It is very important to take whey before going to bed because at night growth hormones are released and protein synthesis is at maximum. So, it is important to provide enough protein.
This was the meal plan for a single day. You can use it everyday for 2 weeks or you can make slight alterations. For example, you can exchange kidney beans with black beans.
There is not very big difference between white rice and brown rice. So, if you really hate the taste of brown rice, then white rice is good enough.
You can choose vegetables of your own choice, most of them are healthy and full of nutrients.
Tips to lose weight
Eat food slowly
Chewing food slowly have many benefits and can be helpful with your weight loss goals. First of all, eating slowly helps the food to digest faster and better.
In a study it was seen that people who chewed their food slowly ate around 100 calories less than fast chewing people.
The reason behind this is that when you prolong eating period your body feels full even when you haven’t had enough food.
Lemon with water
Drinking lemon juice with lukewarm water is recommended by many skin experts, as it provides glowing and flawless skin.
But, lemon juice is also a great fat burner. It helps to lose weight by boosting your metabolism.
Be stress free
Stress may be considered a mental thing, but it does have physical manifestations. When you get really stressed, the cortisol level of your body goes up.
As we have discussed before, increase in cortisol results in decrease in testosterone production.
In today’s world stress is common but there are few things you can do to reduce the stress. Deep breathing is effective stress buster.
Meditation is also a way to kill stress.
Keep on moving
In a study, it was found that people who had jobs that involved moving, burned a lot more calories than people who stayed at one place.
They burned even more calories in a day than people who worked out, but had to sit at one place all the day.
Even if you have an office job you can stand while doing work on computer or walk around while talking on the phone.
You can burn lots of calories just by standing at one place for a long time.
Drink beer instead of hard liquor
Many people end up drinking hard liquor instead of beer as a way to stop belly fat gain. But, it makes them more fat.
Firstly, hard liquor messes up with hormones in your body, in decreases testosterone level, makes you stressed and prolonged consumption can destroy your bodies ability to produce testosterone permanently.
On the other hand, beer is much better for your body and in fact a moderate amount of consumption can be good for your skin.
Don’t masturbate to lose weight
There is a misconception among many gym goers that masturbation frequently helps to burn calories. Masturbation doesn’t burn same amount of calories as sex.
It even might work in the opposite direction. When you masturbate various hormones are released in your body, this is fine when you are doing it not so frequently.
But, when you start masturbating everyday or more that once a day, it effects your body in a negative way.
Ketogenic diet
This much information about weight loss, diet and exercising is enough if you want to lose a little bit of weight, like 10-20 pounds.
But, if you want to lose very heavy weight you might want to take more aggressive measures. Let me clear, you can use the same diet and workout routine, but it will be a little slower.
Ketogenic diet is really the best fat loss strategy for a person who want to lose lots of fat. And, it is not a word of mouth it is quite tried and tested.
In the ketogenic diet, you cut down carbs intake to almost zero and have lots of fats. Yes, you heard it write fats.
How ketogenic diet works?
The main idea behind ketogenic diet is to make your body adapt fat as the main source of energy. For a normal person, carbs is the main source of energy.
This is done by depleting the carbs completely from the diet and replacing it with fats. When body is getting fats only it adapts to it.
This adaption might take a couple of weeks to take place, until that time a person may feel dizzy or might have digestion problems.
Can I have large amount of protein?
No, because if you have large amount of protein, it can get converted into carbs and this will prevent your body from using fats as an energy source.
How much fat should I eat to lose weight?
It totally depends upon how much weight you want to lose, if you are looking to lose 100 pounds of weight, then half of the calorie should come from fat.
Note – The other half will come from fat stored in the body. If you are eating 1500 calories less than what you are spending then you can lose 50 pounds in just 3-4 months.
Read this article, for further information on ketogenic diet.
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