So you’re looking at the calender you forgot you created a few months ago and you see it! It’s your girlfriend’s sister’s wedding coming up in a week! And of course you promised her you’d drop a few inches in order to slip back into your old suit that no longer fits all that well.

Sure, you could take the pants in to the local tailor  (although it can be tricky to take pants out…it’s much easier to have it brought in), but then you’ll hear about not dropping the weight you said you would the entire drive up. Whatever the occasion (we’ve all been there), it’s time to drop the weight, fast!

But what can you do, and what’s really going to help you drop the pounds quickly?

We’ve got all the answers for you.

Quick Weight Loss Vs. Long-Term Weight Loss

Alright, so let’s get one thing set in stone right away.

Quick weight loss is so much different from long-term weight loss. Long-term weight loss is something sustainable. It’s a way of life. It’s a diet you can abide by and live comfortably. Quick weight loss is exactly that: drop the pounds fast. Your entire goal is to make weigh in at a set time.

Whether it’s the wedding of a close friend, you want to slip into that form-fitting dress or a beach vacation is coming up quickly, quick weight loss shreds pounds in a few different ways.

So just be aware that while you will drop weight, it will come back (at least some of it) because quick weight loss is not sustainable weight loss.

And don’t worry.

This is something you can do. Boxers and other professional fighters do this all the time. They cut down body weight in order to make a specific weigh-in. You don’t need to start hitting the gym and working out all day, every day, in order to make these kinds of strict weigh-in requirements, but we’ve got some tips that will help.

 Quick Weight Loss Tip:  Drink Water. Lots and Lots of Water

The first step to dropping weight quickly is to ditch the water weight.

Depending on your current level of fitness, how much water you have been drinking and how much sodium you’ve taken in recently, you may be able to ditch several pounds right off the bat. The exact amount you can drop in terms of water weight hinges on all sorts of variables.

However, one of the best ways to cut down on the amount of water your body retains is to continually bring in water.

When your body actively brings in water it becomes accustomed to always having it around. Due to this, there’s no reason to hold onto the water.

How much water should you drink?

The recommended amount is a total of 64 ounces of water a day. That’s eight glasses of eight ounces throughout the course of the day. Initially, that sounds like a lot, but when you think about it that really isn’t. A single glass holds around 16 ounces. You only have to drink four of those a day for 64 ounces.

That’s basically one glass per meal.

You can easily drink more than that. One of the ways we like to stay on top of our water consumption is to have a 32-ounce water bottle on hand and sip on it throughout the day.

Need some extra flavor to help boost your water intake?

Toss a few tea bags in the bottle. Or add in cucumbers. If we weren’t going for fast weight loss we’d say you could add in fruit, but we’ll get into why you should avoid fruit for your fast weight loss (yes, we said avoid fruit).

Stick with only consuming water, black coffee and tea (green and black specifically, but nothing with sugar or sodium). Ditch every soft drink, sports drink, juice or anything that isn’t 100% natural. Sodium will just cause your body to retain water, as will sugar.

Sweat Out That Water

When looking to drop pounds quickly, the largest portion of the weight will be water.

There’s a reason why when someone goes on a diet they may drop five or 10 pounds the first week, then slow down drastically. Most of the initial weight is water. Now, with this diet routine, we’ll help you drop a few more pounds than just water, but water really is the main target area. As we just covered the importance of drinking a ton of water, let’s now look at sweating the water out.

There are plenty more ways to push water out of your system than running to the bathroom every 30 minutes.

Sweating it out can help in a few different ways. First, sweat does push the water out faster, but it also helps push sodium out of your body as well. As salt retains water, pushing salt out of the body as well makes sweating a double-whammy. Yes, you can crank up the heat and get in some cardio. You’ve probably heard of things like hot yoga before, which really is nothing but yoga with the furnace up (and an overpriced membership fee).

In reality hot yoga just makes it feel like you’re getting in a workout (we’re not bashing yoga, we think it’s great for stretching out the body, but you’re kidding yourself if you think yoga is any kind of workout…you’ll burn more calories yelling at the TV during a close football game). However, heat mixed with cardio can really push out the sweat.

Now, cranking up the heat may not be an option, and you probably don’t want to see your electric bill go through the roof.

That’s why you should look for a sauna suit. These suits are made out of a special material that catches the heat put out by your body while working out and keeps it close to your body. This maintains a higher temperature level, causing you to sweat.

It’s similar to a greenhouse effect.

If you’re in a real pinch you can use black trash bags for your body, but that’s not really a great fit, and you can pick up a sweat sauna suit for $10 to $20. Just remember, it is crucial to maintaining your hydration while using a plastic sweat sauna suit. If you don’t, you risk dehydration and other problems associated with it.

Quick Weight Loss Diet Options

Remember, this is a diet that you likely will not maintain for longer than a few days or even a week or two.

It’s our opinion you don’t want to just slash out calories completely, yet if you want to drop the pounds you’ll want to alter your diet. It’s still important to bring calories in so your body has energy and your bloodstream can circulate energy to other areas of your body. So you really need to focus on foods that prevent water retention and help you burn calories.

In general, when looking to burn through weight faster, you want a low carb, low calorie higher lean protein diet. Sure, you could sit on your couch and eat celery all day, but you’ll have no energy at all, which won’t help much when you’re trying to put in cardio and other kinds of workouts.

So why low/no carbs?

Have you ever woken up the next day after scarfing some pasta the next day and noticed you have a rather large belly?

Sure, you might have had 1,500 calories of pasta last night, but your belly shouldn’t look that big, right?

Don’t worry, that’ll go down. And it’s not just the pasta weighing down your stomach. Much of this is actually water weight.

You see, every gram of carbs you eat requires around three to four grams of water to store and process it. That pasta you just consumed may end up being 100 grams of carbs, which means you could have an additional 400 grams of water working in unison with it. That’s around a pound of water right there.  And that’s not even including the sodium. So you want to cut out as much of the carbs as you possibly can.

Now, some people like to toss around the concept of a zero carb diet.

That, in reality, is probably impossible.

Unless you’re eating nothing but turkey or certain unprocessed meats all day, you’re going to consume carbs. Your vegetables, fruits and basically everything else not meat related has carbs. So instead you want to go as low as you can. It’s also why you’ll need to ditch fruits for the time being. Fruits are often packed full of natural sugars. Sugars are a form of carbs. So yes, that smoothie you drink on the way to the gym may just have 50 grams of carbs in it (even if it’s made from 100% fruit).

This doesn’t mean you need to go completely Atkins diet. You will run into people who rave about this diet. Rob Lowe, the actor, is now a spokesperson for Atkins. He’s been on the low carb high protein diet for years (even before he knew he was doing Atkins).

However, with Atkins, you don’t count calories.

It’s all about avoiding carbs. So, in theory, you can eat as many fatty foods as you want, as long as there are no (or very little) carbs. The idea is by cutting out carbs your body will instead begin to process fat cells for energy.

However, it also allows you to eat as many fatty meats as you might want.

Instead, for your quick weight loss diet, we recommend almost a variation of Atkins. Yes, ditch the carbs (as much as possible), and also ditch the sodium (which you should do anyway).

Now, we also want you to ditch the heavy fat foods.

This is especially if you have heart conditions.

Instead, focus on a higher lean protein, low car, low-calorie diet. You’ll have more energy than a cleanse diet and still drop the weight. Some options include most seafood (like tuna), lean turkey and other poultry options. Mix with green vegetables (green veggies, like collard greens, tend to have less carbs than colored variations).

With this kind of diet, you can easily get your calorie intake to around 1,000 a day.

You need to burn (generally speaking) 3,500 calories more than you take in to drop a pound (beyond water weight). So if your normal diet is around 2,000 calories, that’s about two pounds a week, just from dieting. Add in the water weight you drop and you could drop 10 pounds in the first two weeks or so (and that’s without crazy cardio or any workout out).

Should You Consider a Cleanse Diet?

If you really need to drop weight fast, you may start eying one of the many “cleanse” diets out there. If you’ve read some of our other posts in the past, you know we’re not a huge fan of these kinds of diets. These diets may include nothing more than just water with some seasoning, vinegar or other oddities included.

Basically, you cut your calorie intake down to zero.

Sure, you’ll burn off some weight with this.

However, there are a few different problems with it. For starters, attempting to maintain a cleanse diet for more than a few days will become dangerous.

Your body needs calories in order to energize the cells within your body. Without any kind of incoming calories, your body just won’t have the needed energy to do this. You’ll feel extra weak and you’ll start to break down muscle. So while you may consider a cleanse diet for a day or two, it’s better to just go with intermittent fasting at this point.

Intermittent Fasting

There are some that swear by this. Basically, you don’t eat for a set period of time. There’s an eat-stop-eat option, where you don’t eat for 24 hours a day once a week and the 5:2 diet, which allows you to consume 500 calories two days a week. It’s not long-term fasting and yet it’s safer than extended cleanse diets.

So consider these for an added weight loss boost.

In Conclusion

It is possible to drop a considerable amount of weight quickly. You likely won’t keep all of this weight off, and many dieting options you shouldn’t maintain for long periods of time, but when in a pinch and you need to fit into that bathing suit, dress or tux, each of these options can help you significantly.

-Terry Asher