Losing Weight in a Month: Gaining weight can be a troublesome thing to deal with especially if you are still in the prime of your life. The extra pounds you have put on not only change the sizes of the clothes you wear, the physical activities that you can do with ease now become more of a challenge. Instant foods and foods that have high trans fat content are becoming integrated into our diets because of their ease and convenience of preparation. Couple these foods with an increasingly sedentary lifestyle and you’ll notice the physical change in as short as a few days.
Losing weight, on another part, can be managed or can be challenging depending on how much weight you’ve gained and how much weight you want to shed off. There will be certain events in our lives that will make us realize that we need to lose weight and fast. Events like weddings, family reunions, high school reunions, charity balls, parties, or any large social gathering can lead us to re-examine ourselves and be more aware of our physical appearance. Thus, the journey to weight loss begins for those of us who will be attending these events. If these gatherings will be happening in a month or two, you’re going to need a comprehensive way of losing weight within a month.
Plan SMART
With your losing weight loss goal not too far ahead, you have to make a concrete plan first in order to have a reliable guide to your weight loss-inducing activities. Your weight loss aid can come in the form of weight loss supplements, exercise, and a healthy diet, but planning is also an aid that we sometimes take for granted while we go on a weight loss program. Sure, there are many effective methods in dieting, supplements, therapy, and even surgery that can allow you to see results over a short period of time, but do they actually let you know if you have reached your goal?
You may continue going on starvation mode every now and then or take weight loss medications or supplements but you can’t seem to track your progress and you gradually lose interest in continuing the program. This is where a SMART plan comes in. Your weight loss goal should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-based. Here’s an example of your SMART weight loss goal for the next month:
Specific
Instead of setting your goal as “I want to lose weight within a month”, make it more specific by making it “I want to lose 20 pounds within 1 month”.
Measurable
Your 20-pound number for your weight loss makes your goal measurable. You can then measure your own weight and subtract 20 pounds to get your target weight. You can then track your progress over the coming days.
Attainable
20 pounds may look difficult to achieve, but it’s not entirely impossible. Having an attainable goal doesn’t mean it has to be easy to achieve or you’ll lose the sense of satisfaction and achievement when you do. It shouldn’t be impossible or else you’ll end up stopping or giving up halfway. 20 pounds may be too big a number, but you have more or less 30 days to shed much weight. Instead, break down your main goal into daily goals – to lose at least one pound daily. This is an easier and attainable goal for the day, and as long as you meet that goal, you will be guaranteed to reach your main goal.
Relevant
Your weight loss goal will need to have something where it can make the most impact. As mentioned earlier, there will be instances when you’ll need to shed weight fast, like an upcoming social event. Thus, in order to look stunning and vibrant at the event, you need to look trim and well-dressed.
Time-based
1 month, or basically 30 days is your timeline to perform your weight loss regimen. In a way, this goes hand in hand with the Specific factor as you have a definite end period to achieve that goal. Once you have this and the other four factors taken into consideration, you are well on your way to working up an effective weight loss program.
Select and Start Your Workout Sessions
Now that you have set a definite goal for losing weight, it’s time to make your workout session work out right the first time. With a limited amount of time in your hands, you can’t afford to make a hit-or-miss approach to your weight-loss session. Even with a lot of resources over the internet for workout plans and regimens, it is still wise to consult a professional fitness instructor to give you a good set of training and exercises that will be in tune with your set weight loss goal. Present to your instructor your goal and plan in order for him or her to make the right intensity of training and exercise sessions that are designed specifically for your weight loss goal.
Follow the Training/Workout Intensity
The success of your long weight losing program depends on how effectively you can follow and execute the training intensity. Before you embark on some serious muscle-flexing and calorie burning, you have to condition your mind to be ready for handling pain and serious changes. Preparation is key to any workout or training session so it is best to have your mind and body to be always ready for what lies ahead.
You are already well aware that your goal is to lose a specific number of pounds before the month ends and it will not take a simple workout or training session to achieve that. With limited time to achieve a significant loss in weight, you are bound to have a high-intensity workout for the most part of your program. The intensity of your workout will see a rising trend so be prepared for more pain as the sessions progress day by day.
Circuit Training
To give you an idea of the training you must go through losing a significant amount of weight – say 20 pounds – within a month, you will need to go through a series of circuit training. By workout definition, circuit training is doing a sequence of exercises in a continuous manner and then you repeat the sequence. Your circuit training will be focused on a certain major muscle group, depending on the area where fat has accumulated.
The most common areas are the abdomen, obliques, biceps, triceps, and quadriceps. Your level of training will also decide the intensity of your circuits. If it’s your first time hitting the gym or going through a weight loss program, you will be provided a beginner bodyweight workout circuit. If you have prior experience with gym programs and workout, or you may have stopped hitting the gym a few months until you have gained pounds, your coach or trainer may recommend an advanced bodyweight workout circuit. Here’s what a typical circuit workout looks like:
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Pushups (30 seconds)
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Planking (30 seconds)
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Mountain climbers (30 seconds)
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Bicycle sit-ups (30 seconds)
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Burpees (30 seconds)
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Knee lifts on the spot (30 seconds)
You will need to perform these exercises immediately after the other, with little or no rest. Repeat the circuit training for 3 sets. Remember that warming up and cooling down is essential in any workout of training, so do some jumping jacks (25 reps) before the circuit and do a slow-paced jog (20 minutes) for cooling down after the circuits. The duration and intensity will change as the days go by and the pain level will also increase, but your body will get used to it.
Follow a Strict Diet Plan
Dieting is an important complement to exercise when it comes to any weight loss program. After an intensive workout, your body’s natural reaction will be to replenish the lost nutrients during the time you sweated out in the workout. This is typically done through eating. You may have noticed that we tend to have severe hunger sensations after exercising or working out intensely and we develop a voracious appetite as a result. For losing weight, you need to seriously take control of this urge in order for your bodyweight reduction to progress smoothly. Avoiding high-calorie foods is the most important part of your diet plan.
Before starting your workout session, be sure to rid your fridge of high-calorie foods such as soft drinks, ice cream, white bread, potato chips, and other processed foods that have high trans-fat, sodium, or any other content that are not good for you and maybe detrimental to your weight loss program. What you should be stocking up on your fridge are fruits, green leafy vegetables, and lean meats and fish. Your diet plan should follow a high-protein and low-calorie design for the next few weeks.
Again proper mindset and conditioning are essential in order for you to successfully get through this diet plan part. The change doesn’t need to be drastic since you will not be totally eliminating calories. You’ll need to have to significantly cut down on the number of calories you take in and ramp up your protein consumption. This diet will help you to gain more strength, improve your muscle mass, increase the total burned calories for the day, and also helps remove fats from the body.
Maintain Your Weight Loss Course with Diet Supplements
Taking on weight-loss supplements can be considered an optional step in your program, but it can also help increase your program’s success. Not all supplements directly target fat and perform fat reduction, but others still help you lose weight by improving your body’s metabolism.
Fats and carbohydrates are easier to break down and convert to useful substances rather than becoming surplus substances that accumulate in places where they should not belong, like the liver, kidney, and blood vessels. Chemicals like L-carnitine, L-tyrosine, and green tea extract are just a few chemicals that help improve our metabolism and reduce body fat in the process. Before you integrate weight loss supplements into the program, you need to consult with your doctor first and what works best for you.
Keep a Consistent Workout Intensity
By the end of the second week of your workout sessions, your body might already be used to the intensity of the circuits. The best thing to do over the next two weeks is to keep the intensity consistent. Your trainer or coach will specifically have an increasing trend of workout circuit intensity for the first two weeks and have it plateau for the next two. The next two weeks are for developing muscle tone and muscle maintenance.
Again, strictly follow the instructions of your gym instructor or coach. Do not increase the workout intensity nor decrease it. Maintain the intensity until the month ends. It may be tempting to go slow or easy on the workout sessions, but do not give in to the temptation if you want to see tangible results of your hard work.
Keep Tabs on Your Progress
Monitoring and measuring your progress helps you maintain focus on your goal and keep track of where you currently stand. The ideal monitoring frequency should be weekly in this case, but if you have the luxury of time, you can do daily monitoring. The first two weeks of the program are crucial as it determines if you are going in the right direction.
Don’t worry if you only see a minimal improvement in your losing weight at first. What matters is there is an observed improvement, which means that the program is working. Also, different bodies have different metabolic rates and react differently to exercise and workout. If you see just a little change in the first week, it just means your body is still adjusting. By the second week, you’ll begin to notice a significant change, and this will inspire you to keep pushing on until the end of the program.
Keep a visible record of your progress report like writing your weight loss progress and target on a piece of paper, having a table to fill out on a computer, or simply put a note on your smartphone. There are also weight monitoring apps that you can download to track your progress even easier.
Conclusion
Your mindset is important in the overall success of your losing weight. You may have thought of the program as a temporary and short-term endeavor at first, but once you realize that you are able to pull through the program, you develop a desire to continue beyond your one month program. This is also a crucial step in approaching weight loss and healthy living. Developing a better perspective about your health and well-being will motivate you to continue with the healthy practices you have performed over the month – doing vigorous exercise, having enough rest and sleep, and eating healthily.
This way, you are eliminating the possibility of relapsing back to an unhealthy lifestyle once your weight loss purpose has been met. Most importantly, if you have a better perspective about weight loss and healthy living while in the middle of the program, you are looking far ahead than just your one-month training – you are in the process of integrating exercise and healthy eating into your lifestyle.
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