Losing More Than 2 lbs per Week

I’ve given you the knowledge you need to lose 2 pounds a week; however, I know you want to lose more than that. Most people, unfortunately, want more than 2 pounds. So the question is...how can one lose 4 to 5 pounds a week?

Let me try to make it as SIMPLE as possible for you. It all comes down to calories in, calories out. It’s really just simple math. Now, I’ll be the first to tell you, I was a horrible math student, as many of my teachers will agree. However, I’m pretty good at it when it comes to weight loss. Here’s how it works: To lose a pound, you must burn 3,500 calories. We must figure out the how to burn more calories in the most effective way.

There are things we don’t want to do, like too much resistance training. Working muscles too much will damage them because they never get a chance to recover. You want the muscles to recover because that’s when they get stronger. So my suggestion on resistance training is total body workouts only three times per week.

You also DO NOT want to get the weight off by starving yourself. If you eat fewer than 1,200-1,500 calories a day, you will sabotage your optimal results. By eating, you are putting fuel on the fire or keeping the metabolism going. When food is not in the body, there is no energy for the metabolism to work off of, thus slowing it down.

Therefore, cardiovascular training (walking, running, elliptical training, rowing, biking) is weight loss extra credit. It allows you to burn additional calories without overtraining. This is why you see people on TV shows lose a tremendous amount of weight in only a week, even weeks into the program.

Think about the math: If you are eating 1,500 calories a day, assuming your BMR without exercise is 1,600, and you do two 1-hour cardio sessions that burn 500 calories each (one in the morning and one at night), the two sessions, along with your regular daily activity, will speed up your base metabolism to at least 2,000. As a result, you will have burned about 1,500 calories that day — that is, almost half a pound. At that rate you will be losing up to 3.5 pounds a week. But most of that is because of lots of cardio. Not extra strength training.

With that said, you are more apt to lose more weight during the first two to three weeks of any weight loss regimen because of the dramatic change in your nutrition and the loss of excess fluid. After that, it's all about crunching the numbers, and cardio is the key.

If you want to lose more than two pounds per week, simply do more cardio. But do LOTS of it.

Chad Cannon is the owner of Shaping Concepts in Bluffton, SC.