How To Lose 30 Pounds in 30 Days

Is it possible to lose 30 pounds in 30 days, or 30 pounds in a month?

The answer is "yes".

However, you have to be determined to stick to it. I personally have not lost 30 pounds in 30 days, but several times I've had a string of days where I'd lose anywhere from 1 to 3 pounds each day. Theoretically, I could have lost 30 pounds in 30 days.

Here are my tips to achieving this. If you follow these tips, I'm confident you can do it...

1. Stay away from sugar - This has become my number one tip for all weight loss. Sugar doesn't just add calories, it also slows down the fat burning process. The more sugar you consume, the less fat you burn. What you want is the opposite, where your body is burning the most fat at the fastest rate possible. To do that, you have to cease as much sugar consumption as you can.
   
   Obvious sugary foods are sodas, cookies, cake, candy, ice cream. But don't forget condiments like BBQ sauce, ketchup, salad dressings, and jams. Read the nutrition labels. Also, fruit contains a lot of sugar. Normally I'd advise you to still eat fruit, but if you're trying to lose 30 pounds in 30 days, just stay away from fruit too.
   
   If avoiding sugar was the only thing you did for weight loss, it would still do some amazing things for you.



2. Don't starve yourself - Going hungry causes your body to go into "survival mode", where it tries to conserve calories and burn as little fat as possible. Instead, eat all throughout the day, but eat a little at a time. Eat foods low in fat, and low in sugar. Think of whole-wheat tortillas (plain), beef jerky (find the lowest sugary jerky you can find), eat salads with no dressing (use salsa instead).



3. Focus on lean meats and vegetables - Buy only fresh meats and vegetables, not frozen or canned or prepared, you'll get the most nutrition and the least amount of calories this way. In fact, eating a lean grilled steak for breakfast is beneficial, it keeps you feeling full longer, and it requires your body to burn more calories trying to digest it.



4. Eat lots of fiber - Fiber burns calories because your body tries to digest it, but it cannot. And because you can't absorb fiber, it effectively adds zero calories to your diet. If you mix fiber into your diet, it will also bind a small portion of digestible food into its mesh and pass it out of your system, thus sparing you from a small portion of calories.
   
   Remember the vegetables I said above. Eat lots of salads, but avoid using dressing. Instead use salsa or even hot sauce works, both of which are zero fat, and zero sugar. Whole wheat tortillas work really well as a breakfast, but eat them plain with nothing on them. Mission Tortillas has a line called "Carb Balance", and their whole wheat tortilla has a whopping 21g of fiber per tortilla in the large size. That's about 80% of your daily requirement right there.
   
   Or use fiber supplements, and take plenty of them throughout the day.
   
   
5. Exercise of course - But you don't have to run yourself ragged everyday, and you don't necessarily have to lift weights. Instead, go walking. I found that you can burn more calories taking a leisurely two hour walk, instead of spending 20 minutes under strenuous weight lifting. Use Google Maps to plot out a course around your neighborhood equaling three miles. That should take you about 2 hours.
   
   Don't forget, use the lunch time at work to do some walking also.



6. Count your calories - Keep track of everything you eat each day, and log into a journal. Use a word processor, a spreadsheet, or text editor, just anything you can use to log your daily calorie consumption.
   
   If you currently weight 200 pounds, and you spent almost all day sitting, sleeping, and doing basic things around the house, you'll burn about 2,900 calories each day, just because that's what your body needs to beat its heart, breath air, build new tissues, and do what minor physical activity you tend to do. It's amazing but true.
   
   So if you keep your body metabolizing food all day long, and mix in some walking each day, and limit your calorie consumption to about 1,500 or less, you will certainly lose about 1 pound of fat each day.
   
   Keep track of those calories to keep yourself on track.



7. Log your weight daily - As remedial as it sounds, it's one of the most underrated weight loss tips. In order to keep yourself on track to losing 30 pounds in 30 days, you must weigh yourself everyday, and keep a log of the weight.
   
   At the end of week, you should have lost 7 pounds. Some days you might not lose any weight, but other days you might lose a couple pounds. But you'll never know if you're on track if you don't keep a daily log.
   
   Hang a calendar on the wall above your scale. Write down your morning weigh-in on the calendar, then make adjustments to your weight loss efforts as needed.

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