How Long Will it Take to Lose 20 Pounds?
Disclaimer: ReviewExercisePrograms.com uses affiliate links and may receive compensation for referring you to its affiliates.
If you want to lose weight healthily, it is imperative to ensure that you don’t lose more than four pounds in two weeks and more than eight in one month. Thus to shed off 20 pounds, you need an average of 10 weeks. For instance, if you lose one pound each week, it will take an average of 20 weeks to lose weight.
How Long Will It Take for Men to Lose 20 Pounds?
Men have leaner muscles compared to women. The result is men tend to lose weight faster than women. Men will tend to lose 20 pounds more quickly when compared with women if they engage in the same exercise routine and diet restrictions.
Regardless of who you are, losing weight can be daunting, whether you want to lose a few pounds or even 20 pounds. The process requires diet and lifestyle modification for men, for women, or for teens. Fortunately, the article below discusses some great strategies you can incorporate to expedite weight loss.
Arguably, you can lose 20 pounds after several months by ensuring you are eating fewer calories and exercising vigorously for an average of three to five hours per week. You can incorporate cardio training, interval training, and resistance training.
Remember that the number of pounds that you can shed every day heavily depends on your metabolism. It is also dependent on your diet, exercise, stress levels, and sleep.
How to Lose 20 Pounds Faster
1. Reduce Calories Intake
The first practical method on your journey to lose 20 pounds is to cut your calories intake. You can start by counting calories.
Ideally, weight loss will only occur when your body uses more calories than it consumes. Your body can effectively achieve that either by increasing physical activity and burning more calories or reducing intake of calories.
Reducing calories should be paired with other methods of losing weight, such as diet and effective lifestyle modification.
2. Diet Modification
A healthy diet can help you to lose a few pounds. Some of the tips you need to consider in diet modification primarily include:
- Incorporate raw vegetables in your meal
- Opt for home-cooked meals
- Men should drink less than five alcoholic drinks in one week, while women should consume less than three.
- Eliminate sweets or sweeteners in your diet
3. Drink More Water
Increasing water consumption is an effective method to help you lose a few calories. Water helps boost your metabolism rate and increases the process of burning calories. This will enhance weight loss when paired with other methods of losing weight.
Drinking water makes you feel full and thus will reduce your appetite the amount of food you consume. To achieve maximum results, ensure you take water before and after meals. Also, ensure that your water consumption is an average of two liters per day.
4. Increase Protein Consumption
If you want to lose 20 pounds within a few months, ensure that you include protein-rich foods in the diet. Protein-rich foods help to decrease belly fat and muscle mass. Also, the diet can help to reduce your appetite, thus minimizing calorie intake.
According to a study, increasing protein intake by 15% will increase the feelings of fullness and reduce calorie intake, body weight, and belly fat.
Protein-rich foods include meat, seafood, legumes, nuts, poultry, and seeds. These sources are healthy, and you can effectively incorporate them into your diet.
5. Exercise
Ensuring that you exercise more than 2-5 hours per week is imperative. The best exercise for losing weight is indulging in resistance training, such as lifting weights. The activity involves using your muscles to effectively work against a certain force to build strength and endurance. Exercise will help increase the body’s fat-burning capacity and increase the rate of metabolism.
6. Reduce Carb Consumption
Low carb diets are more than just a fad – they work. It is imperative to ensure that you reduce the intake of refined carbs to accelerate losing weight. Notably, refined carbs are stripped of the fiber content and nutrients in their processing. Thus these foods are nutrient-poor.
Thus the carbs are digested and absorbed very fast in your body. Rapid digestion will result in high blood sugars and increased hunger. Ideally, consuming these carbs will make you gain weight and increase body fat. Some of the carbs you should consider eliminating in your diet include; white bread, cereals, and pasta.
Take Control of Your Weight Loss Journey
Though the process of losing 20 pounds can seem very challenging, it is quite possible by incorporating the above strategies. Ensure you combine more than one method to achieve better results.