Millions of people worldwide are trying to shed their excess pounds and tone up their bodies. What comes as one of the first questions is the query of healthy weight loss goals. There is an increased trend of people who want to get their perfect body as fast as possible, that’s why crash diets or juice cleanses became so popular. But the impact of extreme dieting is utterly disastrous to your health. That is why it is crucial to set up realistic goals allowing you to melt your fat and lower the number on the scales without damaging your health.
How much weight can you safely lose in 100 days without crashing your health? Maybe you can easily lose 100 pounds in 3 months? Read this article to find out.
The Basics Of A Healthy Diet
Essentially, a balanced diet is delivering all essential nutrients to your body and supporting its basic functioning. Putting up a healthy diet is crucial whether you want to lose weight, gain muscle mass, or simply maintain your current state. Certainly, following a suitable dietary plan is even more indispensable for those who’ve got certain issues such as digestive problems, food intolerances, or polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). Reduction of risk with major health issues, including obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, and cancer are all strongly connected to healthy dieting (11, 8). A balanced diet will boost your metabolism, rejuvenate your skin, and help maintain the desired weight.
The USDA (12) states that the majority of your daily energy intake should come from fruits and veggies, low-fat dairy, legumes, nuts, and protein (preferably from plant sources and seafood). Indeed, you need to avoid over-sweetened, filled with artificial preservatives, processed and fatty junk food. This aspect, thankfully, has become a common-sense for every person just beginning their weight loss journey.
According to the US Department of Health and Human Services (12), an adult woman needs between 1600 and 2000 calories per day to maintain the proper functioning of her body and prevent the development of nutrient deficiencies.
At the same time, healthy weight loss tempo is about 1-2 pounds per week (9). A faster weight loss is likely to harm your body, and you’re likely to gain the weight back after sticking to such an extreme dietary plan.
Which Foods To Include In A Healthy Diet?
Before grasping how much weight you can lose in 100 days, you need to understand which foods will accompany you in this effort.
- Whole grains are rich in complex carbs and fiber, will boost your energy levels, help you lose weight more quickly, and reduce cardiovascular risks (13).
- Leafy greens like kale, collard, spinach, and arugula protect you against heart disease, macular degeneration, type 2 diabetes, and certain cancers (4).
- Legumes are very rich in vegetable protein and are linked to normalized blood pressure, reduced levels of cholesterol, and lower risk of heart disease (3)
- Nuts such as almonds and walnuts provide a nourishing effect on your whole body and are a rich source of polyunsaturated fatty acids omega-6 and omega-3. They even protect you against serious conditions like diabetes and cancer (1).
- Dairy products such as natural yogurts (no added sugar), kefir, and low-fat cottage cheese provide calcium crucial for your bones and teeth and improve the digestive tract.
- Ocean fish contain good proteins and essential omega-3 fatty acids. Seafood helps maintain eyesight, smoothen your skin, improve your performance in intellectual tasks, and lower the risk of depression (5).
- Fruits and berries are a storehouse of various vitamins and minerals. They can rejuvenate your skin and protect the body from inflammation and disease.
As mentioned before, you should avoid deep-fried foods, sweetened sparkling drinks, burgers, mayonnaise, and similar sauces, sausages, and other processed-meat products, sweets, and packaged juices. In general, anything containing artificial sweeteners, preservatives, and palm oil should not be a part of your diet.
Read More: The Fundamentals of a Balanced Diet: Foods, Benefits, Weight Loss
How Much Weight Can You Lose In 100 Days?
Simple math will help. 100 days is approximately 14 weeks. This means you should be able to lose between 14 and 28 pounds in 100 days without wreaking havoc on your health. A maximum weight loss in a month, following a healthy approach, would be about 8 pounds.
You might lose more than 2 pounds in the first week or two, and this is normal. During the first few weeks of losing weight, a rapid drop is normal. In part, this is because when you cut calories, the body gets the energy it requires initially by releasing its stores of glycogen, a type of carbohydrate located in your muscles and liver (7).
Glycogen is partly made of water, so when you burn glycogen for energy, it releases water, causing water weight loss. This effect is temporary, and your weight loss is going to be slower further along the road.
As you lose weight, you often lose some muscle with fat. You should ideally try to lose fat and build up muscle at the same time.
Muscle helps keep up your metabolism, the rate at which you burn calories. So when you lose weight, your metabolism slows down, and you start burning that fat slower than when you were heavier.
So, a slower metabolism will slow your weight loss, even if you stick to the number of calories that helped you melt some fat previously.
In this case, one of the best solutions is to increase your physical activity to build up muscle. That is just one of the reasons it is crucial to combine dieting and physical training in your weight loss process.
Tips For Effective Weight Loss Process
Diet and training are two major components of weight loss, but small tips can make your weight loss much more effective without requiring tons of effort. How much weight can you lose in 100 days depends on those lifestyle changes too.
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Eat Slowly
It might seem unimportant, but the pace at which you eat makes a great difference to how much you eat. A study lead on middle-aged women has shown that eating faster is associated with a high BMI (6). When you eat too fast, your brain doesn’t have enough time to send a signal that you are full. As a consequence, you consume more than your body actually needs. Eating slowly whenever possible will help you achieve your weight loss goals.
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Practice Mindful Eating
Furthermore, if you choose to eat at a slower pace, you can practice mindful eating to make everything even more enjoyable and effective. Mindful eating is regularly used as a treatment for a wide diversity of health conditions including food-related behaviors like binge eating and emotional eating, as well as anxiety and depression. It is, of course, helpful in weight loss as well (2).
If you tend to let yourself off the hook, raise the white flag when things get tougher than you expected, send yourself on an unconscious binge-eating trip – BetterMe app is here to help you leave all of these sabotaging habits in the past!
This approach could definitely help you lose weight without drastic calorie restriction and improve your overall health as well. It might be a good option if you don’t want to restrict calories too much, or if you’re not much into physical activity.
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Sleep Enough
Sleep is an extremely underrated factor concerning the weight loss process. But in reality, poor sleep is extremely strongly associated with obesity (10) and can hinder your muscle gains as well.
FAQs
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How To Lose 40 Pounds In 100 Days?
As you’ve seen, the healthy number for weight loss in 100 days is up to 28 pounds. So, losing 40 pounds will take more time if you wish to care for your health while melting extra fat.
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How Much Can I Lose In 100 Days Without Exercise?
It all depends on your calorie intake – calorie burn balance. It is difficult to lose 2 pounds a week solely through calorie restriction. So, if you wish to preserve your health, you are likely to lose less than 28 pounds in 100 days without exercise.
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Can I Lose 100 Pounds In 100 Days?
No, you can’t. This is an extremely unrealistic number and you shouldn’t even consider it as possible.
Final Thought
How much weight can you lose in 100 days? Approximately, up to 28 pounds. This is a healthy maximum number if you wish to take care of your health while melting excess pounds. Your weight loss process should consist of exercise and healthy eating habits combination, and you can include some of the tips and approaches listed in this article to achieve the best results.
DISCLAIMER:
This article is intended for general informational purposes only and does not address individual circumstances. It is not a substitute for professional advice or help and should not be relied on to make decisions of any kind. Any action you take upon the information presented in this article is strictly at your own risk and responsibility!
SOURCES:
- Almond consumption and cardiovascular risk factors in adults with prediabetes (2010, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
- An Acceptance-Based Behavioral Intervention for Weight Loss: A Pilot Study (2012, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
- Cereal grains and legumes in the prevention of coronary heart disease and stroke: a review of the literature (2006, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
- Dark Green Leafy Vegetables (2013, ars.usda.gov)
- Dietary fish, n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid consumption, and depression risk in Japan: a population-based prospective cohort study (2017, nature.com)
- Faster self-reported speed of eating is related to higher body mass index in a nationwide survey of middle-aged women (2011, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
- Getting past a weight-loss plateau (2020, mayoclinic.org)
- Healthy lifestyle factors in the primary prevention of coronary heart disease among men: benefits among users and nonusers of lipid-lowering and antihypertensive medications (2006, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
- Losing weight (n.d., cdc.gov)
- Meta-Analysis of Short Sleep Duration and Obesity in Children and Adults (2008, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
- Preventing cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes: a common agenda for the American Cancer Society, the American Diabetes Association, and the American Heart Association (2004, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
- The 2015–2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans ( 2015, choosemyplate.gov)
- Whole grain intake and cardiovascular disease: a meta-analysis (2008, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
