Diet Plan To Lose 30 Pounds In 3 Months — Losing 30 pounds in three months might sound like an impossible feat. Most of us would do anything to achieve this, but it is important to remember that losing weight isn’t all about weighing more than a ton of bricks, it’s about improving your lifestyle and health. If you’re killing yourself in the gym to shed those pounds and still aren’t getting any results, maybe it’s time for a change.
Can You Lose 30 Pounds In 3 Months?
For some, losing 30 pounds in 3 months sounds like a complete and utter lie. It is because the media has bombarded us with numerous ads on weight-loss supplements and pills. Such ads claim that such supplements and pills can even help you lose weight in a week or two.
However, after trying them, you may notice little to no change. Therefore, the perception of most people of losing such pounds in such a timeline is unrealistic. However, this is only because you tried some marketers’ products that did not work.
According to experts, you can lose weight through exercise, weight loss surgery, and consuming low-calorie diets . Therefore, do not fall into the trap of believing any weight loss pills or supplements.
Instead, you are urged to become more active and try to engage in physical activity. It means that the best way to lose 30 pounds in 3 months is by eating right and exercising. You need to pick practical and effective workout plans.
At the same time, focus on either a low-calorie diet (LCD) or a very low-calorie diet (VLCD). The diet plan you choose will be influenced by several factors. They include your daily calorie limit, your dietary requirements, and the weight you want to lose.
How to Lose 30 Pounds in 3 Months With a Diet Plan
A calendar showing days of the month.
Losing 30 pounds in three months is a lofty goal, but it’s achievable if you’ve got the motivation. A three-month deadline puts your rate of loss at an average of about 2 1/2 pounds per week, just slightly above the ideal range of 1 to 2 pounds per week recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
You can safely lose weight at this faster rate, as long as you choose a diet plan that emphasizes diligent portion control, healthy food choices and exercise. Always check with your personal physician before beginning a diet-and-exercise program to be sure it’s appropriate for you!
Potential for Losing 30 Pounds in 3 Months
Weight loss happens when you reduce your calorie intake below what you burn. To lose 30 pounds in three months, you’ll have to create a deficit of 8,750 calories per week — or about 1,250 calories per day.
For the average adult, who requires about 2,000 calories per day to maintain the current weight, a 1,250-calorie deficit is unhealthy and unsustainable because it would leave just 750 calories on which to live. In general, men need more calories per day than women, even when trying to lose weight.
But if you have a significant amount of weight to lose, chances are you burn more than the 2,000-calorie-per-day average. Consult with your physician or use an online basal metabolic calculator, which estimates your daily calorie maintenance needs, to ensure you burn at least 2,450 calories daily. This ensures you can safely trim the 1,250 calories daily to lose 30 pounds in three months.
Exercise to Assist in Weight Loss
If trimming the required number of calories is not possible for your frame, combine eating less with increased physical activity. Exercise boosts your daily calorie burn significantly.
Aim for 60 to 90 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic — such as brisk walking — on most days to burn more calories, along with regular strength training to maintain muscle. You can then reduce calories by only 500 to 1,000 per day to achieve the goal deficit of 1,250 calories per day.
How much of an increase in caloric burn you get from physical activity depends on your size and the intensity of the exercise. Note that if you’re already physically active and maintaining your weight, you’ll need to add more exercise duration or intensity to create a deficit that promotes loss. Consulting a personal trainer is helpful for recommendations about what types of exercise will benefit you the most and be safe for your current level of physical fitness.
Choosing a Weight-Loss Diet Plan
A sensible weight-loss plan teaches you reasonable, maintainable habits so you’ll stay in control of your weight your whole life. Drastic measures may bring immediate results, but they’re more likely to lead to serious consequences, such as low energy, muscle loss, irritability, diminished immunity, inability to concentrate and binges.
If you don’t learn to manage your eating and exercise, chances are you’ll gain all 30 pounds back — and possibly more. Go with a plan that’s sensible, doesn’t ban entire food groups, and is appropriate for your lifestyle and schedule. For example, a plan that requires lots of nightly cooking when you work 12-hour days and have children may be unsustainable and set you up for failure.
Diet plans that provide a tool for monitoring — whether it’s a food journal, a counselor or online tracker — help keep you from straying, too. To lose a significant amount of weight in a relatively short period, like three months, accountability is key.
The free LIVESTRONG MyPlate calorie tracker app for iPhone and Android has helped millions of people lose weight the healthy way — by getting support from an active community as they track their eating and exercise. Consistently a top-rated app, MyPlate offers the latest technology in an easy-to-use tool that includes millions of foods and recipes, 5-minute in-app workouts and a robust support community.
Sample Diet Plan
How many calories you eat to lose the 30 pounds in three months is really tailored to your size, calorie needs and activity level. A sensible approach, though, usually includes eating a 2- to 4-ounce serving of protein, at least 1/2 cup of whole grains or starchy vegetable, 1 to 2 teaspoons of an unsaturated fat, and 1 to 2 cups of leafy or nonstarchy veggies at each meal.
Quality protein foods include white fish, chicken breast, lean steak, white-meat pork, tofu and egg whites. Opt for brown rice, oatmeal, quinoa and 100 percent whole-wheat bread for whole grains or sweet potatoes, winter squash or peas as starchy vegetables.
Leafy and nonstarchy vegetables include lettuce, kale, broccoli, cauliflower, tomatoes, green beans, asparagus. For healthy, unsaturated fats, choose olive and avocado oil, nut butters, raw nuts or seeds and avocados.
Your daily meal plan might consist of an egg white omelet with chopped peppers, mushrooms and tomatoes and a slice of whole-wheat toast topped with 2 teaspoons of almond butter; a tossed spinach salad with chicken breast, quinoa, olive oil and cucumbers; and flank steak, wild rice and steamed broccoli for dinner.
Although you’re trying to lose weight quickly, you can still indulge in snacks. Make them nutrient-rich choices, though, that are portion-controlled to keep calories low. Yogurt, fresh fruit — especially berries, which are low in calories — whole-grain crackers, hummus and almonds are some options to choose from. The number of calories you eat at snack time depends on your daily calorie limits.
Weight Loss Pitfalls
Your daily calorie needs are calculated according to your size. As your size shrinks with weight loss, your calorie needs change. To keep losing weight, you’ll need to adjust your calorie intake downward every time you lose five to 10 pounds.
Larsen notes that for every five pounds lost, you’ll need to decrease your intake by 25 to 50 calories. So, if you successfully lose weight when eating 1,600 calories per day at first, once you lose 15 to 20 pounds, you may have to reduce your intake by an additional 100 to 200 calories to keep dropping weight.
Even if you don’t reach your goal weight in three months, know that small changes can make a big health impact. The CDC notes that even losing 5 percent of your total body weight can lead to improvements in blood sugar levels, cholesterol and blood pressure. You’ve got this!
How much weight can I lose?
Although results always vary, using a healthy and safe weight loss target of 1-2 pounds per week, followers can expect to lose anywhere from 10-30 pounds in 3-months. This is substantial weight loss and doesn’t come without commitment and mindfulness.
Total weight loss can also depend on overall activity. Although you can see awesome results by just mixing up your food choices, incorporating more activity can also play a huge role in weight loss on a 3-month plan. Activity like food choices and calorie goals should be individualized and focus on balance. If you aren’t extremely active, try taking the stairs, parking further away from the store, or taking the dog on an extra walk. Increasing activity throughout the day can have a direct impact on fat loss and yield an increase in muscle mass. You will be surprised how quickly this activity adds up and how much of an impact it can have on weight loss.
When starting a weight loss plan of any kind, it is also important to find ways to measure progress. For some, this looks like daily weigh-ins. For others, relying on energy levels and how clothes are fitting is a better approach. Whatever you choose, consistently measuring progress can help you learn the natural ups and downs your body experiences. Remember, weight loss is not always linear. There will be ups and downs along the way. Learning to embrace these times and even work with them will be key to successful weight loss.
How many calories should I eat?
In order to lose weight, a specific balance of calories must be present – but what is the right balance? There are tons of 3-month meal plans out in the diet universe, all with calorie limits that claim to help you lose weight. Although calorie balance is important, your target calorie budget should be completely individualized and based off of your goals, eating preferences, and sustainability. You may lose weight quickly by restricting your calories, but if you cannot sustain this, or it only lasts for 3 weeks, is this meal plan effective and sustainable? Not quite!
By counting calories, you can gain more information about your diet – but ultimately calories are just one piece of the puzzle. The key to sustainable weight loss is a comprehensive approach that focuses on overall health, and considers nutrition, activity, and overall well-being.
Let’s dive into a sample meal plan to give you some ideas on how to create and follow a 3-month weight loss plan!
The 7-Step Plan I Followed to Lose 30 Pounds in 3 Months
I gained 30 pounds only once in my life due to tremendous stress at work. Here is a repeatable process to help you recover from a similar situation.
There was only one time in my life when I gained 30 pounds in 12 months because of extreme stress in my life. It took me 3 months to lose all that weight and become a new man again.
I have been a slim person all my life. Since the age of 13, I played volleyball, soccer, basketball, beach volleyball, and even practiced Aikido for several years. Despite being an active sports person without any weight problems, I did not know that the huge stress at work at the beginning of my leadership journey would end up in gaining 30 pounds in a year.
My unhappiness and stress level were triggering frequent emotional eating rituals. Lunch or dinner were activities to keep my body fed to sustain the energy level required to perform the job get done. The quicker the better it was. How pathetic. It was so mechanic — no different than trying to maintain and grease a well-working machine part to keep the whole engine running. I was a robot in a skin cage.
The quality of what I was eating was terrible too. Whatever I could find quickly and push down my throat was good enough so that I could get more things done and head back home after 9 or 10 pm to take a shower and sleep to get ready to perform my best the next early morning again.
No sports, no social life. I had lost touch with my family and with my friends. We even had postponed our marriage with my fiance to a later time till I would stabilize the work in my department as if there could be any stability in such a turbulent market.
I was living in Turkey by the sea in a great 8,500 years-old Mediterranean city at that time that was full of beaches without sharks in a great climate with 300 days of sunshine every year. I was not enjoying any bit of that great atmosphere at all because of working at all times.
I was totally lost.
I had to make a decision for my life.
Even before getting the manager role, I`ve been working to live. It`d been 3 years that I was testing that shameful way of working and it was not healthy at all. I was unhappy. The pounds I gained for the first time in my life were solid proof I was not on the right track for my life. I was becoming a bigger potato bag every day.
Here is what I thought I should do.
With those in mind, I recognized it was time to do something different in my life. I would start working to live. Point.
Here is below the 6-step plan I followed to lose 30 pounds after making that life decision.
1. Action one was to reduce the food intake.
- First, I set a target to reach 82 kg (181 pounds). I was 96 kg (211 pounds) the day I set the target.
- I decided to keep my Mediterranean breakfast. It was strong, healthy, and kept me energetic.
- I was eating so much bread and pastry. I decided not to eat any bread during the day except the breakfast and I`d only eat 2 slices — that`s it.
- Lunch would be light, starting with a light soup and only one course of a meal. No bread, desserts, and candies were allowed after lunch- not even the even ice cream.
- I used to work at lunch. I stopped doing that and decided to spend 30 minutes at least eating and socializing. The other 30 minutes would be walking around the plant with a team of several colleagues in my team — they have been inviting me before but I never had a chance to join them. I`d not miss that chance again to exercise and socialize with them which also proved to help with coaching and mentoring others.
- Dinner would be only a decent-sized Mediterranean salad with no dressing but olive oil. I`d have red or white meat or fish on it. No bread, desserts, and candies were allowed after lunch- not even the even ice cream.
- I was truly a meat lover. I decided to eat less meat and more fish that was fresh off the sea.
- I would not eat anything after 8 pm. That would help my metabolism slow down better and help with better sleep.
- Sleep was of utmost importance and I would not drink any water after 9 pm to avoid waking up at night and visiting the restroom. 7.5 hours was good enough for me.
- I decided not to eat anything between breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
2. Reducing food intake was only 50% of the game plan. It would not yield the results I wanted if I increased my efforts to burn calories.
- I decided to drink 2–2.5 liters of water every day to keep myself hydrated.
- A 30-minute walk after lunch was something that would be helpful.
- I decided to have several shop-floor tours at the plan instead of one and this way reduced emails and increase face-to-face communication.
- I started exercising after work 3 times during the week.
- I was living by the sea and decided to swim every Saturday and Sunday. Shark-free see was a great place to swim.
3. Every plan needs to be won mentally first. All great victories of the past are those won through the conquest of the hearts of others. So, I built a plan to keep my mental energy high.
- I established a work and life balance in a few weeks. I did not make an immediate change but instead took a few weeks to avoid missing my commitments and not to be selfish in my actions.
- A few weeks later, I started leaving my job at maximum at 7 pm to let time for myself to slow down, socialize, spend time on my hobbies, and relax.
- I started with daily affirmations to help me remember my end target.
- We had 6 months to marry my fiance and I envisioned myself like my previous version when I used to sport and have a strong mind and body a few years ago. That helped me stick to my true north.
4. Every plan requires a follow-up so where is what I did to measure progress.
- I’d measure my weight every morning right after waking up without drinking any water. I would visit the restroom before I weigh myself on the scale so that I could have an apples-to-apples comparison of my weight loss metrics by 6 am every morning during the week.
- We built a stupid contest among several others who had a similar weight reduction target and started a contributive conflict to energize and challenge each other. That would include sharing the daily progress vs our commitments on a weekly basis.
5. Every plan is subject to change and might fail so it must be failsafe. Here is what I did to make sure I stayed on track.
- I shared this target with my fiance, sister, and a few close friends and gave them the freedom to challenge me hard if I step back from my weight loss target. That would mean challenging what I would eat too. My sister and fiance gave me so much hard time keeping me eating only a salad each night but nothing else.
6. No plan can be successful unless you celebrate any quick wins.
- My celebration was to eat whatever I wanted on Sundays without exaggeration as long as I was on track and kept my promise to myself.
7. Just do it.
No plan will help you if you procrastinate. As Master Yoda says — There Is No Try. Just Do It. I followed his advice and started executing my plan the next morning after I came up with it.