How to Lose 10 pounds in One Week without Starving

So, you want to lose ten pounds in a week? And, you probably want to lose ten pounds in seven days without being hangry the whole time.

By now, you’ve heard of Keto and if you’re looking to lose weight, nothing beats it.

After all, the title is how to lose 10 pounds in one week without starving. I know it can be done, I lost more than that much weight in a week myself. And I can tell you how you can do it too.

You could skip right to day one if you want to, but losing 10 pounds so quickly is big undertaking and there’s some science involved. Healthy weight loss and long term health is the goal, not willy nilly “pop up” diet plan sales tricks.

Reading the whole post and understanding the science behind the Keto Diet and this WOE will be the easiest way to lose 10 pounds quickly. But you’re the boss on this journey. You can skip ahead if you want.

Note: this is not a lose ten pounds “per week” post. DO NOT CONTINUE THIS plan for more than one week at a time. Don’t go too hard until you are in ketosis, have made healthy eating a habit and are ready for the amazing benefits of intermittent fasting.

Healthy weight loss is a marathon, not a sprint.

In fact, my friends and readers all sort of settle into losing a bit more or less than about 2 pounds per week when they continue eating a reasonable low carb diet. I think 2 pounds a week is great!

Just think where you could be in six months! Or a year!

WEIGHT LOSS PLAN?

Throughout the years there have been lots of diet fads. Especially low calorie and high carb diet fads….

The “banana diet,” the “cucumber diet,” the “lemon juice and vinegar diet” “the have a limb amputated diet” – okay, that was just to see if you’re paying attention.

I don’t know if any of these wacka-noodle diets actually work – and they aren’t worth it at any rate because you’ll starve the whole time. Starving while you are trying to lose weight is a recipe for failure.

Of all the “diet plan” type of measures I tried, the low calorie and high carb diet was the worst! It didn’t work but at least you could starve while you spent a bunch of money on a “diet plan” that basically said you weren’t losing weight because you lacked self control.

For most people this will lead to weight gain in the long term. It’s not sustainable to keep feeling like a failure. Maybe you’ve felt that way too. That’s about to change friend…

What I can tell you is that I have done lots of research about the Keto Diet, and I know for a fact that Keto actually works to help you lose weight without starving.

I know why the Keto Diet works so well, and I can explain it because it’s fairly simple.

I can also tell you that if you combine a healthy Keto Diet with intermittent fasting you can quickly and comfortably get into Ketosis.

During the first few days after achieving Ketosis there is usually some rapid weight loss.

I lost 13 pounds the first week.

I started at over 250 pounds, and I was very strict with myself about eating no carbs, and keeping protein under 15% of my calories.

KETO WORKS DIFFERENTLY FOR DIFFERENT PEOPLE.

Now, I don’t really think I should have to say this, but you’re unique – just like everybody else.

Your body’s metabolism is not the same as mine or your spouse or your kids. No two people lose weight at the same pace.

Your metabolism may not even the same as it was year ago. And, if you are a woman and hitting that “change of life” time, this is especially true. If you plan to lose 10 pounds this week, planning Keto for YOUR body is key.

Check out this post my wife wrote about what she discovered during the pre-menopausal time and Keto (I am not really able to give input – I understand the process but will never experience it).

The time it takes you to achieve Ketosis and how it will affect you will vary depending on your age, sex, weight, muscle mass, total body composition, stress levels, fitness levels, and your diet before you start.

And, a huge factor in the effect of Keto on your body and how fast you lose weight is how sensitive you are to insulin.

If you are insulin resistant or type 2 Diabetic, achieving ketosis will probably take a little longer.

Again, If you really want to skip the explanation and go to the “How To” part of the post that’s fine. I want to help you lose weight long term but I will understand.

If you are here for long term weight loss, I believe it will be easier and healthier if you understand why Keto works.

Please understand that you really can lose 10 pounds in a week, but you can also change your lifestyle so you’re healthier and thinner forever. Not with a short term, 7 day “diet” but with long term lifestyle shifts.

WHAT IS KETOSIS?

Ketosis is the metabolic state where your body uses fat/ketones for fuel instead of sugar/carbs. That’s the selling point that has made the Keto Diet all the rage for millions of people who are trying to lose weight.

Everyone probably knows by now that Keto is a low carb way of eating. When you eat fat instead of carbs, you stay fuller longer and can easily create a calorie deficit without starving. Fewer calories= weight loss (yes, calories still matter on Keto).

(If you are new to Keto and want to learn all of the acronyms like WOE- check out this guide.)

The reason Keto works so well for losing weight quickly is that when you eliminate empty carbs, your pancreas doesn’t excrete enough insulin to stop you from accessing fat for fuel.

Insulin is the hormone that tells your cells to open up for the sugar that is floating around in your blood.

In addition, insulin also tells your fat cells to hold onto fat – i.e. you can’t burn fat when there is too much insulin and losing weight on any diet is impossible.

If you eat a ketogenic diet (80% fat, 15% protein and 0-5% carbs) your insulin levels will drop to the point where fat cells will release fat to your liver.

In turn, your liver will break the fat down into ketones and release them into your blood where the ketones will be absorbed directly and used for fuel.

One other thing insulin does is tell your kidneys to recycle sodium and other salts.

When you reduce the insulin far enough to get into ketosis, you excrete (pee out) the sodium along with the excess water.

FAQ’s:

Lets get a couple of quick questions that I get over and over about this plan out of the way real quick…

If you have other questions that you don’t see an answer for, please post them in the comments and I’ll answer them the best that I can.

This is not a generic “meal plan” type of deal. This is real Keto and the food doesn’t have to be fancy. For this week, the foods you will be eating will be simple. Meat and green veggies.

When the week is over, check out all of our amazing recipes for Keto dessert, easy dinners and Keto Bread. But this week is about simple foods and getting into Ketosis fast.

This is not a “diet” but rather a lifestyle shift. If you are serious about weight loss that happens this fast, Keto is the only way to do it.

You need to commit to eating healthier foods that will provide your body with more of the nutrients it needs while avoiding carbs and empty calories that cause you to pack on unwanted weight.

Exercise will help. Even a little movement goes a long way.

But remember – if it doesn’t challenge you, it won’t change you. High intensity exercise isn’t needed at all. Just do a little more than you “want” to.

What is FAT WEIGHT VS. WATER WEIGHT?

If you are going to lose 10 pounds or more in a week it is going to be mostly water weight.

You’ll lose weight fast, but you’ll mostly be losing water weight though peeing a thousand times a day, it’s one of the main signs of Ketosis.

No matter what you eat or don’t eat, it would be impossible to lose 10 pounds of actual fat in a week. Don’t confuse this with overall body weight.

Water, fat, bone and muscle all make up your body weight. You can actually get a scale that will measure the percentages of each. This is the one we have.

Onward…

FAT WEIGHT:

There are 3,500 calories in a pound of fat.

That means to lose one pound of fat, you would have to burn 3,500 more calories than you consume to lead to weight loss.

So, to lose 10 pounds of fat, you will have to have a calorie deficit of 35,000 calories. Holy smokes…

To do that in a week you would have to burn 5,000 calories per day more than you consume.

Since the average person burns between 1,600 and 2,500 calories a day, this would be an impossible calorie deficit.

I have a pretty high metabolism. If I just sit on the couch, I burn about 2,200 calories a day, and if I do a high intensity workout I can get it up to 2,700 calories.

So, even if I ate nothing for a week and did a high intensity workout out every day, I might lose five pounds of fat and who knows how much water weight.

WATER WEIGHT:

I fasted for 3 days and I lost 7 pounds. If you do the math, about 1.5 pounds of that was fat, and the rest was water.

As I explained above, when you get to ketosis you urinate out a bunch of sodium, and water follows sodium. You’ll pee out more water than you drink. Don’t be alarmed when this happens.

A gallon of water weighs about 8.3 pounds.

So what I really lost was about 1.9 lbs of body fat and ⅔ of a gallon of water. I was really happy about that. I was a lot less “puffy” without that excess weight that was “just water”.

RAMP UP YOUR METABOLISM WITH FAT BURNING FOODS? ….. NOPE!

Ugh. I see pins and posts and ads about “fat burning” diet foods all the time and it makes me cringe.

“Fat burning” or “metabolism increasing” foods don’t exist.

There is no such thing as food that can burn fat. The absolute fastest way to lose 10 pounds is to stop eating.

But that’s really uncomfortable if you aren’t already in ketosis.

It’s called intermittent fasting and you’ll get there- but not right out of the gate.

Fat is fuel, carbs are fuel, protein can be fuel, your food is made up of fuel. No diet food “burns” fat.

Your body burns the fuel and your metabolism determines what type of fuel and how many calories you can burn in a day.

Your metabolism is controlled by muscle mass, hormones, and the mother-of-all metabolic hormones, is insulin.

As I said above, insulin is secreted by the pancreas when you eat carbs (net carbs).

Insulin only allows you to burn carbs/sugar for fuel.

Insulin stops fat burning and increases fat storage, making weight loss impossible.

NET CARBS = Carbs – Fiber

I understand if you’re confused by this – I was when I first started this whole Keto thing.

Net Carbs are the carbs (sugar) with calories and they include starches like bread, pasta and potatoes. As well as sugars like table sugar, honey and corn syrup, etc.

This week you should try to eat as few net carbs as you can because they create a severe insulin response – less than 5% of your calorie count should come from net carbs while you are actively trying to lose this particular ten pounds. Bonus: this will effectively lower your empty calorie intake as well.

Fiber, aka Dietary Fiber is technically a carbohydrate. But your body can’t digest or glean any calories from it, and most importantly for Ketosis, it causes no insulin response.

You should eat lots of fiber.

Fiber is great for the good bacteria in your gut. It can help get rid of toxins, and combine it with some healthy fats, and it will keep you feeling full.

When you look at a food label, you’ll see “total carbohydrates” and under that, a line for “dietary fiber.”

If you subtract the dietary fiber from the total carbohydrates, that will give you net carbs (in grams).

There are 4 calories per gram of net carbs. Calorie counting is not totally necessary but calories are still important, even on Keto.

KETOSIS WEIGHT LOSS PLAN TO LOSE 10 POUNDS:

This is the part you’ve been waiting for….

If you plan to lose 10 pounds in a week, you’re going to need to get into Ketosis fast.

But you also don’t want to be hungry or “hangry” or anything like that.

Your body will get into Ketosis when insulin is low enough and there is no glycogen available.

Glycogen is what your liver and muscles make out of sugar.

Your body stores about one days worth of energy in the form of glycogen in your muscle and liver cells.

And your body will burn that before it will start burning fat – There is no way around it.

What you need to do is burn through all of the glycogen without giving your muscles and liver any sugar/carbs to replenish the glycogen.

LEAN PROTEIN & HEALTHY FAT?

If you’re like me and have been struggling with weight gain and dieting for decades – lean protein sounds great. But healthy fat sounds like a contradiction in terms.

So an explanation about healthy fat is in order:

I know when they say lean protein- they’re talking about something like a skinless boiled chicken breast instead of bacon.

But the idea of lean protein doesn’t really track because the protein molecules in the bacon are pretty much the same as the ones in the chicken breast. They’re both just protein.

Healthy Fat might be a little harder to get your head around.

Most of the common fats that are sold in stores are highly inflammatory and bad for your gut.

A lot of the fat that normally accompanies protein is good for you.

When you’re a fat burner – getting 80% of your calories from fat – it is important to make sure it’s the healthy fat.

More information about healthy fat can be found at this post.

The Basics- WHAT YOU NEED DO TO GET INTO KETOSIS FAST:

1. Don’t eat any sugar
2. Don’t eat any carb filled food (starches like white or sweet potatoes, fruit and grains)
3. Don’t overeat protein
4. Don’t eat any sweeteners (even zero calorie, no carb sweeteners- just for this week)
5. Get most (80 to 90%) of your calories from healthy fat.
6. Drink lots of water.

THE PLAN TO LOSE WEIGHT QUICKLY:

The night before you start, eat early if you can and try not to eat too many carbs.

Don’t eat any high carb foods like noodles, potatoes, bread, etc. and skip dessert.

Instead, eat some protein, leafy foods and cruciferous veggies like meat and salad or meat and broccoli with cheese – that sort of thing.

Meat and green veggies are perfect. Use olive oil or avocado oil to cook your meat- vegetable oil is highly inflammatory.

Nothing fancy or complicated needs to be made and keep the list below handy:

• Don’t drink any alcohol at all.
• Don’t have any “diet drinks”
• Drink lots of water. (black coffee, tea, club soda are okay and count as water as long as there are no sweeteners)
• Do something to get tired, like take a long walk or work out (it doesnt need to be a high intensity workout unless you are used to that).
• Then go to bed early enough that you can get eight hours of sleep if possible. You may not sleep that well because this is not your normal routine but give it a try.

The above list is going to apply to the whole 7 day plan.

DAY 1: WAIT TO EAT UNTIL YOU’RE HUNGRY.

When you wake up, drink water (some people like to add a little spritz of lemon or lime & that’s okay).

After you drink some water it’s okay to have some black coffee.

Wait as long as you can to eat or drink anything with calories.

Don’t torture yourself, but if you can wait until lunch to eat, that will be great, if you can wait ’til dinner that would be even better.

When you do eat, have a leafy green salad with oil & vinegar dressing, and maybe some fatty protein like bacon, chicken wings or fried eggs.

For dinner, eat low carb veggies like broccoli, spinach, brussel sprouts etc. and some meat (fatty meats are better).

Keep your protein low – for men this mean less than 50 grams, and women less than 40 grams. (your body turns excess protein into sugar & you don’t want that today).

To be clear, you will only eat small portions of meat and veggies. Don’t stuff yourself. Just eat until you are comfortable.

Again do some sort of exercise even if it’s just walking the dog or cleaning the house to get tired. Try to get to bed early.

The idea of day 1 is to eat as close to zero carbs as you can and only enough fat and protein so that you are not hungry.

You’ll find that need to eat less when you have added healthy fat in your diet. It keeps you full longer too.

DAY 2 AND DAY 3: SAME BUT EASIER

Do the same as day one, but you will find that you don’t get as hungry because you’re adapting to fat burning.

If you eat mainly fat and fiber you will stay full. Remember to get some sodium if you notice that you are losing a lot of water via urination.

By day 3 it may not even be hard to incorporate intermittent fasting (not eating) until dinner.

The idea of day 2 and 3 is to make the time between eating longer without getting too hungry.

This will allow your insulin levels to stay low while you burn out the remainder of the carbs/glycogen in your liver and muscles.

DAY 4 AND 5:

Only eat one meal. I recommend it be dinner.

You’ll consume fewer calories during these two days (for men less than 1000, and for women less than 900).

Eating fewer calories is easier when you incorporate high fat food like meat, olive oil or avocados in your meal because you’ll get full faster and stay full longer.

Keep net carbs as low as possible (less than 5% of total calories for men less than 12 grams and for woman less than 11 grams).

If you need help with determining how much to eat, get a nutritional calculator like Fitness pal or any of the others that offer free versions first (to make sure you like it and will use it).

Keep protein under 15% of total calories (For men less than 37 grams and for woman less than 33 grams)

Do something to get tired and go to bed early.

The idea of day 4 and 5: You will see that without carbs in your diet you don’t get hungry.

You should have burned through all of the carbs in your system, and if you are not experiencing any of the signs of ketosis yet, you soon will.

DAY 6 AND 7:

Fast. As in, don’t eat on day six or seven.

Don’t worry (in Ketosis you won’t starve). You’re almost there!

This is called intermittent fasting – zero calories – The ultimate Keto Diet Plan when you are looking to lose weight. Losing 10 pounds in a 7 day span is no easy feat. Be proud of yourself.

You should drink water – lots of it.

You may also drink black coffee, tea, club soda (the flavored club soda is okay).

You may add a little spritz of lemon or lime to your drinks (there is calories in lemon, but it is insignificant if you only add enough for flavor)

Do not eat or drink any sweeteners. (no “diet drinks” no sweet & low, no splenda etc. If it tastes sweet don’t eat it.)

You should have a some salt. You can eat it straight or put it in water.

(I know it seems weird to have salt with nothing to put it on but if you are in ketosis and drinking enough water you will need to replenish your electrolytes so you don’t get crampy and sore.)

Keep your regular schedule. Still do something to get tired and go to bed early.

The idea of day 6 and 7: By not eating any calories, all of the calories you burn will be from body fat.

If you burn 4000 calories during these two days that is a over a pound of actual body fat. And fasting re-balances/resets the hormones that control your metabolism, so it will not only make you thinner it will also make you healthier.

CONTINUE ON KETO:

If all you’re going for was to lose 10 pounds in a week then we’ll see ya next time.

Maybe there’s class reunion or a big family thing and you just wanted to be thinner for the event.

If all you want is to lose weight fast, then don’t read any further, but if you want to stay thin and be healthy for the rest of your life, a healthy Keto lifestyle is the way to go.

I have done the work and can help. For the last 5 years, I have not only been happily Keto, but I have done all the research.

And if you would like an in depth explanation of how Keto works and how we got tricked into thinking we should eat low fat, low taste, low calorie foods… Why we get Fat: And What to do About It is a fantastic book.

If you want to sustain a thriving Low Carb Lifestyle that allows you to eat less and live more you’re going to need to change your Mindset.

Congratulations on making it though the week!

Please, please don’t feel like you have to go though this alone. Ask questions in the comments and I will answer as quick as I can. It will help others with their weight loss journey and we all win!

That’s it for the 7 day plan!

Nope, I am not going to try to sell you the super secret Keto weight loss meal plan, supplements or pre-packaged convenience food. It’s all yours and I hope it helps you.

But if you enjoyed this post and you feel generous you can buy me a coffee if you want. Or you can join my newsletter or share this post with friends. All are much appreciated and I wish you the very best.

Cheers Rockstars!

Thom

More Resources to Help You Make the Most of Keto:

• 9 Signs you’re in Ketosis
• Is the Keto Diet Safe?
• Intermittent Fasting Benefits