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Step 1
Keep a detailed food log of everything you eat for 1 week. This is important because before you can reduce your calories by 1,000 each day, you need to know how many calories you are consuming now. Using an online food log resource such as www.fitday.com or www.sparkpeople.com can make calorie counting much easier.
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Step 2
Eliminate any beverages containing calories from your diet. A 12 oz. can of soda usually contains about 150 calories. If you drink two or three cans of soda a day, you could easily cut 300 to 450 calories from your diet by switching to no calorie alternatives such as unsweetened tea, sugar-free drink mixes, water or coffee.
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Step 3
Stop eating foods with no nutritional benefit. These are foods which are high in calories but do absolutely nothing good for your body. Examples are soda, cookies, candy, ice cream and potato chips. One cup of ice cream can contain anywhere from 200 to more than 500 calories. Depending on the size of bowl you use, it's possible to eat 1,000 calories of ice cream without even realizing it. In this case, dropping the ice cream could be all you need to do in order to lose 10 lbs. in 5 weeks.
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Step 4
Say no to deep-fried foods. Frying foods is a great way to completely destroy a perfectly healthy, nutritious food and turn it into a high calorie nightmare. For example, 5.4 oz. of boneless, skinless chicken breast has 200 calories, while a 5.4 oz. original recipe chicken breast from KFC has nearly 400 calories. That's almost double the calories for the same amount of food.
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Step 5
Increase your vegetable intake in order to feel full while losing weight. Raw spinach and cooked broccoli are foods that you can eat large amounts of without worrying about calories. Use vegetables to fill you up in place of higher-calorie foods. For example, pasta isn't exactly unhealthy, but it is high calorie, so substitute half of your normal serving with vegetables. Replacing just 1 cup of pasta with 1 cup of cooked broccoli at dinner will save you nearly 200 calories.
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Step 6
Consider protein supplements to help curb your sweet tooth. Protein powders have come a long way in terms of taste over the years. A nightly chocolate protein shake mixed in a blender with a few ice cubes can taste an awful lot like a chocolate milkshake, especially to someone on a calorie-restricted diet. Just be sure to count the calories in the protein powder along with everything else you eat in order to stay on track and lose that 10 lbs. in 5 weeks.
