Over 75 percent of our body is comprised of water. That water is necessary to carry blood, lubricate muscles, carry electrical impulses through the brain, everything we do requires water. Our bodies retain, or store water for future needs — the result of millions of years of evolutionary wiring. The majority of people carry around 5-8 excess pounds of water weight. By simply drinking more water, we can lose this entire amount in just a week. If you take in a gallon of water daily, you’ll let your body know that you get plenty of water each day, and as a result it doesn’t need to store it as often.

Another way to lose weight in a week is to eat better; consume just fruits and vegetables, and nothing else. This is a very simple plan, but a rapid weight loss plan nonetheless.The calorie count for a large green salad is very low. Not only will you take in a far lower number of calories, your daily fiber intake will be significantly increased. Fiber helps to clean out the bowels and eliminate a substantial amount of excess waste that many people with bad diets carry around.

What’s the third plan? Still as simple as the first two, increasing the amount of water you drink and fruits & vegetables you eat. But this time, you add moderate amounts of lean meat, fish, poultry, and whole grains, because the human body is designed for good protein and complex carbohydrates as well as fiber and water. For successful weight loss, our bodies need carbohydrates, which convert to fuel that the body burns, added to a reduced caloric intake.

Weight loss will be a bit slower with this plan, but it does take a more healthy and balanced approach to dieting. It also allows you to take in the nutrients your body needs while ensuring your calorie intake is lower than the amount of calories you burn every day.

A good average weight loss for a single week is between 8 and 20 pounds following the balanced plan. Assuming, of course, that you have that much excess weight to lose. As most of us do, this is a very realistic weight loss goal.

The majority of effective ways to lose weight quick include dramatic changes in diet. One of the simplest ways to do this is to start one of the diet plans that requires you to starve yourself. If the number of calories one consumes is cut to an extremely low number, the body will burn the calories stored in the body as fat. The downside of this is that after the diet stops, the body will store the calories added into the diet as fat in case it needs them later.

Fasting is the most prevalent method of losing weight among starvation diets geared towards rapid weight loss. Fasting involves skipping whole meals, usually to the point of just one daily. If you do this, you can certainly lose weight, but it can also dramatically affect your health, to the point where it can cause permanent harm to you.

As an alternative to fasting, people also go on specialized diets. Atkins, grapefruit, and Scarsdale diets are examples of these, and there are many more out there as well.

The fad diet involves either cutting out or eating only a specific food that is thought to be very important to the weight loss process; the thought is that by doing this, you can lose weight more quickly. Usually people can lose weight fast on such plans, but the diets lack certain essential nutrients and so are not healthy options for any extended period of time. You could eat enough to get the calories you need, but without the nutrients from the other food groups, you’ll experience a more subtle form of starvation that can have terrible consequences for your overall health.

Thus, weight loss is not something to be done quick-and-dirty. It is a time-consuming effort that requires planning and thinking. It’s even harder to figure out how to lose weight without sacrificing your health or appetite, as it can be hard to starve yourself and it’s no example of safe rapid weight loss. It’s recommended to seek medical advice before starting a weight loss plan, particularly one designed to promote rapid weight loss as the ultimate goal.