Many of us have pondered how to slim down quickly or drop a dress size or two, yet few know the most effective approach to achieving a slimmer physique.
Luckily though, we’re here to show you exactly how to get thin quickly and in a healthy manner. You may not wake up 20 pounds lighter, but if you follow these tips, you could blink your eyes and be 10-20 pounds lighter in a month or two, even more so if you’re on the larger side.
With that being said, let us show you 7 effective ways to get skinny in no time, and a few secrets to set you up for long-term success too.
1. Set Yourself Up for Success
Before you start on your journey to slimming down, you should create a plan and set yourself up for success. Set a realistic goal for yourself, like losing one-two pounds per week.
Then, commit to that goal by following the guide below.
This will help you get motivated to make lifestyle changes that will help you get slender fast and maintain weight loss down the road. Once you know your goals, prepare to get slimmer by doing the following:
Stay accountable with friends: One of the easiest ways to stay accountable and motivated throughout your fitness journey is by having a friend do it with you.1 Together, you can cheer each other on and be sure you’re both following your diet plans.
Take before pictures: Having pictures to compare yourself to once you slim down and achieve your weight loss will serve as another motivator as you start losing weight. It’s common for people not to realize how much their body has changed until they see an old picture of themselves.
Having a before picture will help you see how far you’ve come and encourage you to keep pressing forward when your journey to get fit becomes hard.
Check in with your doctor: A clean bill of health is important when starting any new exercise or meal plan. Take this opportunity to consult your doctor for weight loss advice and discuss any medications or supplements that boost weight loss you might consider using.
Start a food journal: If you are new to dieting, you may not realize how many calories you’re eating every day. Since maintaining a caloric deficit is a huge factor when it comes to weight loss and getting skinny, it’s important to know your starting point.2
Start by tracking your normal eating habits for a week and calculate how many calories on average you’re eating each day.
Take that number and subtract 500 to 1000 from it to find your new calorie goal. Of course, this is an oversimplification because no one size fits all, and some people may want to subtract 200-400 calories at first.
But the premise remains the same, try to find your maintenance calories, and reduce your intake from there.
Try to stick to your goal as much as you can, and keep tracking your meals so you can see where you slip up in your diet. Sticking to a new diet is hard, so you will probably make mistakes in the beginning.
That’s okay, as long as you keep pressing forward! Create plans for how to prevent overeating next time.
Stock your kitchen with healthy food and snacks: By having only healthy food in your house, it will be a lot harder to graze on unhealthy snacks. Put healthy snacks like vegetables and whole-grain bread in your line of sight in the pantry or fridge so it’s the first thing you see when hunger sends you searching for something to munch on.
And the same lies true for unhealthy food that you may already have. Simply store them in a cabinet – out of sight, out of mind.
2. Know What To Eat To Get Skinny
Nutrient-dense whole foods are the key to getting skinny fast. By eating only nutritious foods, you won’t have to worry about consuming too much sugar that will hold you back from losing weight.
Occasional cheat days or slip-ups in your diet are bound to happen, and that’s okay. But try to keep your meal plan mostly made up of these healthy foods:
Protein: This macronutrient is essential for muscle growth along with almost every other bodily process your body does daily. It also takes a long time to digest, so eating it keeps you fuller longer.2
Try to incorporate plenty of protein-rich foods like eggs, salmon, and chicken into your meal plan. Dairy-based proteins like whey and Greek yogurt are great options for post-workout snacks.
As a bonus, yogurt is packed with gut-healthy probiotics.
Fiber: This nutrient is a digestive tract superstar and has been linked to cancer prevention.3 Fiber also helps you feel full, so it’s a great addition to a skinny meal plan.
You can get fiber naturally from grains, fruits and vegetables like oats, quinoa, onions, sweet potatoes, raspberries, and watermelon. If you want a convenient way to add a ton of fiber, you can try a glucomannan supplement to boost your satiety and promote weight loss.4
Healthy fat: Monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats are the fats you should strive to consume. They’re found in many plants and fish; they’re loaded with nutrients and they also help keep you feeling satiated.3
To get these fats in your diet, try adding avocados and olives to your salads. Fish or flax seeds are both great sources of heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids.
3. Know What Foods To Avoid
Eating all the healthy foods in the world might not be enough if you’re eating unhealthy foods on top of that. To be sure empty calories don’t sneak up on you, avoid eating these foods when you can:
Sugar: There is no nutritional value when it comes to sugar, and this molecule is what your body uses to create fat when there’s an excess of it in your blood.1 Try to avoid candy and sweets.
If you’re craving something sugary, try a healthy alternative like fruit or dark chocolate instead.
Refined Carbs: Things like white bread and white rice have been stripped of their nutritional value. These carbs are broken down into sugar and raise blood sugar levels.
Plus, your body doesn’t get much benefit from them.3 Try to eat complex carbs like whole-grain bread and brown rice to fill your body with healthy vitamins and minerals.
Processed foods: These foods are often full of preservatives, extra salt, and extra sugar. When you can, try to cook at home and avoid pre-packaged food.
Sodium: This is an essential nutrient for maintaining blood pressure, but too much of it can be bad for your heart. Too much salt also often contributes to bloat and retaining water weight.
Buy low sodium foods when possible and watch the amount of salt you add to your meals.
The daily recommended value for sodium is 2,300 mg for adults and children older than 4 years of age.
Diet foods: Low-fat diet foods usually have a ton of added sugar and artificial ingredients to make up for their lack of natural flavor.3 When you buy yogurts and other dairy products, it’s better to buy their full-fat versions and eat them in moderation.
4. Know What To Drink & Get Slim
You might not think watching what you drink matters when it comes to dropping a few sizes, but certain drinks can be full of calories, sugar, and unhealthy ingredients. At the same time, there are drinks you can consume that will speed up your path on how to get slimmer with weight loss.
To help speed up your weight loss, drink more:
- Water. Staying well-hydrated is essential for helping you get lean. Drink a glass before meals to help you feel fuller and eat less, which will promote weight loss. When upping your fiber intake, be sure to up your water intake too so you don’t get constipated.
- Green tea. Full of antioxidants and also super hydrating, this might be a good option for you if you don’t like the taste of plain water.
On the contrary, avoid these drinks or use them sparingly if you want to slim down quickly:
- Sodas. Fizzy drinks are often full of sugar and can add a lot of empty calories to your daily intake. Avoid diet sodas if you can, too. They are usually full of artificial ingredients that are bad for your health although they can be a low calorie substitute for regular sodas if you simply can’t kick the soda habit.
- Alcohol. Full of sugar, and super dehydrating, alcohol can be detrimental to your goals to get slimmer. Try not to indulge in more than a few drinks a week, and be sure to drink lots of water before and after drinking to help avoid dehydration and hangovers.
Related reading: Approaches to lose weight gained from alcohol consumption.
- Fruit juice. Juice might sound healthy, but it’s full of sugar and has similar effects on your body as soda.5 If you want something sweet, try eating a piece of fruit. You will satisfy your craving with less sugar, and you’ll be getting the benefit of fiber, too.
- Loaded coffee drinks. Coffee drinks like lattes and mochas are full of sugar that can sneak up on you first thing in the morning. Coffee itself can be beneficial for helping you to get lean, so if you can stand the taste, try drinking black coffee in the morning without any sweetener.
5. Take Care of Your Body All Around
Understanding the art of quick weight loss involves caring for your body to ensure it functions optimally, ultimately aiding in dropping a few sizes rapidly. Try optimizing the following for best results:
Exercise: While exercising isn’t mandatory for weight loss, combining it with a nutritious diet is an effective way to get skinnier fast. Note that you don’t need to spend hours at the gym to lose fat.
Simply making an effort to move more throughout the day will help speed up the process.
Cardio: You usually burn the most calories during a cardio session, and it’s important for lung and heart health.6 You can try biking, running, walking, High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), or swimming to get your heart rate up.
Resistance training: Building muscle helps you burn more calories over time, and the best way to do that is through resistance or strength training. Beginners might want to start with weight lifting three times a week, allowing a rest day between each resistance training session.
Being active will do more for you than just burning calories while you’re exercising. Working out boosts your metabolism for up to 24 hours after you’re done, and it makes your body work better overall.6
It also is good for your mental health and promotes happiness.
Get enough sleep: Lacking sleep can cause your body to hold onto fat and make it harder for you to lose weight.7 Aim for six to nine hours of sleep per night to give your body a chance to repair itself and rest up for the day of calorie burning ahead.
Avoid stress: The stress hormone cortisol makes your body want to hold onto fat, making it harder to lose weight.7 Keep your stress down by practicing relaxation techniques like meditation and yoga.
Be nice to yourself: Don’t beat yourself up over slip-ups on your journey. Even if you gain a pound or two now, you’re setting yourself up for a healthy life by making these changes and you will benefit in the long run.
Avoid negative self-talk and be supportive of yourself to avoid giving up on trying to get skinnier through weight loss.
Treat yourself like a friend and rather than verbally beating yourself up, ask yourself how can you help yourself reach your goals.
Have fun: Give yourself a cheat day once a week and try new healthy recipes to keep your weight loss journey interesting. This way, you’re more likely to stay committed to your plan long-term.
Treat yourself: Rewarding yourself for a job well done is absolutely crucial to keep at it and positive reinforcement works better than negative.
You can treat yourself with foods, road trips, playing a game, a cup of tea or anything else you enjoy. You can even find comforting home remedies to help with weight loss that are deliciously enjoyable.
6. Avoid Fad Diets That Promise Weight Loss
When attempting to discover rapid weight loss methods, the allure of fad diets and crash diets may appear enticing, but they are ultimately ineffective. These diets are incredibly unhealthy and rarely work long term.
When you try crash diets, you run the risk of getting sucked into a “yo-yo” dieting cycle where you lose and gain weight repeatedly and can never maintain your lean figure.
This process is not only bad for your weight loss journey, but it can also end up hurting your overall health as well as damaging your mental health.3
Don’t skip meals (unless intentionally fasting) or cut calories to an extreme number to lose weight.
Instead, treat yourself to a healthy approach for quicker weight loss that will stick.
7. Try Healthy Diet Techniques for Long-Term Weight Loss
Not every diet trick will work for everyone, so it’s important to experiment a bit to find what healthy diet techniques will work for you.
Along with eating healthy and getting active, try some of these techniques to see if they help you lose weight quickly:
Intermittent fasting: This style of fasting gives you a short four to eight-hour window to eat every day although there’s various eating windows such as 16:8, 20:4 and beyond. The rest of the day, you only drink water or plain black coffee, or green tea.
Fasting allows your body to use up all its energy stores and start burning your fat before you eat.8 If you try this technique, be sure you’re still meeting your calorie goals each day and drinking lots of water throughout the day.
This isn’t recommended for people with diabetes or hypoglycemia disorders.
Mindful eating: Paying attention when you eat might make all the difference when it comes to eating less. By eating slowly and sitting at the table without other distractions, you will be more likely to pay attention to your body’s cues and stop eating when you’re full.
Use plates smartly: Dish up your unhealthy foods on smaller plates, or plates that are red. This will help signal to your brain that you should eat less of them, and by having smaller plates, you will need to actively choose to go back for seconds if you want to binge on something unhealthy.
Since you’ll have to think about this, you’ll be less likely to do it.
Stop eating two hours before bed: Going to bed with a full stomach can lead to a harder time losing weight, or even weight gain.3 Try to have dinner a couple of hours before bedtime, and avoid snacking after your last meal.
Don’t call food groups “bad”: Giving negative descriptors to food can cause unhealthy behavior, especially if you already have a negative relationship with food. You’re more likely to feel guilty for eating food you deem “bad”, and these negative emotions can lead to binging.1
Instead, acknowledge that unhealthy foods are less nutritional, and tell yourself you want to avoid them as an act of self-love to your body. But, if you eat something unhealthy, it’s not the end of the world and you can get right back on your healthy eating plan tomorrow.
If you struggle with a food addiction, it’s important to recruit help from your healthcare provider so you can avoid binging and maintain your new skinny physique going forward. This, along with long-term lifestyle changes and the above-mentioned ways to lose weight will help you get slimmer fast and stay that way.
3 Secrets to Getting Thin Fast
Losing weight can seem like a difficult journey, but with a few lesser-known secrets, you can have an advantage when trying to achieve weight loss and get slimmer.
1. Don’t Weigh Yourself Every Day
Some diet plans might tell you to weigh yourself every day for accountability, but this could end up being counterproductive.3 Your weight will fluctuate day-to-day, and most of the time, gaining a pound or two in 24 hours just means you’re holding onto water weight.
But seeing the scale bounce around so much might end up discouraging you from trying to lose weight.
It’s still important to weigh yourself regularly to stay accountable and be sure your good habits are working. Aim to weigh yourself once a week instead of daily.
Try to do it at the same time of day and on the same day of the week, wearing the same clothing (or none at all), for the most consistency.
2. Brush Your Teeth After Meals
This might seem like a weird tip, but if you want to eat right after you brush your teeth, mint is an appetite suppressant. This is convenient since most of the time, you’ll want to keep your minty breath fresh for at least an hour or two after brushing your teeth.9
By brushing your teeth whenever you’re done eating, you are decreasing the likelihood of snacking in between meals. Not to mention, your dentist will praise you on your next checkup for keeping your teeth so clean.
Please note, some dentists suggest waiting 30 minutes after a meal to allow the acidity in your mouth to neutralize. Or, try swishing some water and baking soda after a meal to neutralize the ph.
Although baking soda for weight loss isn’t effective.
3. You Can Fake It (a Little Bit)
If you need to cut pounds fast, but don’t have the time to lose a ton of weight — or if you want to accentuate the weight that you’ve already lost — there are ways to help you look slimmer fast without compromising your health with a crash diet. There are three ways to do this:
- Wear black to camouflage your shape and make it look like you’ve achieved more weight loss.
- Use shapewear under your clothes to make everything look tighter and trimmer.
- Lose water weight to reduce bloat by avoiding dairy and gluten, and drinking lots of water.
None of these methods are permanent, but they will help you look your best during a special event or holiday that you want to dress up for.
Ensure you follow the healthy diet and workout regimen mentioned in this article to achieve fat loss effectively.
The Bottom Line
When the right methods are used, you can slim down quickly in a healthy way. It’s important to set goals and commit to healthy weight loss over time if you want to get lean and maintain your weight loss long-term.
By filling your diet with healthy foods and being more active throughout the day, you’ll start to shed fat fast, and when you incorporate the weight loss secrets in this article, the weight might start to come off even faster. Understanding these tips for achieving rapid and healthy weight loss will help jumpstart your journey towards a slimmer you.
Moreover, making these positive lifestyle changes can guide you on how to lose 70 pounds or more. The possibilities are endless.
As with anything, take small steps to get to your destination and try to enjoy the journey for long lasting success.
References
1Rössner, S., Hammarstrand, M., Hemmingsson, E., Neovius, M., & Johansson, K. (2008). Long-term weight loss and weight-loss maintenance strategies. Obesity Reviews, 9(6), 624–630. <https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-789x.2008.00516.x>
2Strasser, B., Spreitzer, A., & Haber, P. (2007). Fat Loss Depends on Energy Deficit Only, Independently of the Method for Weight Loss. Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism, 51(5), 428–432. <https://doi.org/10.1159/000111162>
3Champagne, C. M., Broyles, S. T., Moran, L. D., Cash, K. C., Levy, E. J., Lin, P. H., Batch, B. C., Lien, L. F., Funk, K. L., Dalcin, A., Loria, C., & Myers, V. H. (2011). Dietary Intakes Associated with Successful Weight Loss and Maintenance during the Weight Loss Maintenance Trial. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 111(12), 1826–1835. <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jada.2011.09.014>
4Zalewski, B. M., & Szajewska, H. (2015). Effect of glucomannan supplementation on body weight in overweight and obese children: protocol of a randomised controlled trial. BMJ Open, 5(4), e007244. <https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2014-007244>
5Pepin, A., Stanhope, K. L., & Imbeault, P. (2019). Are Fruit Juices Healthier Than Sugar-Sweetened Beverages? A Review. Nutrients, 11(5), 1006. <https://doi.org/10.3390/nu11051006>
6Cox, C. E. (2017). Role of Physical Activity for Weight Loss and Weight Maintenance. Diabetes Spectrum, 30(3), 157–160. <https://doi.org/10.2337/ds17-0013>
7Elder, C. R., Gullion, C. M., Funk, K. L., DeBar, L. L., Lindberg, N. M., & Stevens, V. J. (2011). Impact of sleep, screen time, depression and stress on weight change in the intensive weight loss phase of the LIFE study. International Journal of Obesity, 36(1), 86–92. <https://doi.org/10.1038/ijo.2011.60>
8Effect of Intermittent Fasting on Fat Mass. (2020). Case Medical Research. Published. <https://doi.org/10.31525/ct1-nct04245007>
9Koithan, M., & Niemeyer, K. (2010). Using Herbal Remedies to Maintain Optimal Weight. The Journal for Nurse Practitioners, 6(2), 153–154. <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nurpra.2009.12.005>