Is 5 weeks enough to lose weight?

I'll be starting a diet soon and I was wondering if 5 weeks is enough time to lose a decent amount of weight?

You should be able to lose weight in 5 weeks. Just know that once you stop "dieting" you will gain it back. In order to keep the weight off for good, you'll need to adopt a healthy lifestyle and stick to it--something you can see yourself doing for the rest of your life.

How much weight you will lose depends on how much you eat and how much you exercise. It's recommended that you should try not to lose more than 0.5-2 lbs per week because that is what's considered safe. However, if you are new to healthy living, you will probably lose a little more than that in the first few weeks. After a few weeks, your weight loss will stabilize.

You should make sure you are drinking 8 cups of water per day and eating less than what you burn each day. You don't want to starve either. Females should eat no less than 1200 calories per day and males should eat no less than 1500 calories per day.

Most people have about 5-15 pounds of excess water weight. You can get rid of that by drinking 8 cups of water per day. On this plan, you could lose anywhere from 2.5 lbs to 23 lbs during 5 weeks. Don't expect the extremes though. You may lose much more than 2.5 pounds or much less than 23 pounds. It all depends on how big of a deficit you have. So to answer your question, yes 5 weeks is long enough to lose a decent amount of weight.

My final tip would be to use a logging website to help you log your calories and activities such as caloriecount.about.com.

If you have a question leave your comment below and I will answer your question in a post.