Im desperate to lose 40 pounds

SueInAz wrote: »

Whether or not that's possible, in a healthful manner or not, will depend on how overweight you are now and how close 40 pounds will get you to a healthy weight. Unless you are very overweight it is impossible to drop so much weight in such a short time. The math just doesn't work out.

You didn't say when in December so we'll split the difference and say mid-month which is 10 weeks from now. 40 pounds / 10 weeks means you're trying to lose an average of 4 pounds per week. It takes 3500 calories to equal a pound of fat lost or gained. That means you'd need to burn 2000 calories more than you're eating each day to lose 4 pounds per week (3500 calories x 4 pounds / 7 days = 2000 calories per day).

If you're an average-sized person you burn 2000 calories each day just living your average day. Most women actually burn less than that but I'll still use that for this example because it's easy. So 2000 calories per day burned = 2000 calories per day to lose 4 pounds per week. That means if you ate absolutely nothing for the next 10 weeks you might be able to lose 40 pounds. However, if you were eating nothing you'd have no energy to do the normal things you'd need to do to burn 2000 calories every day. So you can see that even eating absolutely no food for 10 weeks will not allow you to reach your goal. It's simply not possible and certainly not in the healthy way you say is your objective.

You'd be better off being thankful that your SO loves the person you are now, trying to lose 10 or 15 pounds between now and then and buying some Spanx if you're still feeling insecure about your looks.