5 week weight loss

At most you can safely lose 1% a week, so that would be about 10-15 pounds

At your weight, you can safely lose a lot more weight faster than the typically advertised 1lb/week. HOWEVER, the biggest thing to focus on is your diet. We are creatures of habit, and your eating habits are what got you in this place to begin with. You have to kiss your old eating habits goodbye, permanently, if you want to lose weight and keep it off. There's no other way around this.

The best recommendation I have, and what has worked for me, is to really sit down and spend a few hours coming up with a meal plan for yourself. Literally plan out every breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack for a whole week at a time. A spreadsheet works great for this. Write down all the macros and calories for every item in every meal, and structure it so that you are eating at a deficit. I use one of my days off to cook all the meals, box them up, and set alarms on my phone to tell me when to eat them. Eating every ~3 hours works for me, because I don't get very hungry ever. This literally takes ALL the guess work out of your diet. Dieting then becomes just eating what your past self planned out and precooked for your present self.

To figure out how many calories you should eat, you can use an online TDEE calculator, but even better is to use the TDEE spreadsheet here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8EbfzFB0mBrMGJ6V2N5QWNfeTg/view this takes all the guesswork out of your activity level. All you have to do is put in your weight every day ( same time, same circumstances, every day ), and the total calories you ate that day. This will tell you exactly what your TDEE is no matter how much exercising you do.

Here's an example of a meal plan spreadsheet that I made: http://imgur.com/eORcbUj

So I eat the exact same stuff every day all week ( but I diversify between meals, and always cook a fresh breakfast ) - note that eating exactly the same stuff every day isn't for everyone, but I change up the spices I use to get different flavors to keep it interesting. To give you an idea, it only takes me 1 hour to cook all 10 lunch and dinners for a week. This extra plan ahead work saves me TONS of time and stress all week between cooking, figuring out what I CAN eat by the end of the day, etc. I also have a very basic shopping list now, so grocery shopping is a total breeze, and I have ZERO wasted food every week because I buy exactly what I know I'll be eating .

By doing this, you eliminate all the guess work out of your diet. It becomes trivial to stick to it and you actually WANT to stick to it because it makes it so easy and saves so much time. Pick the foods you like, you don't have to eat exactly what i am. Pick food you like, season it how you like, and cook what YOU like to eat.

And absolutely don't feel bad about having a cheat day on the weekend. Don't go crazy and gorge yourself, but yeah man have a hamburger, or a burrito, or some Chinese, or a pizza - whatever you like. But during the week you are ON DIET and eating what great stuff you made for yourself.

This is how you will lose weight AND keep it off. By taking the time to plan your food, saving you tons of hours every week between cooking and planning and fast food.