50 Meal Prep Recipes for Weight Loss | Under 500 Calories (2024)

FAQs

How much weight will I lose by eating 500 calories a day? ›

If you can eat 500 fewer calories every day, you should lose about a pound (450 g) a week. Always talk with your health care provider to determine a healthy weight for you before starting a weight-loss diet.

The Fast Diet encourages you to eat lean protein, vegetables, and fruit on fasting days, usually as two small meals plus a few snacks. A typical 500-calorie fasting day might include oatmeal with fresh blueberries for breakfast, a tangerine for a snack, and a chicken and vegetable stir-fry for dinner.

Fruits and vegetables generally have high water and fiber content, which provide volume and weight but not calories. That's why they're low-energy-dense foods. Grapefruit, for example, is about 90% water. Half a grapefruit has just 64 calories.

To lose 10 pounds in one week, you'll need to burn between 3,500 and 5,000 calories more than you consume each day by restricting your diet to small portions of nutritious yet low-calorie foods, and significantly increasing your aerobic exercise with interval training, sports, and other vigorous activities.

To lose 30 pounds in four to seven months, you must create a calorie deficit of 500 to 1,000 calories per day. A tried-and-true way is to reduce your daily intake by 500 calories and add moderate-intensity exercise on most days.

Generally to lose 1 to 2 pounds a week, you need to burn 500 to 1,000 calories more than you consume each day, through a lower calorie diet and regular physical activity. Depending on your weight, 5% of your current weight may be a realistic goal, at least for an initial goal.

Losing 5 pounds a week comes to reducing your food intake by 3500 calories over seven days. The value that represents the decrease in calorie intake is known as the calorie deficit. If you want to lose 5 pounds in a week, you will need to reduce your food intake by 17,500 calories, which is a huge calorie deficit.

A 500-calorie diet can be dangerous without a doctor's supervision. it can lead to malnutrition and other health problems. Healthy weight loss may include limiting food portions, burning calories, and other methods. A 500-calorie diet is an extreme form of a very low-calorie diet (VLCD).

Very Low-Calorie Diet (VLCD)

On a VLCD, you may have as few as 800 calories a day and may lose up to 3 to 5 pounds (1.5 to 2 kg) week. Most VLCDs use meal replacements, such as formulas, soups, shakes, and bars instead of regular meals. This helps ensure that you get all of the nutrients you need each day.

What is the 5:2 method? ›

The 5:2 diet is actually very simple to explain. For five days per week, you eat normally and don't have to think about restricting calories. Then, on the other two days, you reduce your calorie intake to a quarter of your daily needs. This is about 500 calories per day for women, and 600 for men.

You need to burn 3500 calories a day to lose one pound a day, and you need anywhere between 2000 and 2500 calories in a day if you are doing your routine activities. That means you need to starve yourself the whole day and exercise as much as to lose the remaining calories. This is practically not possible.

Following a low-carb diet also means consuming more protein. Studies indicate that a diet rich in high-protein foods, such as eggs, fish, seafood, legumes, nuts, meat, and dairy results in overall less abdominal fat, more satiety, and an increased metabolic function.

A good rule of thumb for healthy weight loss is a deficit of about 500 calories per day. That should put you on course to lose about 1 pound per week. This is based on a starting point of at least 1,200 to 1,500 calories a day for women and 1,500 to 1,800 calories a day for men.

For example, to lose 1 to 2 pounds a week — a rate that experts consider safe — your food consumption should provide 500 to 1,000 calories less than your total weight-maintenance calories. If you need 2,325 calories a day to maintain your current weight, reduce your daily calories to between 1,325 and 1,825.

We watched hundreds of videos on 3 day water fasts and people reported losing between 4.5 lbs to 12 lbs on their fast. This depends on a lot of factors including starting weight and height. The three-day water fast can be a powerful tool for natural healing, weight loss, and overall well-being.

Some research suggests that the average person assigned female at birth can limit their daily caloric intake to 1,500 calories or less to drop 1 pound per week. The average person assigned male at birth may consume up to 2,000 calories a day to lose the same amount of weight.