How to Drop a Size in 6 Weeks

One size doesn’t sound like much but it makes a huge difference in how you look and feel. Learn how to drop a size in just six weeks!

A lot of times we have a bigger goal in mind and that bigger goal can seem so impossible that we don’t even try.

It takes about 10 to 15 pounds to drop a size in clothing. And by size, I mean a size in your jeans, not just a dress.

I’ve got my before and after pictures at the end to show what a ONE size drop looks like on me!

As a weight loss and life coach for women over 50, I’m at expert at helping you use your MIND to get the results you want in your body and in your life!

What I want to suggest is that you start with the goal of losing one size in your jeans. There are so many benefits to dropping just a size!

Why you want to drop a size in 6 weeks.

You feel AMAZING!

You feel strong.

You feel self-confident.

The clothes you are wearing become very loose. That creates a feeling of thinness. Because you’ve been moving your body, you feel stronger.

You’ll discover a process that actually works for your body.

You’ll be unstoppable!

You don’t have to lose all the weight you want, to have these feelings. You can do it with one size, in 6 weeks.

The best part is you don’t have to starve yourself or put yourself through hard core workouts.

Losing a size in 6 weeks, will take a combination of eating and exercising. Ten pounds is doable in six weeks but for some people, this is not enough to lose a size.

I’m going to share my favorite and most effective exercise for trimming your middle and helping you get into that smaller size of jeans!

Seriously, this is how I live most of the time and when I gain a few pounds, this is how I lose them.

Even if you don’t quite lose a whole size—your clothes will definitely feel looser and you’ll feel great.

The Rules for Losing a Size in 6 Weeks

• Eat two or three meals a day.
• Don’t eat between meals.
• Don’t eat sugar or flour (not even gluten-free types)
• Limit alcohol.
• Walk 4 or 5 times a week.
• Other exercise that you like if you want.
• Have a fasting period of 12 to 16 hours daily. (Dinner time until your first meal of the next day.)
• Eat proteins, vegetables, healthy oils, and fruit.

Understanding the Science Behind Losing Weight

To lose weight efficiently, especially after age 50, you really do have to understand the process.

Those of us over 50, grew up in the day of low-fat and low-calorie diets.

While popular, they were never shown to be effective long-term and they turned out to be detrimental to overall health.

Science has come a long way in understanding what makes a person gain weight.

Guess what? It’s not eating fat that makes you fat!

Too much insulin in the bloodstream causes a person to gain weight. Read more about that here: How Hormones Affect Your Weight After 50.

Sugar and foods that act like sugar, raise insulin.

Sugar and foods that act like sugar are the true culprits in weight gain and fat storage.

These types of food raise insulin in your blood. When there is too much glucose in your blood, the insulin stores it as fat.

When there is too much, too much of the time, you store fat rather than using it for energy.

You gain weight.

Years of this, not only cause you to gain weight but it probably feels like it is out of your control.

That’s because the hormones that signal hunger or fullness also get messed up. Then your body can’t give you proper signals, you over-eat the wrong kinds of foods, and you gain weight.

In addition, you may be eating too often. If you have food in your system around the clock, then again you keep more glucose in your blood than your body can handle.

That’s all for the science folks! There are resources below if you want to dig in yourself for more detail. But for this post, I want you to know that I didn’t make this stuff up.

It’s not just effective, it’s backed up by research and science.

Just a reminder. This is not intended as medical advice, it is meant to be informative and an example of what I do and why. This may not be the right thing for you right now because of health reasons. I also use simplified descriptions of body functions at times to make this easier to understand.

How to Go from Storing Fat to Burning Fat

Your body has to be able to access its own fat storage for energy!

Your body won’t want to do that at first. It is used to having an easy supply of energy in the form of too many carbs, too many sweet drinks, and too many snacks.

Getting energy from your own fat is way harder for your body but it is way healthier.

So, you’ll have to use some willpower and discipline to get this turned around.

It won’t magically happen. Your body will crave carbs and sweets for a period of time, while you implement your new habits.

You might feel almost sick for a few days as your body switches from using easy fuel (snacks and processed foods) to using your own fat for fuel.

Don’t give up. It only lasts a few days at most and then you will feel better and then you may even feel better than you’ve felt for a long time.

When we eat too many foods that raise our insulin and eat too many times a day, we store fat.

To get your body to burn fat, you have to reduce foods that raise insulin and eat fewer times a day.

It’s fairly straightforward, but it’s much different than what most of us grew up with. Also, it takes some time for your body to make the switch. How long, depends on how committed you are to the process.

If you go back and forth, you’re most likely to stay in a fat-storing mode. What I mean by that is you eat clean most days but not all. Your body never really gets a chance to get metabolizing that fat.

Let’s start with how often a day should you eat to lose a size.

How Often Should You Eat to Lose Weight?

You will have to experiment and figure this out for yourself.

However, I recommend two meals a day so that you can have a robust fasting period. If you can’t see yourself doing this yet, limit yourself to no more than three meals a day.

For me, I need a fasting period of about 15 hours to lose weight. During maintenance, I fast for 12 hours.

Aim for a minimum of 12 hours to start. As well as losing weight in the short-term, I really suggest building habits you can keep up forever.

One of the reasons, that we end up with insulin spikes is that we eat too often. Even if you are eating primarily healthy foods, if you eat too often, your insulin won’t come down and you won’t burn fat.

A lot of people find that only eating two meals a day is really effective for losing weight and then maintaining that loss.

Time-restricted eating or intermittent fasting is known to be effective for regulating insulin.

That’s what I do.

If you haven’t done this before, it may sound really intimidating. You might think you’ll be starving.

You won’t be! For a 12-hour fast, you really are only going from dinner to breakfast.

But you will be enabling your body to access and use its fat stores for energy. That’s the goal and that’s how you lose weight.

Sample Day of Intermittent Fasting

7:00 AM Coffee

10:00 AM Coffee

11:00 AM Bone Broth

1:00 PM Lunch (protein, vegetables, healthy oil or fat)

7:00 PM Dinner (protein, vegetables, healthy oil or fat)

When I need to lose weight, I will have black coffee. If I’m happy with my weight, I use half and half in my coffee.

I usually have 12 to 16 ounces of bone broth every day. Here’s why. It doesn’t seem to break my fast.

You can have water, lemon water, unsweetened tea during your fast time.

Diet soda is not a recommended beverage ever. Artificial sweeteners can screw up your hormones too!

What to Eat when You Want to Drop a Size

Since you are only eating 2 or 3 meals, it’s important to get the most nutrition you possibly can to fuel your body!

While it might sound like I’m trying to deprive you, I’m actually encouraging you to eat more real food than you probably ever have.

Food is meant to nourish and fuel your body. That’s why I make the bulk of my diet protein, vegetables, and healthy fats.

Proteins include all meats and eggs. I’m not a vegetarian, so I don’t try to advise on that. I buy the highest quality meat I can that is the most humanely raised.

Portion size for meat is about 4 to 6 ounces per meal.

Vegetables are where you will get your variety! You can eat almost any of them. Two that aren’t recommended are peas and corn.

Leafy vegetables: You can have all the leafy green veggies you want.

Low carb vegetables: This includes zucchini, peppers, broccoli, cauliflower, cucumbers, celery, green beans. Load up on these and eat as many different kinds as you can.

Starchy vegetables: I like to include a small amount of these with my lunch and dinner. Go easy. One fourth a sweet potato makes a huge difference in my energy and mood. If you stop losing weight, cut back. These include potatoes of any kind and winter squash.

This does not include potato chips or French fries. Maybe later, when you are ready to add a treat now and then back into your diet.

Onions and garlic: These make your food taste good.

Healthy fats and oils: Olive oil, butter, ghee, coconut oil, avocado oil, mayonnaise made with healthy oils. Eliminate canola and vegetable oils as well as margarine and shortening.

You can use your healthy fat or oils to cook with and use a little more for flavoring on prepared food. Recommend about 1 TB per serving for cooking and 1 TB for dressing per serving.

Optional foods: You can add these to your meals to add flavor. Use sparingly and keep in mind that nuts and avocado are also counted as fat. These optional foods are nuts (a small handful), avocado, berries, or small piece of other fruit.

How to Exercise to Lose a Size in Six Weeks

Here is my secret ingredient to dropping a size in six weeks. Exercise.

But don’t worry, I’m not advocating hard-core workout. I’ve found that the most effective exercise for me is walking.

Walking really does help me lose weight and shape up. It is the only thing that seems to get at my love handles!

For walking, I love to get outside and do 2 or 3 miles at a time. I also love to use in-home walking. Using a combination of these, really helps me trim my waist and bottom. Plus my legs look shapely.

I also believe that regular walking helps keep stress down, which might also keep the hormone cortisol down. Elevated cortisol can cause weight gain.

Outside Walking for Weight Loss

When the weather is nice, I tend to do more of this. I like to get out a few times a week and do one hour of walking. For me that equals about 3 miles. That’s a modest pace but it seems to do the trick for me.

I have written extensively about how walking helps me. Here are two helpful posts to get the most out of your outside walking.

What’s the Best Way to Walk for Weight Loss

How to Make Walking More Effective

Inside Walking for Weight loss

In addition, I like to do at-home walking workouts. I subscribe to Leslie Sansone’s Daily Walk. I’m not an affiliate—I just depend on these workouts so much.

What I like about them is that they give you more of a full body workout. They especially target you core.

I can tell a real difference in my body from doing these workouts. They come in 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 miles. I like the 2 and 3 mile workouts best.

In addition, they are a time saver. They move quicker than I usually walk outside, so I get more done in less time!

There are some good quality ones on YouTube.

Check out her website. I subscribe to the Daily Walk and I get a months-worth of workouts to choose from. You can pay monthly or by the year for the best deal.

Try this workout on YouTube or go to her website and try a week for free. In summer 2019, I used this workout for several weeks to help me drop a size when I needed a jumpstart for my metabolism.

How to Drop a Size in 6 Weeks

Six weeks is 42 days. Those days can help you break your addiction to sugar and processed foods.

If you already eat healthy, the addition of intermittent fasting and targeted exercise can help you budge those stubborn pounds.

You will know so much more about how your body works if you can stick with this.

If you “mess up” don’t quit. Just keep going.

If you mess up, you haven’t failed at all.

You only fail if you quit.

What if it took you 12 weeks to lose a size? That’s not failing!

That is success my friend.

That’s about how long it too me to lose 15 pounds. 12 weeks. But you know what would have happened if I had given up.

I wouldn’t have lost those pounds or a whole size.

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The biggest secret I can share is to simply not quit. Feed your body the most nutritious foods you can, in the right quantities, and at the right time.

It takes time to learn how to work with your body and time for your body to begin working for you again.

It takes time to heal insulin-resistance and get your hormones working properly.

This is so worth it. Not just to be a size smaller but to improve your health overall.