Evidence Based
Here’s a familiar story:
You want to look and feel your best at an upcoming event (a wedding, family vacation, school reunion, etc.) but you’ve put off starting your diet.
Time moves forward in leaps and bounds and now the big day is looming just 12 or so weeks away, and you’re wondering, “how much weight can I lose in 3 months?”
The answer largely comes down to your starting body fat percentage and how effectively you use diet and exercise to maintain a calorie deficit.
The long story short is that if you have around 10-to-20 pounds to lose, you should have no trouble reaching your goal weight within the next 3 months. If you want to lose more weight than that, you can still make fantastic progress, but you’ll likely need to diet for longer than three months.
In this article, you’ll learn how much weight you can lose in 3 months if you’re normal weight, overweight, or lean, plus the best diet and exercise tips you can follow to maximize your fat loss over the next 90 days.
How Much Weight Can I Lose in 3 Months?
A safe, healthy, and realistic goal is to lose 0.5-to-1% of your body weight per week, which is around 1-to-2 pounds of weight loss per week for most people.
In other words, you can expect to lose 12-to-24 pounds in a 3-month period.
That said, the more fat you have to lose, the faster you can safely and healthily lose it.
People who are very overweight (men over 25% body fat and women over 35%) can often lose 2-to-4 pounds per week without issue.
That means very overweight people can lose anything from 24-to-48 pounds in 3 months if they know what they’re doing.
At the other extreme, those who are lean and looking to get leaner (men around 10% body fat and women around 20%) may only be able to lose one half to one pound of fat per week.
Thus, a reasonable weight-loss goal for them would be 6-to-12 pounds over 3 months.
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How to Lose Weight in 3 Months: Diet Tips
If you want to lose weight like clockwork without struggling with hunger, cravings, or lethargy, here’s what to do with your diet.
1. Use an aggressive (but not reckless) calorie deficit of about 25%.
Research shows that eating 20-to-25% fewer calories than you burn every day will help you lose fat lickety-split without losing muscle or wrestling with excessive hunger, lethargy, and the other hobgoblins of low-calorie dieting.
2. Eat a high-protein diet.
High-protein dieting beats low-protein in every way, especially when you’re dieting to lose weight.
Specifically, you should eat about 1-to-1.2 grams of protein per pound of body weight per day.
And if you’re very overweight (25%+ body fat in men and 30%+ in women), this can be reduced to around 40% of your total calories per day.
3. Take supplements proven to accelerate fat loss.
The best supplements to help you lose weight quickly are . . .
- 3-to-6 mg of caffeine per kilogram of body weight per day. This will raise the number of calories you burn and also increases strength, muscle endurance, and anaerobic performance. If you want a clean, delicious source of caffeine that also contains five other ingredients that will boost your workout performance, try Pulse.
- 0.1-to-0.2 milligrams of yohimbine per kilogram of body weight before fasted training. This increases fat loss when used in conjunction with fasted training, and is particularly helpful with losing “stubborn” fat. If you want a 100% natural source of yohimbine that also contains two other ingredients that will help you lose fat faster, preserve muscle, and maintain training intensity and mental sharpness, try Forge.
- One serving of Phoenix per day. Phoenix is a 100% natural fat burner that speeds up your metabolism, enhances fat burning, and reduces hunger and cravings. You can also get Phoenix with caffeine or without.
How to Lose Weight in 3 Months: Exercise Tips
1. Do a lot of heavy, compound weightlifting.
Lifting weights doesn’t just help you build (or hold on to) muscle—it helps you lose fat, too.
If you want to maximize the fat-burning effects of weightlifting . . .
4. Strategically use cardio to burn fat faster.
The best way to include cardio in a weight loss regimen is to do as little as needed to reach your desired rate of weight loss and stay fit, and no more.
For best results . . .
- Do at least two low- to moderate-intensity cardio workouts per week of 20-to-40 minutes each.
- Do one HIIT workout per week if you enjoy it.
- Don’t do more than 2-to-3 hours of cardio per week. You can do more than this, but this increases the chances of interfering with your weightlifting workouts.
- Do your cardio and weightlifting on separate days if possible, and if you have to do them on the same day, lift weights first and try to separate the two workouts by at least 6 hours.
3. Stay active.
You don’t need to do formal exercise to speed up fat loss. You can significantly increase calorie burning by staying physically active whenever possible throughout the day.
Every little helps, including taking the stairs instead of the escalator, doing household chores, and parking further away from work than normal, so try and find as many ways as you can to “sneak” in activity throughout each day.
These little spurts of activity might seem trifling, but research shows they can add up to hundreds of calories per day.
+ Scientific References
- JO, M., NA, R., BC, N., LA, G., JS, V., K, D., JA, B., AL, G., SA, M., SJ, F., K, H., RU, N., & WJ, K. (2001). Low-volume circuit versus high-volume periodized resistance training in women. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 33(4), 635–643. https://doi.org/10.1097/00005768-200104000-00019
- PT, F., & AG, C. N. (2011). The effect of between-set rest intervals on the oxygen uptake during and after resistance exercise sessions performed with large- and small-muscle mass. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 25(11), 3181–3190. https://doi.org/10.1519/JSC.0B013E318212E415
- IG, F., A, C., S, T., MG, N., AZ, J., II, D., I, P., PM, T., K, T., G, M., & A, M. (2009). Intensity of resistance exercise determines adipokine and resting energy expenditure responses in overweight elderly individuals. Diabetes Care, 32(12), 2161–2167. https://doi.org/10.2337/DC08-1994
- De Boer, S. F., & Koolhaas, J. M. (2005). 5-HT1A and 5-HT1B receptor agonists and aggression: A pharmacological challenge of the serotonin deficiency hypothesis. European Journal of Pharmacology, 526(1–3), 125–139. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.EJPHAR.2005.09.065
- SM, O. (2006). Yohimbine: the effects on body composition and exercise performance in soccer players. Research in Sports Medicine (Print), 14(4), 289–299. https://doi.org/10.1080/15438620600987106
- TW, B., TJ, H., RJ, S., GO, J., DJ, H., JW, C., & MH, M. (2006). The acute effects of a caffeine-containing supplement on strength, muscular endurance, and anaerobic capabilities. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 20(3), 506–510. https://doi.org/10.1519/18285.1
- TA, A., RL, R., & K, F. (2008). Effect of caffeine ingestion on one-repetition maximum muscular strength. European Journal of Applied Physiology, 102(2), 127–132. https://doi.org/10.1007/S00421-007-0557-X
- A, A., S, T., S, C., P, H., L, B., & J, M. (1990). Caffeine: a double-blind, placebo-controlled study of its thermogenic, metabolic, and cardiovascular effects in healthy volunteers. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 51(5), 759–767. https://doi.org/10.1093/AJCN/51.5.759
- HT, H., JJ, H., J, I., H, K., R, P., T, K., K, M., & AA, M. (2015). Body composition and power performance improved after weight reduction in male athletes without hampering hormonal balance. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 29(1), 29–36. https://doi.org/10.1519/JSC.0000000000000619
- ER, H., AA, A., & PJ, F. (2014). Evidence-based recommendations for natural bodybuilding contest preparation: nutrition and supplementation. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/1550-2783-11-20
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