Diet to lose 15 kilos: weekly menu and how long it takes

Can you lose 15 kilos in two weeks?

Not fat. Fifteen kilos of fat takes several months of a sustained deficit, and cannot fit into fourteen days. Two-week diets, liquid diets and diets that remove a whole food group do make the scales show less. What is lost is water, glycogen stores and some muscle.

When energy is cut heavily without enough protein and without strength training, part of what drops is muscle mass [2]. Muscle is active tissue, and losing it is one of the reasons the weight comes back afterwards.

The catalogue of miracle diets is renewed every year, and they all share three signs. They promise a timeframe, cut out a food group and do not say what happens when they end. Very-low-energy diets exist, but they are reserved for programmes with healthcare follow-up [3]. At Alimmenta we do not recommend diets of less than 1,200 kcal a day under any circumstances. Below that figure medical supervision is needed and nutrient deficiencies can appear.

How long does it take to lose 15 kilos?

Around seven or eight months, from the day you start changing things. That is around 500 g per week, which is the pace that allows fat loss without losing muscle or running short of nutrients. Thirty weeks at that pace equals fifteen kilos. There are two points worth knowing before you start.

• The first weeks drop more. Two or three kilos in the first month is common, and a good portion is water. After that the pace settles.
• The closer you get, the slower it goes. The last five kilos are harder than the first ones. For that stretch the diet to lose 5 kilos will help.

If it is not exactly fifteen kilos, or you do not yet know how much weight you want to lose, start with the general weight loss diet guide. If you have around ten kilos to lose, the one to lose 10 kilos is a better fit; and if it is twenty, the one to lose 20 kilos starts with a medical assessment.

How to divide your plate to lose 15 kilos

Four things, and none of them requires weighing. They apply equally to lunch and dinner.

• Vegetables, half of the plate. They are what fills you up most with the least energy, and they bring vitamins, minerals and fibre.
• Carbohydrates, preferably wholegrain. They provide satiety and energy for the rest of the day.
• Protein at every meal. It helps preserve muscle while fat goes down.
• Good-quality fats, in the right amount. They provide a lot of energy in a small volume, so oil is added by the spoonful.

There is a way of cooking that almost everyone drops for no reason: stewing. It is usually the first thing to go when someone starts looking after themselves, and there is no reason for it. With vegetable stock and little oil you get a dish eaten with a spoon that fills you up.

It goes in the same direction as AESAN, which asks for eating more vegetables, fruit and plant-based foods, and less red and processed meat [4].

Do you need to cut out bread and flour to lose 15 kilos?

No. After the timeframe, it is the most common question, and in consultation the answer has been the same for years. Carbohydrates are not removed, they are put in their place. Bread, rice, pasta and potato provide satiety and energy, and they are what allows a plan to be sustained for months.

What changes is which types and how much. Wholegrain is better than refined, and in the portion appropriate for you, which is not always what you serve yourself out of habit.

What does a weekly menu to lose 15 kilos look like?

It is a menu with lunch and dinner for all seven days. Who it is for: a healthy adult who wants to lose around fifteen kilos. Who it is not for: it is not calculated for pregnancy or breastfeeding, nor for anyone under 18 or people who need to gain weight. Nor for people with diabetes treated with insulin or with medicines that can lower blood sugar too much, chronic kidney disease or an eating disorder, current or past. If you have a condition with its own plan (coeliac disease, diagnosed allergy, heart or liver failure), your plan takes precedence.

Breakfast and the afternoon snack are not in the table because they depend a lot on each person’s schedule. There are options in the nine breakfast ideas. If you find it hard not to repeat dinners, see the nine dinner ideas.

Quantities are deliberately omitted from the table: they depend on you. What does not change are the proportions of the plate.

If the scales stop halfway

It will happen. Over seven or eight months there are weeks when weight stays the same, some because of hormonal changes and others because of tiredness (“I look better, I am tired of the diet”). Almost none is solved by cutting back further.

• Also look at your measurements. You can be losing fat without the scales moving. Weigh yourself at most once a week. Also observe your waist and hip measurements, or how a belt you wear often fits.
• Raise your daily movement. Exercise and everyday movement, such as walking or taking the stairs, are the two parts of energy expenditure you can change at will.
• Do not give up strength work. Together with enough protein, it helps preserve muscle while fat goes down [2].

What mistakes do we see in consultations?

There are three phrases we hear almost every week in consultation. All three end up in the same place.

• “Tonight, no carbohydrates”. Having dinner without carbohydrates does not make you lose more. It leaves accumulated hunger, and that hunger catches up with you the next day in mid-afternoon. If they feel heavy at night, change the portion: a boiled potato, a little rice or a slice of wholemeal bread instead of a plate of pasta.
• “I overdid it today, tomorrow I’ll have a salad for dinner”. Compensating with a minimal dinner builds up hunger for the next day, and the excess repeats. What helps is returning to your usual food at the next meal, without punishment.
• “This time I will stick with it”. Diets with an end date give back what was lost because they end, and that is the yo-yo effect. The next day you go back to eating as before, because nobody taught you anything else.

That it has happened to you before says nothing about your willpower. What sustains weight is a way of eating that can withstand a wedding, a trip and a bad week. Eating out, having dinner with the same food as your family or enjoying a croquette without writing off the day is also part of the plan.

If what breaks is your relationship with food (you eat when not hungry, in secret or to calm yourself), another menu is not enough. Specialist psychology helps there.