Not everyone has the need to lose significant weight. Sometimes the silhouette just needs a slight tweak.

To answer the question in the title, it would first be necessary to establish a few facts.

Fact 1: The human body on average retains about 2.5 kg of water, depending on factors such as diet, age, gender and health.

Fact 2: Three kilograms of fat is, loosely counting, about 23,000 calories. Fact 3: The first kilograms lost are actually retained water.

Gluing all this together, we can conclude that we can approach the topic of losing 3 kilograms in two ways - short term and long term.

Water in the human body

What mainly causes water retention in the body is sodium - a diet rich in salt is the fastest way to go if you just care about retaining sick amounts of water.

No sensible person pursues this, so the first step to improving the body's water management is to significantly reduce salt intake.

Removal of retained water will, admittedly, make the numbers on the scale go in the direction we want, but it will have nothing to do with weight loss strictly speaking.

Negative caloric balance or permanent effect

The basis, the foundation of weight loss is a negative caloric balance. It can be achieved changing to a lower calorie diet, but this will not improve metabolic parameters as much as diet combined with exercise.

What to avoid in losing weight?

An absolute crime on the body is the use of very restrictive diets lasting 1-2 weeks, popularized by many weight loss portals.

This is a fundamentally stupid idea, because in practice yo-yo effect will quickly nullify any effects, and all we will be left with is the memory of the cabbage patch.

Safe rate of weight loss

The amount of calories burned per day varies depending on our basal metabolism, physical activity, diet and overall health.

Safe weight loss fits in at a rate of half a percent-one percent of body weight per week.

Assuming a rate of 1 kg/week, it will take about three weeks of a reasonable, well-balanced diet to lose three kilograms.

Rapid weight loss vs. water

Increasing water supply is one way to remove retained water in the body - the body gets a signal that it is hydrated, so there is no need to store water.

By combining the consumption of more water with physical activity, it is possible to efficiently get rid of the excess, which will reduce any swelling, in addition to reducing our weight.

Maintaining a constant body weight

However, in order for weight loss results to be sustainable, the diet cannot be approached in an "about-to" manner. Only a permanent change to a healthier diet will guarantee a stable body weight.

The first step in determining how many calories we need is to calculate basal and total metabolism - it's simple math.

Basal metabolic rate (PPM) is the one responsible for keeping the body alive and will depend on age, sex or health.

Total metabolism is PPM multiplied by our physical activity rate. Depending on its level, the ratio will be roughly between 1.2 and 2.2.

Anything below total metabolism will caloric deficit - and this is the factor responsible for successful weight loss.

Resume

To sum up - if we are anxious for the numbers on the scale to fly down quickly, it is worth striving to remove the water retained by the body. If our goal is long-term, stable weight loss - and this is what the goal should be - it will take some effort and math, but the results will stay with us for a long time.

Simply removing water will not magically lower the percentage of fat in the body composition, which is what we should be aiming for.