Do you want to slim down fast for that beach vacation or high school reunion or a wedding? While there are many things you can do to shed pounds, too quickly, like any sudden change to your body, can be dangerous. While fad diets, diet pills, and fasting may indeed induce rapid weight loss, these methods can cause you to lose muscle and may also injure your heart and other organs fairly quickly. The best solution? Don’t go for an overnight miracle. Instead, follow these steps to lose weight rapidly, healthily, and sustainably.

Determine your daily calorie intake. Losing weight is simply an activity. Also, remember to calculate your metabolism. The metabolism is a large part of your calories burned in an average day. To win the battle, know how many calories you consume in a day. Seek out alternatives to the unhealthy foods you’ve identified. You can simply reduce the amount of soda you drink or mayonnaise you put on your sandwiches, or you can substitute healthier choices.

Drink water instead of soda, for example, or use mustard instead of mayo. Low-fat and low-calorie options are also available for most foods, and many of these are natural, (although some are made with strange chemicals), and tasty. Start trying to eat healthy on most meals:

• Choose lean meats. Chicken and fish are both very low in fat, and certain fish like salmons, sardines, and fresh tuna are an excellent sources of antioxidants and Omega-3 fatty acids, which are also beneficial to your health, so aim to replace some or all of the beef or pork in your diet with these foods.
• Replace high calorie side dishes with healthier alternatives. Many people get a ton of calories from side dishes such as macaroni and cheese, French fries, or potato salad. You can eat healthier and lose weight by replacing these with fresh vegetables and salads. Pre-made salads are practically effortless, and when accompanied by a reduced-calorie dressing or no dressing at all, they’re weight-loss gold.
• Start your days off right. A fattening breakfast of bacon and eggs or a pastry can be replaced with yogurt, oatmeal, high-fiber, low-sugar cereals; or fresh fruit for fruit smoothies. However, for those on a low carb diet bacon and eggs are a great combo for breakfast, since neither have carbs. But don’t fall into the trap of skipping breakfast. Eating a healthy breakfast increases your rest metabolic rate earlier in the day, and reduces snacking before lunch.

Watch Your Portion Sizes. Eating a whole bag of rice cakes in one sitting won’t help you lose weight. When eating chips, nuts, or dried fruit, put a portion in a small bowl and then put the bag away. That way you won’t mindlessly eat a larger portion than you had intended. Even if you only make minimal changes to your diet choices, reducing portion size will inevitably reduce caloric intake. A great way to watch portion sizes while snacking is to buy one serving 100 calorie packages – and they come in many favorite snack food items.

!Grace on healthy snacks. Just because you’re getting healthy doesn’t mean you can’t snack. In fact, eating small meals and snacks throughout the day, or grazing, has been shown to aid weight loss, compared to eating three large meals a day, by keeping metabolism steadier. Pick snacks that are low in calories and fat and high in fiber dried apricots, nuts, rice cakes, fruits, baby carrots, cherry tomatoes, and so on. Vegetables are generally very low in calories, very high in fiber, and full of flavor and nutrition. Avoid starchy vegetables like potatoes, and try to eat vegetables plain, without fatty dressings or dips.

Fruit also makes a good snack. Fruit contains more soluble fiber than vegetables, which slows your body’s absorption of carbohydrates, thus releasing energy more slowly preventing sugar highs, and keeping you feeling full longer. Fruit juices are not a replacement for the real thing. You need that fiber, and juices often have more calories than the equivalent serving of fruit and as many calories as soda! Be careful with dried fruits, because without the water, you tend to eat more, and fruits, when dried, are calorie-rich per ounce. With any dry or dried food, be sure to drink plenty of water.

Get more fibre. There are many myths about fiber, but there is science to back up its helpful role in the diet. Fiber keeps the right amount of water in your intestines, making your digestive system work more efficiently and helping to keep you regular. Thus, just eating enough fiber may help you feel slimmer in just a day or so. There is also evidence that fiber in the diet can help prevent stroke and heart disease, ease the effects of diabetes, and may even directly help in weight loss.

Drink Plenty of Water. Adequate water is essential for health, and a great many people simply don’t get enough. What’s more, if you’re chronically dehydrated, your body will retain water in unflattering places, so if you make sure to get plenty of fluids you can start visibly trimming down in as little as a day. Remember, the more you exercise, the more water you’ll need. See the related wikiHow for more details on how much water you should be getting.

Exercise. Remember, you can lose weight either by decreasing your calorie intake or increasing the number of calories you burn. Any health strategy should include both, but if you want to lose weight fast, exercise is essential.