We’ve all been there. You want to lose weight so that you can squeeze into that new outfit in time for a wedding or special occasion. Or you want to prove to old acquaintances that life has gotten better since high school when reunions come back around. But looking for one of those crash diets like the Cabbage Soup Diet, Grapefruit Juice Diet, Three Day Diet, or the Lose 21 Pounds in 21 Days Diet can be almost as miserable as being on the diet themselves.

Now, although these crash diets have been known to work to a certain extent, eating only cayenne pepper flavored water isn’t going to be a method for weight loss that you’re going to want to sustain for a long period of time. But this isn’t to say that losing weight fast isn’t out of the picture if you do things the old fashioned way. Michael Dansinger, MD from The Biggest Loser says: “In theory, one could drop as much as 20 pounds in a week following a very ambitious eating and exercising plan, devoting more than seven hours per week to rigorous exercise.”

Even if you can’t drop everything in your life to be on a reality weight loss show, you can still safely lose large amounts of weight just by cutting back on what you eat and increasing your exercise load. Weight loss and maintenance are more about establishing healthy habits and permanent lifestyle changes than dropping water weight or going into starvation mode.

How to do it:

Think of your calories you eat per day as the amount of money you spend, and the amount of calories you burn as the money in your paycheck. If you’re continuously eating less than you burn, you’re going to have a lot of calories left in that bank that are going to equal weight loss. And just like you wouldn’t spend money you don’t have, don’t eat calories that you’re not going to burn. Experts generally recommend creating a deficit of about 500 calories per day through a combination of eating less and increasing physical activities. Depending upon your body weight, this could result in a loss of about 3-5 pounds per week.

If that is not fast enough for you, you can always eat less, although doctors say that you don’t dip below the line of about 1050 for safety’s sake, and add a supplement that increases your caloric expenditure or raises your metabolism.

Although exercise is extremely important, limiting what you eat is going to help you get that zipper up than anything else. Dansinger says that “Dieters who are losing 3 pounds a week are usually losing 2 pounds from diet and 1 pound from exercise.” So next time you’re reaching for that second helping, thinking you’re just going to work it off at the gym tomorrow, remember that it’s going to take twice as long to work it off than to just not eat it.

For a really fast start to your diet, you might want to try limiting your salt and starches. “When you reduce sodium and cut starches, you reduce fluids and fluid retention, which can result in up to 5 pounds of fluid loss when you get started,” explains Dansinger. And we all know how hard it is to stay on a diet when you’re not seeing any results, so if anything this could help buoy your spirits so that you can meet your end goals.

As far as choosing which foods you’re going to eat, Dawn Jackson Blatner RD, American Dietetic Association spokesperson recommends:

1. Eat plenty of low-calorie vegetables to help you feel full.
2. Drink plenty of water so you don’t confuse hunger with thirst.
3. Clear the house of tempting foods.
4. Stay busy to prevent eating out of boredom.
5. Eat only from a plate, while seated at a table.
6. Always eat three meals and one snack daily—no skipping meals.

Even if you need to lose weight fast, you don’t have to resort to crash diets that are going to make you miserable and probably rebound and gain more weight than you lost.