Losing 30 lbs is a fine goal. Losing it in only 3 months is not :

I see a lot of folks who are messing up their chances of success by setting unrealistic goals, i.e. "I'm 230 lbs now, and I want to be under 200 by March." You realize that's like well over 2 lbs/week, right? That's a fine rate of loss for someone who is 400 lbs but not 230. That's going to require too much calorie restriction, and your body can become so accustomed to that level of calories, that you can never go back up again at all without gaining.

Use a free online calorie calculator to figure out a moderate deficit for someone of your age, height, and weight. For me right now, that's about 1700-1800 calories. For someone who weighs 230, it will be a lot more calories. Then set a goal that you're going to stick to those calories until March. The amount you lose is up to the universe. Don't try to rush it. Just stick to your diet and trust the process. If you still haven't lost anything after a month of sticking to your calories, then you can reduce it by 100/day and see what happens.

BTW I have found that I must have a high metabolism, because I can still lose weight at a substantial rate by eating 200-300 calories more per day than what the calculators tell me. So I recommend playing around with it.

But why set a time line for something you can't control? All you can control is tracking your food and sticking to your diet. You can't control the speed of loss, so why make that a goal? Success is about losing one pound at a time.

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