1-2 lbs healthy weekly weight loss range? But why?

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  • yarwell
    yarwell Posts: 10,477 Member
    cbelc2 wrote: »
    Losing too fast can be physically harmful. The gall bladder can't handle the stress.

    The gall bladder is like a balloon. How would it be affected ? This is like saying your lungs will wear out if you exercise.
  • yarwell
    yarwell Posts: 10,477 Member
    viren19890 wrote: »
    Either I'm unable to explain myself properly or I'm not understanding the points properly.

    I'm asking why is this 1-2lbs a week considered healthy universally. A person who is much bigger/taller-shouldn't they have different healthy range?

    When it comes to body-some things are individualistic but this number is universal?

    You're looking at a generalised guideline of 1-2 lbs/week which probably has little basis in anything.

    We've established that an obese man eating nothing lost 0.74 lbs/day or 5 lbs/week by eating nothing. That's probably the upper limit, unless you could find a way of making him exercise more.

    15% weight loss in 12 weeks is demonstrated in at least two clinical studies of obese people on VLCDs, so if they started at 200 lbs that would be 30 lbs in 12 weeks or 2.5 lbs/week.
  • stevencloser
    stevencloser Posts: 8,911 Member
    edited March 2016
    viren19890 wrote: »
    usmcmp wrote: »
    viren19890 wrote: »
    Either I'm unable to explain myself properly or I'm not understanding the points properly.

    I'm asking why is this 1-2lbs a week considered healthy universally. A person who is much bigger/taller-shouldn't they have different healthy range?

    When it comes to body-some things are individualistic but this number is universal?

    If BMR is different person to person- and LBM differ person to person as well- shouldn't this range be different too ?

    The rate at which someone can utilize their fat stores is directly related to the amount of fat they carry. Someone with 300 pounds of fat can lose weight faster (and in a safe manner) than someone with 50 pounds of fat.

    Yeah that is what I was wondering. They can possibly lose more than 1-2lbs per week and still do it healthily. So it isn't universal but applies to most people that's why it's use far widely. Ok

    Thanks.

    It's because you also need to get enough nutrition in. My protein and fat alone put me at above 1000 calories for my goal of retaining muscle mass (which you probably want too). My TDEE is 2100 or so, so even if I didn't eat ANY carbs at all, I wouldn't be able to lose more than 2 pounds per week without exercise far above what I'm already doing. An extra 500 daily exercise burn just to lose 1 more pound of fat may be possible still, but wanting 5 per week would mean an extra 1500 just from exercise. With 0 carbs. I can tell you without having tried that I'd collapse after a few days of that.
    Something like that is just not sustainable.

    You'd need to have a lot of fat on you to make that a realistic goal. And I mean a LOT.
  • Jruzer
    Jruzer Posts: 3,501 Member
    This has been bandied about here recently in other discussions.

    Here, for example:http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10346155/cardio-isnt-for-fat-burning/p1

    It is believed that there is a maximum amount of fat that one can mobilize per day, which is about 31 kcal/lb of fat per day. This is discussed in more detail here with a link to the original paper:
    http://mindandmuscle.net/articles/determining-the-maximum-dietary-deficit-for-fat-loss/

    As a simple example take a person at 200 lb with 30% body fat. This is 60 lbs of fat, so this person could theoretically sustain a deficit as large as 1800 kcal per day (3.6 lbs/week) and lose fat while sparing lean tissue. But this is a maximum theoretical number achieved under ideal conditions: plenty of protein, resistance training, etc. Many overweight people won't be able to maintain these conditions.

    Plus an 1800 kcal/day deficit is extreme and it's likely that the subject wouldn't be able to get proper nutrition at this level, let alone the issue of hunger that would certainly ensue eating at a 1800 calorie deficit.

    However, this does indicate that obese individuals could probably sustain a rate of loss greater than 2 lbs/week. But no one here should recommend it - that should be left to medical professionals.

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