Is It Ever Okay to Aim for 2lbs a Week?

lucypstacy
lucypstacy Posts: 178 Member
edited November 17 in Health and Weight Loss
I see posts saying that's too aggressive, but I thought that it was okay if you still have a lot to weight to lose. I have 100lbs to go, so I have mine set for 2lbs a week until I lose more - with the idea I'll set it back to 1lb a day in the near future.
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Replies

  • honkinballs
    honkinballs Posts: 34 Member
    I've been hitting two pounds a week but I'm a fat guy, I think kommo has the right idea.
  • TimothyFish
    TimothyFish Posts: 4,925 Member
    How much you have to go doesn't matter. If 2lbs is more than 1% of your weight then it is too aggressive. If it is less than 1% of your weight then it is fine.
  • lucypstacy
    lucypstacy Posts: 178 Member
    edited April 2017
    I'm 5'4" and currently 250lbs, so it's still fine. I have to get to 230lbs to have a hernia surgery. Since I'll be laid up in the hospital for a week, I figure that's when I'll cut back to 1lb a week. Plus, the weight should be about right.
  • nutmegoreo
    nutmegoreo Posts: 15,532 Member
    lucypstacy wrote: »
    I'm 5'4" and currently 250lbs, so it's still fine. I have to get to 230lbs to have a hernia surgery. Since I'll be laid up in the hospital for a week, I figure that's when I'll cut back to 1lb a day. Plus, the weight should be about right.

    Per WEEK. I presumed typo in your OP, but you repeated per day here, so I just wanted to be clear, people are talking per week. Your first week or two with the bigger drop is fine, because of water shift, which is what you had already said.
  • lucypstacy
    lucypstacy Posts: 178 Member
    Yes, I meant per week. Odd little typo. I corrected both posts where I wrote day.
  • LAT1963
    LAT1963 Posts: 1,375 Member
    edited April 2017
    You are not alone. I'm 5' 8" and lost 20 lbs in 52 days starting from 257 lbs. The latest 30 of those days I lost 8 lbs, which I think represents my post-initial-whoosh rate that I should strive to maintain. Current daily target 1670 cals, but that will go down as my weight decreases.

    We will both be fine at these rates, given our similar weight. I'm happy to see your success so far!
  • estherdragonbat
    estherdragonbat Posts: 5,283 Member
    edited April 2017
    5'3 and just hit 75lbs to go today. 2 lbs is still < 1% of my total body weight, though I am going to shoot for 1.5 starting in three weeks. (Passover starts next week. I've resolved to take a 2-week diet break/eat at maintenance starting this coming Sunday.) Which, sigh, means it's probably time for me to join the 21st century and ditch my analog scale for a digital... Can't really tell fractions of pounds without one.
  • Theo166
    Theo166 Posts: 2,564 Member
    edited April 2017
    The advice I've seen is not to lose over 1% of your total weight a week.
    I've been averaging just a shade over 2lbs so far this year, which is under 1%
  • nutmegoreo
    nutmegoreo Posts: 15,532 Member
    lucypstacy wrote: »
    Yes, I meant per week. Odd little typo. I corrected both posts where I wrote day.

    Awesome! Just wanted to clarify. There is nothing wrong with 2lb/week at your current weight. Great job so far!
  • danadikay4239
    danadikay4239 Posts: 2 Member
    Sometimes I'm loosing more than 2lbs per week. Talked about it with my doctor. No problem, I'm healthy and I'm eating enough. I need the fast results to stay motivated, and if you do some research about it, it's often water inside your body you will loose (of course also fat). Keep cool and do your thing :)
  • LAT1963
    LAT1963 Posts: 1,375 Member
    estherdragonbat wrote: »
    5'3 and just hit 75lbs to go today. 2 lbs is still < 1% of my total body weight, though I am going to shoot for 1.5 starting in three weeks. (Passover starts next week. I've resolved to take a 2-week diet break/eat at maintenance starting this coming Sunday.) Which, sigh, means it's probably time for me to join the 21st century and ditch my analog scale for a digital... Can't really tell fractions of pounds without one.

    You could also get a balance-scale, which is the most accurate. But digital scales these days can be web-linked to automatically report your weight to the scale company's website and then you can activate an mfp communication app to have your weight auto-reported to mfp. That way you just step on your electronic scale and don't have to worry about recording the weight here (as you must when using mechanical scales).
  • TimothyFish
    TimothyFish Posts: 4,925 Member
    seska422 wrote: »
    TimothyFish wrote: »
    How much you have to go doesn't matter. If 2lbs is more than 1% of your weight then it is too aggressive. If it is less than 1% of your weight then it is fine.

    Not necessarily. I'm at ~154 pounds and I want to lose about 12 more pounds. There's no way that I could aim for 1.5 pounds per week because that would put me at a daily calorie goal of about 850. The weight loss goal ranges stated above have been a better fit for me but, even then, they are a bit aggressive for me and I've lost more slowly than that in order to have a sustainable daily calorie goal.

    There are a number of things at play here. First, is it safe for a 154 lb person to lose 1.5lbs in a week? Probably, since 1-2 lbs is generally considered safe. Second, is it safe for a 154 lb person to eat less than 1200 calories per day? Probably not. Third, why would a deficit of 750 calories cause a 154 lb person to eat only 850 calories? Because that person is sedentary. Fourth, is it safe for a person to be sedentary? Probably not. Fifth, if a person is as active as health organizations recommend, would they burn enough calories during the day that a 750 calorie deficit has them eating more than 1,200 calories? Probably.

    It seems to me that the issue is one of an unsafe activity level, not an unsafe calorie deficit.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,326 Member
    I really wish people would express some of these limits as a % of total calories expended in a day, aka TDEE.

    If 1% or 2lbs is a 75% deficit off a low tdee I would not view it the same as i would view an acceptable 25% cut for someone who is obese.

    In general 15-20% cuts (i.e. caloric deficits)when people are normal weight or low overweight, increasing to 25% when obese seem to work fine for results over time with minimal side effects.

    As to the OP, assuming your deficit is not wildly above ~25%, 2lbs a week is fine.

    My only other comment is, that depending on the type of hernia and dangers it presents, and depending on ease of access to surgery and availability of surgical dates in your world, I would be tempted to keep on losing weight as opposed to putting the loss in the backburner for semi elective surgery.

    I am not suggesting that you should keep to a large deficit while healing. To the contrary, doing so will slow down your healing, so reducing or eliminating weight loss while healing makes a lot of sense.

    But there are a few weeks of healing to do and having recently gone through minor hernia surgery I can guarantee you that my thoughts were along the lines of "holly crap this would have been so much harder at my original weight" (and our starting points were extremely similar, if you consider the couple of inches I have on you)

    Of course there are a whole whack of considerations that may make a delay a bad idea... just throwing out to you that weight loss is just as much of a health necessity for you moving forward and that you have no reason to only aim for limited short term results... think of achieving and maintaining long term a large loss.
  • lucypstacy
    lucypstacy Posts: 178 Member
    My hernia surgery is VERY important. I had 4 years of peritoneal dialysis. My entire left side, where the dialysis port was located, is literally one massive hernia. It hurts to move, and I can't bend, twist, or turn suddenly. Sometimes, rolling over on that side at night is painful. This is massive surgery. The doctor said he was going to cut through a layer of muscle to put in the mesh. I also have an upper fatty hernia, a hiatal hernia, and a umbilical hernia, which I was obviously born with. All of this is going to be fixed. Right now, it causes a lot of digestive issues as well. I can feel things move through my intestine and get caught in places.
  • seska422
    seska422 Posts: 3,217 Member
    lucypstacy wrote: »
    My hernia surgery is VERY important. I had 4 years of peritoneal dialysis. My entire left side, where the dialysis port was located, is literally one massive hernia. It hurts to move, and I can't bend, twist, or turn suddenly. Sometimes, rolling over on that side at night is painful. This is massive surgery. The doctor said he was going to cut through a layer of muscle to put in the mesh. I also have an upper fatty hernia, a hiatal hernia, and a umbilical hernia, which I was obviously born with. All of this is going to be fixed. Right now, it causes a lot of digestive issues as well. I can feel things move through my intestine and get caught in places.

    Ouch.

    Well, you're on the right track to get down to your required weight for surgery so keep at it!
  • Gallowmere1984
    Gallowmere1984 Posts: 6,626 Member
    edited April 2017
    Always and never are terrible ways to look at nearly anything related to weight loss/training/diet. I have become recognized as an extremely aggressive weight cutter here. It works very well for me in short bursts of 4-5 lbs./week. Spare me the water weight rhetoric, as my losses remain after carb refeeds, my strength never suffers, and after doing this repeatedly, my LBM is fine.

    Now, I would not recommend my methods to most (read 99.9999%) people, BUT according to the always/never way of looking at things, what I do should be wrecking me. However, it's become a key part of my diet and training strategies, and is serving me quite well.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,326 Member
    lucypstacy wrote: »
    My hernia surgery is VERY important. I had 4 years of peritoneal dialysis. My entire left side, where the dialysis port was located, is literally one massive hernia. It hurts to move, and I can't bend, twist, or turn suddenly. Sometimes, rolling over on that side at night is painful. This is massive surgery. The doctor said he was going to cut through a layer of muscle to put in the mesh. I also have an upper fatty hernia, a hiatal hernia, and a umbilical hernia, which I was obviously born with. All of this is going to be fixed. Right now, it causes a lot of digestive issues as well. I can feel things move through my intestine and get caught in places.

    Y i k e s !
    Here's hoping for a clean repair and swift and complete recovery!!!
  • nutmegoreo
    nutmegoreo Posts: 15,532 Member
    lucypstacy wrote: »
    My hernia surgery is VERY important. I had 4 years of peritoneal dialysis. My entire left side, where the dialysis port was located, is literally one massive hernia. It hurts to move, and I can't bend, twist, or turn suddenly. Sometimes, rolling over on that side at night is painful. This is massive surgery. The doctor said he was going to cut through a layer of muscle to put in the mesh. I also have an upper fatty hernia, a hiatal hernia, and a umbilical hernia, which I was obviously born with. All of this is going to be fixed. Right now, it causes a lot of digestive issues as well. I can feel things move through my intestine and get caught in places.

    Oh my. All the best to you on this one. I wish you a speedy recovery.
  • someguybb
    someguybb Posts: 4 Member
    I'm doing 2 a week. No complaints. Went from 335 to 314 in about 2 months.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,638 Member
    lucypstacy wrote: »
    I'm 5'4" and currently 250lbs, so it's still fine. I have to get to 230lbs to have a hernia surgery. Since I'll be laid up in the hospital for a week, I figure that's when I'll cut back to 1lb a week. Plus, the weight should be about right.

    I'd strongly encourage you to go to maintenance calories for a while after surgery, as a support to healing.

    I had laparoscopic gallbladder surgery while I was losing weight, and kept up my normal calorie deficit. This was not a good plan, but it took several weeks to realize that (I began to feel slightly weakened and fatigued). It would've been a much better plan for me to go to estimated maintenance calories, or at least a miniscule deficit, for 2-4 weeks after the surgery . . . and mine was quite a minor/routine surgery. It took longer than it should've for me to bounce back to a normal energy level.

    Obviously, I'm not your granny, so you'll make your own decisions about this. But please consider taking a diet break while you heal, or at least checking with your doctor about the extent of your calorie deficit after surgery.

    P.S. You may also experience some water weight retention for healing after surgery, which you may see as a weight gain. If you know your consumption is where it should be, please don't let this worry you. Even in my post-surgery calorie deficit, I saw a couple of weeks or so that looked like a plateau, before the water weight dropped off.
  • lucypstacy
    lucypstacy Posts: 178 Member
    Well, I'm not going to be as strict on myself while healing. For the first week, I'll be in the hospital. I'm sure they'll me up on my feet as soon as I can comfortably walk, but I'm also going to listen to my body. I honestly not sure where my maintenance level will be at that weight. I'll have to look it up.
  • cmtigger
    cmtigger Posts: 1,450 Member
    TimothyFish wrote: »
    seska422 wrote: »
    TimothyFish wrote: »
    How much you have to go doesn't matter. If 2lbs is more than 1% of your weight then it is too aggressive. If it is less than 1% of your weight then it is fine.

    Not necessarily. I'm at ~154 pounds and I want to lose about 12 more pounds. There's no way that I could aim for 1.5 pounds per week because that would put me at a daily calorie goal of about 850. The weight loss goal ranges stated above have been a better fit for me but, even then, they are a bit aggressive for me and I've lost more slowly than that in order to have a sustainable daily calorie goal.

    There are a number of things at play here. First, is it safe for a 154 lb person to lose 1.5lbs in a week? Probably, since 1-2 lbs is generally considered safe. Second, is it safe for a 154 lb person to eat less than 1200 calories per day? Probably not. Third, why would a deficit of 750 calories cause a 154 lb person to eat only 850 calories? Because that person is sedentary. Fourth, is it safe for a person to be sedentary? Probably not. Fifth, if a person is as active as health organizations recommend, would they burn enough calories during the day that a 750 calorie deficit has them eating more than 1,200 calories? Probably.

    It seems to me that the issue is one of an unsafe activity level, not an unsafe calorie deficit.

    There can be medical or disability issues that cause a person to be sedentary.
  • LucasWilland
    LucasWilland Posts: 68 Member
    The biggest issue with the more than 2 lbs per week of fat loss is that many people find that it is harder to maintain a consistent rate of progress (there is some research showing a greater decrease in metabolic rate with very large deficits, 30% or more). This, however, can be somewhat offset by having periods of refeeds weekly and taking diet breaks when applicable.

    Generally, it is easier to think of body fat as a circular diagram: in the circular diagram, you have fat on the outside and muscle on the inside. The greater the circle is on the outside, the more of it you can take away without it impacting the circle on the inside. The smaller the circle is on the outside, however, the greater chance you have of impacting the circle on the inside, which is why huge calorie deficits are an awful idea for someone who is already fairly lean, 10 to 14% body fat.

    If you want to learn more about rapid fat loss the right way, I recommend you check out this video with Eric Helms:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN9Df3O9mOI
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