.5 pound a week or 1?

Sub4_2018

Hi All,

Had a couple weeks of vacation and finally getting back to consistent tracking. Just curious what you'd set your goal to in my situation. I'm 5'6, female, 138 lbs with a goal weight of 123-125. I'm set to "not very active" and track my exercise through my Garmin (I get quite a few calories back through running and walking).

I keep going back and forth on setting my goal to .5 pound a week, or 1 pound a week. On the one hand, I like having more calories to eat, and on the other I'm not sure I want it to take me twice the amount of time to lose the weight.

So out of curiosity, what would you set it to?

malibu927

.5. Not just for the extra calories, but to help preserve as much muscle as possible. The only caveat is with the smaller deficit you'll have to be even more on top of your logging because there is less room for error.

kimny72

0.5 lbs vote here. I'd guess your calorie goal for 1 lb per is pretty darn low. Even the shorter time frame is more than 3 months, and eating bare min for that long is tough. As @malibu927 mentioned, muscle preservation is important as well, especially if you aren't focusing on strength training.

Patience will be the key though, because half a lb can easily hide behind normal water weight fluctuations, so you might go several weeks without seeing the results on the scale.

Whichever way you go, good luck!

Sub4_2018

@malibu927 @kimny72 - I do 2 strength training sessions a week, about 45 minutes each session. Not sure if that changes anything, but either way, I really appreciate the feedback!

Tacklewasher

Sub4_2018 wrote: »

@malibu927 @kimny72 - I do 2 strength training sessions a week, about 45 minutes each session. Not sure if that changes anything, but either way, I really appreciate the feedback!

The concern I would have is that your Garmin (and mine) kinda suck at estimating calories burned from strength training and are better at steady state cardio. So I'd err on the side of caution and go with the 1/2 lb, but be ready to adjust your calories down if 6-8 weeks in you haven't lost at that rate.

strongwouldbenice

I'm almost the exact stats as you and I have the same problem figuring out which to use. I've just set it to .5lb for this week (TOM and I was just kind of hangry), but I intend to put it back down to 1lb for the coming weeks.
I think it's probably just a case of trial and error to figure out what you can happily stick to.

Sub4_2018

@Tacklewasher - I think I'm going to go with 1 pound a week based on the calories my Garmin gives me. I get SO many additional calories from my Garmin I feel like it's really overestimating (for example, I was given 1800 exercise calories this past Saturday - I was active on Saturday, but that seems really high). So to "compensate" I can set my calories at 1 pound a week instead of .5 since there's not as much room for error with .5/pound.

Sub4_2018

strongwouldbenice wrote: »

I'm almost the exact stats as you and I have the same problem figuring out which to use. I've just set it to .5lb for this week (TOM and I was just kind of hangry), but I intend to put it back down to 1lb for the coming weeks.
I think it's probably just a case of trial and error to figure out what you can happily stick to.

I've thought of doing the same thing - switching between the two every few weeks. I definitely agree - trial and error!

SuzySunshine99

I think it depends on how accurate you are willing to be with your logging. Are you weighing everything you eat? If you are, then definitely the .5 pound goal is appropriate.

However, if you do a lot of estimating and measuring with cups and spoons, then maybe go with the 1 pound goal to account for some errors.

Personally, when I was losing, I kept my goal at 2 pounds per week, even when I got close to my goal weight. I was NOT an accurate logger, so I was not losing anywhere NEAR that amount, which would have been inappropriate for me.

Really, it is trial and error. You say you are going to go with 1 pound a week...that's fine, just give it some time and monitor your progress.

Sub4_2018

SuzySunshine99 wrote: »

I think it depends on how accurate you are willing to be with your logging. Are you weighing everything you eat? If you are, then definitely the .5 pound goal is appropriate.

However, if you do a lot of estimating and measuring with cups and spoons, then maybe go with the 1 pound goal to account for some errors.

Personally, when I was losing, I kept my goal at 2 pounds per week, even when I got close to my goal weight. I was NOT an accurate logger, so I was not losing anywhere NEAR that amount, which would have been inappropriate for me.

Really, it is trial and error. You say you are going to go with 1 pound a week...that's fine, just give it some time and monitor your progress.

That's a really good point. I do log pretty accurately (weighing my food, etc.) but I decided on 1 pound a week because my I use my Garmin for exercises calories and I think it really overestimates how much I'm burning (I mentioned this above, but it gave me an additional 1800 calories this past Saturday which seems really high). For that reason, I'd rather have some room for error and go with 1 pound a week. I'll give it a few weeks and see if I'm losing as expected and then adjust as necessary. Thanks for the input!

Seffell

My stats and goals are similar to yours and I lose (when I actively do) at 0.5lbs to 0.25lbs. This means eating almost at maintanance so this is how I'm supposed to eat to maintain anyway so forms good habits.

However if you want to get at your goal faster, which I totally get, you could try 1lbs. I'd love to, but I can't sustain such a big deficit (500cals a day) because I'm not very active.

ITUSGirl51

I do 1 lb plus 100 calories. .5 doesn’t move the scale fast enough for me to be happy with the progress.

LivingtheLeanDream

I'm one of the 0.5lb a week crowd, you don't have much to lose and you wont want to lose muscle along with the fat either. And the plus side is, you get a few more calories to work with.

jasondjulian

You can set it to either, but I'd really aim for losing the 1/2lb per week... slower is better, especially with only 15lbs max to lose.

Thing is, when you get this close to goal, and are aiming for a small amount of incremental loss per week, you'r weighing and logging and calorie consumption needs to be on point, I mean METICULOUS if you can... here is where an extra 100 or 200 calories fudged or miscalculated can mean the difference between hitting weekly weight loss goal or zero.

Jadub729

I have never lost what MFP is set to, personally I'd set it for 1lb a week and expect .5.

taziarj

If you have 75+ lbs to lose 2 lbs/week is ideal,
If you have 40-75 lbs to lose 1.5 lbs/week is ideal,
If you have 25-40 lbs to lose 1 lbs/week is ideal,
If you have 15 -25 lbs to lose 0.5 to 1.0 lbs/week is ideal, and
If you have less than 15 lbs to lose 0.5 lbs/week is ideal.

tbright1965

taziarj wrote: »

If you have 75+ lbs to lose 2 lbs/week is ideal,
If you have 40-75 lbs to lose 1.5 lbs/week is ideal,
If you have 25-40 lbs to lose 1 lbs/week is ideal,
If you have 15 -25 lbs to lose 0.5 to 1.0 lbs/week is ideal, and
If you have less than 15 lbs to lose 0.5 lbs/week is ideal.

FWIW, my target is 1% / week. I seldom eat into my exercise calories. But having started at 265#, that is in the 2 pounds / week range. I don't need to be concerned with exercise tracking accuracy if I don't plan to eat into those calories. However, I can see how close the estimates are to the results. I.E. if I estimated I had a 7000 calorie deficit this week, but my weight stayed the same, did I really have the deficit I thought I had?

I've personally experienced my Fitbit underestimates my calorie burn a small amount, so I probably have MORE exercise calories to use, and still don't use them most weeks. For example, my food logging and Fitbit data projected a 2.7 pound loss, a bit more than 1% Yet I lost 3.5 pounds. Probably due to lower estimates of movement and my policy of rounding up calorie dense foods to build margin.

I think a PERCENTAGE rate is more realistic than picking a number. Also, understand that when doing it by percentage, the number of pounds lost / week will drop as your weight drops.

Finally, every 10% lost, I drop my calorie targets another 5% I.E. if I was at 2000 cal/day when I started, after losing 10%, the new target is 1900 cal/day.

Using this strategy, I've been able to stay on the 1%/week path for the past 13-14 weeks, with a 13.21% loss from my starting weight.

ljashley1952

I've gone with 0.5 pounds a week. It is an easily doable number. If I'm eating more one week, I simply need to counter it with a little more exercise. If I can't exercise as much, I just cut a few more calories. It is just easy to manage and I'm not really in a hurry. If it takes me a year, I'm fine with it...as long as it's going in the right direction.