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ksquacker
ksquacker Posts: 3 Member
in Introduce Yourself
Hi MFP-ers, My name is Ed and basically I broke my back last year, gained a LOT of weight - 88 lbs. Now its time to lose around 10% per month. Is that too much?
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  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,419 Member
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    Hi, Ed, and welcome to the Community! I'm sorry to hear about your back injury, but glad you're ready for a new recovery phase.

    Unless a person under close medical supervision, general rules of thumb suggested around here tend to be to lose no more than 1% of current weight per week, and 0.5% can be more conservative (encouraged for sure if there are other significant physical/psychological stressors in the person's life besides the calorie deficit); or to cut no more than 20% off one's total daily maintenance calories. (If you still have healing to do, that might count as an additional physical stressor.)

    Usually it's suggested to slow down more, and start figuring out and practicing weight-maintenance habits, when reaching maybe 25 pounds left to goal weight. I hope that makes sense?

    Without knowing more of your personal details (height, weight, age, some idea of lifestyle (related to the stress question)), it's hard to be more specific. 88 pounds is a good bit to lose, but whether 2.2 pounds a week is very (too) aggressive, it's hard to say. Pretty sure that if you're OK losing that fast at first, you'd be well served to slow the bus down along the route.

    Losing any meaningful amount of weight is realistically a long-term proposition. I know that we all want to get it off Right Away, but that isn't always sustainable for long enough to make it all the way to goal, let alone set us up to maintain that healthy weight happily once we get there. Sometimes striving to go a little slower is actually a quicker route to goal weight, vs. an aggressive plan that ends up triggering some slips and backslides along the way.

    Being charged up at the start is normal, but I think using some of that energy to figure out some baseline sustainable ways of keeping a calorie deficit is a thing that pays off in the long run, vs. going pedal to the metal on cutting calories and/or jumping into high levels of exercise right off the bat. Realistically, motivation tends to fade with time for most of us, so setting up habits that don't require lots of motivation - can work semi on autopilot - can be helpful.

    Just my opinions, as always . . . from the perspective of year 6+ of maintaining a healthy weight, after about 3 previous decades of overweight/obesity.

    Wishing you success!

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