Healthy rate of weight loss?

Nooditaur

Hi, I joined MFP because I was sitting on the high end of the "normal" BMI range, and wanted to improve my diet and fitness level while losing some of the chubbiness on the way!

I know that weight loss slows down as you lose more, because your body expends less energy to move around, and some people advise reducing their calorie deficit when they are in the normal weight range. My question is this: what is a healthy and sustainable rate of weight loss for someone like me, who was never "overweight" to begin with? How much of a calorie reduction should I be eating to achieve this weight loss (I am currently sticking to the TDEE - 20%, and eating back most exercise calories)?

(In case it's useful, I am 5'4" and currently around 59kg, with a goal weight of around 52kg. My TDEE without factoring in exercise would be around 1750.)

donjessop

You need to make sure that you don't drop below 1200 calories while you are doing this. You didn't mention your age or activity level, so I'm making a guess, so TDEE - 20% seems OK for you, but it is only going to result in a loss of about a kg every 3 weeks. That's still a good reduction even though it is probably going to be lower than you expected. The difficulty lies in the fact that you are already "normal" according to the BMI calculator (http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/obesity/BMI/bmi-m.htm) so losing weight is going to be difficult without causing you health issues. Expect it to be slow and I think you will be surprised at quick it seems.

Nooditaur

Oops my bad, I forgot to say that I'm 18 and I work out typically 5x a week doing 30 mins of cardio each day (I vary it between running, cycling and dance). Thanks for the advice, I'll never go under 1200 calories (plus if I did, I would probably get hungry and binge...). Losing 1kg every 3 weeks is not too bad. My main focus is to get fit and and reduce my BF%... maybe I should do more strength training for muscle building? Can you not build any muscle from cardio?

Francl27

Definitely do some weight lifting/strength training!

cdahl383

I shoot for 1-2 lbs of weight loss per week and as I get closer to my goal weight it typically slows to 1 lb a week or even less sometimes.

Kindone

If you are going by TDEE- X%, your activity level is already factored in and you are not supposed to eat back your exercise calories.