Determining pounds to lose each week

candidcastaway

I've seen a couple of posts floating around with a breakdown of how many pounds to aim to lose a week if your goal is "x" amount of pounds. Problem is, I can't find it anywhere. I'm 171 pounds, at 5'2", and my goal weight for now is 145. That's 26 pounds. I had it set at 2 lbs/1.5 lbs for a little while, but I had a feeling that for only wanting to lose 26 pounds, that was too much. I just set it to 1 lb/week, and it upped me to 1900 calories daily from 1700 daily. I'm sure someone is familiar with the breakdown post I'm talking about (I hope I described it well enough), and can let me know if 1 lb/week sounds about right for my goal.

Also, I do work out 3-4 times a week, about 35 minutes each time.

Branstin

As a rule of thumb, the following weekly targets would give a balance between minimizing negative side effects and seeing a reasonable weekly weight loss:

More than 75 lbs: 2 lbs/week
40-75 lbs: 1.5 lbs/week
10-40 lbs: 1 lb/week
Less than 10 lbs: 0.5 lb/week

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/819055-setting-your-calorie-and-macro-targets
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1080242-a-guide-to-get-you-started-on-your-path-to-sexypants

4legsRbetterthan2

As a rule of thumb, the following weekly targets would give a balance between minimizing negative side effects and seeing a reasonable weekly weight loss:

More than 75 lbs: 2 lbs/week
40-75 lbs: 1.5 lbs/week
10-40 lbs: 1 lb/week
Less than 10 lbs: 0.5 lb/week

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/819055-setting-your-calorie-and-macro-targets
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1080242-a-guide-to-get-you-started-on-your-path-to-sexypants

all great info!

terbusha

Yeah, 1 lb/week on average is a great way to go. What I do and what I recommend to people is to eat at a calorie level that allows you to drop 1 lb/week. This assumes an average calorie burn from you getting in all of your workouts. This will be different for everyone, so you'll have to do some trial and error to figure it out. I'd start ~1600 cal/day. Hit this goal, along with your macros and getting in your workouts, for a week. If you lose 1 lb, you're good to go. If you lose too much, increase your intake and repeat. If you don't lose enough, reduce your intake a bit and repeat. After a few weeks, you'll figure out what works for you in your situation.

Allan