Setting a weight loss goal

TwiddleTwaddle

Hi everyone,
I know that slow and steady wins the race and that a weight loss of 1-2lbs a week is the best loss in order to sustain weight loss. Does this apply to everyone? I mean - people of all weights?
In my case.... I am 310 lbs and want to lose 100lbs. Should someone of my weight only be losing 1-2lbs a week? Or would it be okay for me to lose say 3.5lbs a week?
Is the 1-2lb guide more aimed at people of a lower weight than me? Or is it for everyone?
Would it be bad news if I were to aim for 3.5lb a week?
What do you think?

yarwell

15% weight loss in 3 months is not unheard of - that would be 15 lbs/month or 3.5 lbs/week. You have sufficient reserves to provide your pure calorie needs so you need to eat enough protein, fibre, essential fats, minerals and vitamins to ensure you are nutritionally complete. That doesn't happen at a particular calorie level - 2000 calories of crap could leave you malnourished whereas a prescribed VLCD preparation would be nutritionally complete with 500 calories.

http://www.pbrc.edu/the-research/tools/weight-loss-predictor/ suggests you'll lose 8lbs/month with a 1500 calorie deficit.
http://bwsimulator.niddk.nih.gov/ suggests that a 1750 calorie deficit would take you to 220lbs in 300 days (eating 1345 calories) then you would eat 2500 to stabilise. These simulators put your current intake at about 3000 - 3200 calories.

Your profile said you were interested in the science, try
http://www.ajcn.org/content/49/1/93.long
http://ajpendo.physiology.org/content/279/1/E124.full
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0004377

tytso

The goal is to lose weight in a sustainable fashion. So setting too high of a goal and then failing to meet could be bad from a psychological aspect, at which point you give up. I come from an engineering/computer science background, so I found the e-book "The Hacker's Diet" (Google for it; it's available as a free e-book download, or you can read it from your web browser), to be very helpful, since it covers handling weight fluctations as well as how to manage your own psychology, which is really important.

I started at 280 pounds, and ideal weight for me would be somewhere in the 160 pound range. I started around Christmas of last year, and my initial goal was 253, with a goal of losing 1 pound a day. I started religious calorie counting in January, and started using a FitBit at the same time. This allowed me to very accurately measure my activity level, and my calorie burn rate, and I made it a goal to have a deficit of at least 500 calories a day. Since I was generally exercising around 400 calories a day, as long as I made sure I wasn't eating more to compensate, this was easy. Since I treated the 500 calorie/day as a minimum, and I often ended up with a deficit of 750-1000 calories, I ended up losing about 1.5-2 pounds a week. Win!

Sometime in March, when I was around 250, I revised my goal downward, to 200. I had been gradually increasing my exercise regime, so I was exercising 45 minutes day at the gym (on average; some days it was an hour; some days 30 minutes) on the Elliptical Trainer. 45 minutes is 600 calories a day; 60 minutes is 800 calories a day. In addition, I started using a walkstation at work (standing desk plus 2mph treadmill). At that point I was averaging around 15000 steps/day according to FitBit, and since it tracks stairs, I had stopped taking the elevator and was averaging around 12-15 stairs a day. I was also averaging closer to 2-2.5 pounds/week, so I upped my weight loss goal to 1.5 pounds a week (but remember, I treat this as a minimum, not as the target).

Today, I'm at 215 pounds, so I've lost 65 pounds in total. I'm often doing a full 60 minutes on the elliptical trainer, and I now average between 25,000-30,000 steps per day on work days (I use the walkstation a lot). There are times when I average 3 pounds/week, but if I travel and I end up only averaging 1.5 pounds that week, it's not the end of the world. When I hit 209 pounds, I will finally no longer be obese by BMI standards, but only "overweight". At that point, I'll revise my goal downward to 175 pounds, which at a BMI of 25.1 will take me to the boundary between "overweight" and "normal". If all goes well, I'll hit that by sometime in the fall.

Note though that exercise is a key part of my program; if I just cut my calories down to 1000 or 1200 a day, I'd be miserable; there's no way I could keep that up. But since my activity calories range from 2000-2400/day, with my basal metabolism for my height and weight being just under 2000 calories/day, this means I can eat 2500 calories per day and still be at a 1500 calorie/day deficit. That's 3 pounds/week. And if I end up eating out more, or splurging every once in a while, I can still end up losing 2.5 pounds/week, which is still above my target weight loss goal. (Remember, underpromise, and overdeliver --- it will keep you psyched up!)

I do recommend getting a FitBit and linking it to your MyFitnessPal account. I use the two in combination so I can have a really good sense of how many calories I've burned (FitBit) versus how much I've eaten (MyFitnessPal).