Can I lose 20lbs in 2 months..? 40 in 4?
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I would shoot for eating healthy and getting some cardio. If you tone up a bit-and even lose 20 lbs in 4 months-you may look like you weigh even less!
My good friend started running cross country in June of last year, she was running and watching what she ate. Come end of August she had only lost 20 lbs give or take but she went from a 14 to a 8/10. So, can it be done? maybe...but that same friend gained all of it back and then some when she stopped running/eating well. There are no quick fixes-especially if we're talking college (pizza and beer yay!). I lost my greatest amount of weight in college over 2 years because I didn't have any money for transportation and walked 4+ miles a day. Once I got money and a car, I gained it all back. Took a while but now I know it's a lifestyle change. Focus and lose the weight while you are young-it gets harder as you get older...and you get chubby in weirder places.
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There's two different questions, but they're basically the same. Anyways, in two months I go to Seattle. And I want to be a smaller pant size. I do want to be smaller than a 14. Actually I hope to be comfortably in an 11 if possible. Then two months later, I get back in school, and I want to be even smaller. More like around a 7. I hope to be a 3-5 by roughly next February. That's about 73 pounds in about 9 months if possible. I want to go from 182, to 109. But til then, I want to be about 160 in July, and 140 in September. If that's possible! I'm 5'3, 182 pounds. I think I'm like a 32 inch waist. (Or something along those lines.) I wear a 14 @ old navy , but they're a little big. And 12's are a little small. I measure at my belly button. Is it possible to lose 20 in 2, and 40 in 4...?
If so, can I have some tips to get it off? I have such a hard time because I check back like three days later and I'm like 4 pounds heavier and I feel SO bad and I feel like giving up. Also I can't do too much exercise because I'm really busy with school.
That's an unrealistic and unhealthy goal. It might be possible to work really hard for 2 months and lose 20 lbs, but your body won't feel good because you won't be healthy. And you won't be physically capable of keeping up that routine for the next several months and continuing to lose weight that fast. What will end up happening is that because you've been depriving your body so much for so long, you won't be able to resist the temptation to cave in and binge. And you'll gain a lot of the weight back as a result.
If you want PERMANENT weight loss, you have to think SLOW and SUSTAINABLE. I'm 5'4" and went from 180 to now 125. Like you, I used to wear a size 14 at Old Navy and my waist used to measure 32" at its smallest. Now I wear 2's, 4's, and 6's and my waist is only 26". All that took me 3 YEARS, but I have easily kept it off.
Feel free to message me if you want any tips on how to lose weight slowly and lose it FOR GOOD.
I'm so tired of this parroted nonsense.
You don't want weight loss to be sustainable. Just sustainable enough until you reach your goal weight. At which point you switch to maintenance. Your ability to stay at your desired weight has nothing to do with how fast/slow you lose weight. Correlation does not imply causation.
No matter which path you choose, if you go back to eating 4000 calories a day, you're going to gain weight. There is no guarantee that just because you took your time losing weight that somehow that will magically equate to permanent weight loss.
As far as it being unhealthy, I have no idea where people get this idea. 1200 calories will undoubtedly cause quite a bit of discomfort, especially at first; but if you choose wisely, you'll have no problem meeting your daily nutrient requirements.
As far as my response to OP goes,
Yes you can lose 40 in 4. I think things get quite a bit harder from that point forward. I lost 30 in 3, but took another 2 months to lose the last five. So don't think you can go on doing 10 a month forever.
First of all, "this parroted nonsense" has been my own experience of losing over 50 lbs and keeping it off easily.
Your logic, on the other hand, is not only nonsense, but contradicts itself. You say "You don't want weight loss to be sustainable. Just sustainable enough until you reach your goal weight." For anyone with more than 20 lbs to lose, they'll never actually get to that goal weight if their weight loss ISN'T sustainable. Because you can't hard-core diet for 6 weeks and lose 60 lbs. It just won't happen. If someone has 60 lbs to lose, that's going to take TIME. And the only way that person will actually be able to keep up their new weight loss routine for a period of, say, one year, is if the routine is realistic, healthy, and comfortable enough for them to be able sustain it. A weight loss routine that's too hard-core is extremely difficult to keep up for longer than a couple months and as a result, isn't very helpful for people who have a lot of weight to lose and are accustomed to very poor eating habits.
And about this point: "Your ability to stay at your desired weight has nothing to do with how fast/slow you lose weight. Correlation does not imply causation." Actually your ability to maintain CAN be affected by how fast or slow you lost weight. The speed of weight loss isn't a direct cause, but it IS a contributing factor! The reason why people who lose weight slowly often have an easier time keeping the weight off is because the routine that they had to keep up for a long time (in my case, 3 years) in order to continue losing weight become a permanent habit. Losing weight slowly helps the new changes become permanent instead of temporary. Does that always happen? No, but it often does. In my case it certainly did.
ummm.... I think you're in the wrong conversation. No one is talking about losing 60 lbs in 6 weeks. That is physiologically not possible for OP.
In this context, sustainability implies doing it for the rest of your life. My point stands. You don't need to lose weight (eat at a deficit) for the rest of your life. Only long enough to get to your goal weight. How does that contradict itself?
I love how you keep phrasing everything in absolute terms.... "the ONLY way you can do this..." "...it IS a contributing factor..." "..in my case..." "...you HAVE to think..."
My counterpoint to your original post is that you started by saying "If you want PERMANENT weight loss..." as if you hold the keys to an absolute truth. You lost your weight and you took three years to do it. That is awesome and is a great accomplishment. You should be proud of yourself. But what you shouldn't do is toss it around as if it is the ONLY way to lose weight or that it is even the CORRECT way to lose weight.
For some, a fast kickstart keeps them motivated by making their goals seem possible. Not everybody is as patient as you are. It doesn't make their journey any less meaningful than yours. A fast weight loss also makes reaching goals easier because when you carry around 30lbs less, exercise and fitness is much easier.
I would further argue that for others, the health risk of being severely obese makes weight loss imperative.0 -
There's two different questions, but they're basically the same. Anyways, in two months I go to Seattle. And I want to be a smaller pant size. I do want to be smaller than a 14. Actually I hope to be comfortably in an 11 if possible. Then two months later, I get back in school, and I want to be even smaller. More like around a 7. I hope to be a 3-5 by roughly next February. That's about 73 pounds in about 9 months if possible. I want to go from 182, to 109. But til then, I want to be about 160 in July, and 140 in September. If that's possible! I'm 5'3, 182 pounds. I think I'm like a 32 inch waist. (Or something along those lines.) I wear a 14 @ old navy , but they're a little big. And 12's are a little small. I measure at my belly button. Is it possible to lose 20 in 2, and 40 in 4...?
If so, can I have some tips to get it off? I have such a hard time because I check back like three days later and I'm like 4 pounds heavier and I feel SO bad and I feel like giving up. Also I can't do too much exercise because I'm really busy with school.
That's an unrealistic and unhealthy goal. It might be possible to work really hard for 2 months and lose 20 lbs, but your body won't feel good because you won't be healthy. And you won't be physically capable of keeping up that routine for the next several months and continuing to lose weight that fast. What will end up happening is that because you've been depriving your body so much for so long, you won't be able to resist the temptation to cave in and binge. And you'll gain a lot of the weight back as a result.
If you want PERMANENT weight loss, you have to think SLOW and SUSTAINABLE. I'm 5'4" and went from 180 to now 125. Like you, I used to wear a size 14 at Old Navy and my waist used to measure 32" at its smallest. Now I wear 2's, 4's, and 6's and my waist is only 26". All that took me 3 YEARS, but I have easily kept it off.
Feel free to message me if you want any tips on how to lose weight slowly and lose it FOR GOOD.
I'm so tired of this parroted nonsense.
You don't want weight loss to be sustainable. Just sustainable enough until you reach your goal weight. At which point you switch to maintenance. Your ability to stay at your desired weight has nothing to do with how fast/slow you lose weight. Correlation does not imply causation.
No matter which path you choose, if you go back to eating 4000 calories a day, you're going to gain weight. There is no guarantee that just because you took your time losing weight that somehow that will magically equate to permanent weight loss.
As far as it being unhealthy, I have no idea where people get this idea. 1200 calories will undoubtedly cause quite a bit of discomfort, especially at first; but if you choose wisely, you'll have no problem meeting your daily nutrient requirements.
As far as my response to OP goes,
Yes you can lose 40 in 4. I think things get quite a bit harder from that point forward. I lost 30 in 3, but took another 2 months to lose the last five. So don't think you can go on doing 10 a month forever.
First of all, "this parroted nonsense" has been my own experience of losing over 50 lbs and keeping it off easily.
Your logic, on the other hand, is not only nonsense, but contradicts itself. You say "You don't want weight loss to be sustainable. Just sustainable enough until you reach your goal weight." For anyone with more than 20 lbs to lose, they'll never actually get to that goal weight if their weight loss ISN'T sustainable. Because you can't hard-core diet for 6 weeks and lose 60 lbs. It just won't happen. If someone has 60 lbs to lose, that's going to take TIME. And the only way that person will actually be able to keep up their new weight loss routine for a period of, say, one year, is if the routine is realistic, healthy, and comfortable enough for them to be able sustain it. A weight loss routine that's too hard-core is extremely difficult to keep up for longer than a couple months and as a result, isn't very helpful for people who have a lot of weight to lose and are accustomed to very poor eating habits.
And about this point: "Your ability to stay at your desired weight has nothing to do with how fast/slow you lose weight. Correlation does not imply causation." Actually your ability to maintain CAN be affected by how fast or slow you lost weight. The speed of weight loss isn't a direct cause, but it IS a contributing factor! The reason why people who lose weight slowly often have an easier time keeping the weight off is because the routine that they had to keep up for a long time (in my case, 3 years) in order to continue losing weight become a permanent habit. Losing weight slowly helps the new changes become permanent instead of temporary. Does that always happen? No, but it often does. In my case it certainly did.
ummm.... I think you're in the wrong conversation. No one is talking about losing 60 lbs in 6 weeks. That is physiologically not possible for OP.
In this context, sustainability implies doing it for the rest of your life. My point stands. You don't need to lose weight (eat at a deficit) for the rest of your life. Only long enough to get to your goal weight. How does that contradict itself?
I love how you keep phrasing everything in absolute terms.... "the ONLY way you can do this..." "...it IS a contributing factor..." "..in my case..." "...you HAVE to think..."
My counterpoint to your original post is that you started by saying "If you want PERMANENT weight loss..." as if you hold the keys to an absolute truth. You lost your weight and you took three years to do it. That is awesome and is a great accomplishment. You should be proud of yourself. But what you shouldn't do is toss it around as if it is the ONLY way to lose weight or that it is even the CORRECT way to lose weight.
For some, a fast kickstart keeps them motivated by making their goals seem possible. Not everybody is as patient as you are. It doesn't make their journey any less meaningful than yours. A fast weight loss also makes reaching goals easier because when you carry around 30lbs less, exercise and fitness is much easier.
I would further argue that for others, the health risk of being severely obese makes weight loss imperative.
The 60 lbs in 6 weeks was simply an example. I also never said anything about a "fast kickstart" being bad or unhealthy. Presuming the loss is still at a healthy pace, nothing wrong with that. It's actually very motivating. What I did emphasize is that having a slow and sustainable attitude to weight loss will make it easier to keep going after those first few months. But from your "definition" of sustainability, I can see now that this is simply an argument about semantics. So I will proceed no further on that point.
I don't hold a key to any absolute truth and I never claimed to. All I know is what finally worked for me after a lifetime of being the chubby/fat girl. And if it worked for me, it'll probably help someone else out there. This place is a community for people to share their struggles and triumphs, for people to share what worked for them in an effort to help others. That's all I do; I share what I've learned. And what I've learned is that extreme, "it's all or nothing, this is only temporary" attitudes don't help.
Thanks for your congratulations. I appreciate it, but please don't commend me for my "patience," as I have none and never had any. The only thing I had was a desire not to give up and not to go back to where I was and who I used to be. That was the only thing that kept me going. I wasn't fighting the urge to work harder and lose weight faster; I was fighting the urge every day not to just throw in the towel, give up, and settle for hating myself.0 -
chances are you're over compensating how much weight you have to lose. Losing too much weight too quickly can give you loose skin and stretch marks - not to mention the fatigue and probable mood swings that you will incur by dropping your calories to a such a low number required for such big weight loss. Eat sensibly, workout intelligently and don't pay so much attention to the numbers (must lose this many pounds this week this many next week etc) because this is where it becomes obsessive and you lose sight of the real goal - which should be improved overall health. If you focus on the health facets of diet and exercise, the weight loss will happen, trust me. Lose it steadily and experiment with your calories until you find a comfortable amount that leaves you full, with energy and still losing weight and slowly reduce this as you lose weight. To kickstart yourself and get that instant gratification on the scale that might propel you to continue on your journey try reducing your carbohydrates and sodium intake for a week. This should flush out a lot of excess water weight which might be encouraging on the scales even if it's not actual fat loss.
All the best 0 -
I'm going to hazard a guess that you're still in high school given that your goals seem to reflect a school year ending in June with a two month break before September back-to-school.
You might want to talk to your doctor and parents to make sure that your weight loss is healthy. 109 seems really low and you want to lose it fast, this could become disordered thinking really quickly. I've seen close friends struggle with body issues and it's really sad and usually ends up with greater weight gain or serious health issues.
But, humour me, why 109?0 -
To the OP: just exercise at a comfortable rate, and eat as much as the Harris Benedict equation tells you to for weight loss - you may be able to lose this amount of weight, and you may not. The important thing is to be healthy about it, which translates into a different number for everyone.
It annoys me that on so many of these threads, people are saying unequivocally, NO YOU CANNOT lose that amount of weight in that amount of time. And the people who parrot these numbers and saying "you'd need to eat no more than x amount of calories at your height and weight" - these are just averages, it fails to take into account the fact that people have different metabolisms, different diets, etc. People are not carbon copies or robots, they are organisms with different body chemistries and lifestyles. And to be blunt, I hope this doesn't offend anyone but a lot of this seems like it might be an attempt to make yourselves feel better - just because YOUR body can't healthily lose more than 1 pound per week, you'd LIKE to think NO ONE can. And this just isn't the case - sorry.
It is also a myth that the rate of weight loss has anything to do with your likelihood to keep it off. As long as you're not doing some ridiculously crazy crash diet, keeping the weight off depends on how well you're able to stick to healthy habits once you get to where you want to be. And what you need to do for maintenance can actually be very different from what you have to do for weight loss, depending on how much you're losing. If you're losing 1 pound per week, not so much, but if you're losing 4, you get to up your calories quite a bit once you hit the point where you want to maintain. I've lost 10 (on the Atkins diet), 4, and 1-2 pounds per week at different times, and I gained it back at the same rate every time. And I gained it back due to compulsive overeating.
In my case, whenever I try to lose weight, it comes off very easily. I can lose 3 pounds per week with a very moderate amount of effort. I don't starve myself, I don't do anything unhealthy, but according to some of the people on here, I was "starving myself" and "definitely unhealthy." They wouldn't even listen to me when I said I was consuming about 2000 calories per day and working out 6 days per week, felt great, etc. All they pay attention to is the numbers that they want to pay attention to, and "rules of thumb", and they parrot averages like they apply to everyone.
On the flip side, some people may not be able to lose more than HALF a pound per week and stay healthy, I suppose. There is a large continuum in terms of human metabolism, and I don't know exactly where the OP falls. I guess she knows better than I do.
And 109 does not sound low for 5'3" - I don't know why all these people are saying that. It's only low if you have a large frame and bone structure.0 -
IF you get serious about it you cna do it! I lost 14 lbs in 1 month!
Just eat in a deficit and work hard0 -
I am 5'3" and started at 175 and want to get to 140. It has taken me 5 weeks to lose 15 and I'm now slowing it down since in only have 20 left.
I struggled strongly staying within my 1320 cal allotment. You can crash diet, but you'll crash along with it and you have a greater chance of putting it back on.0 -
So 1lb a week doesn't sound like much, but add it up. About 4lb a month and after 4 months, close to 16lb, so while you might not get to 40lb, its still halfway there, and being a bit smaller in four months is better than not doing anything right?No, sorry. 2 pounds a week is all the more you should be losing to keep it healthy and sustainable. (meaning you won't gain it all right back.)0 -
I admire you for having a goal. I hope you plan on logging all your food and exercise. It has really helped me to do that.
My son's wedding is on May 31. My goal was to be 130 pounds. On February 4, I started out at 162 pounds at 5'I' tall. had 16 weeks to lose 32 pounds. That was 2 pounds a week.
I got pretty close to my goal. I am now 134.
I have a 35" waist and wear a Petite 12. According to the weight charts, I will no longer overweight once I hit 132.
Now that I am 134, I see that is still too high for me. If I work out more, it may be okay.
Having a goal really kicked me in the butt to do this.0 -
27lbs in a little over a month and you're under 200lbs? I'd hate to see how you ate to do it.Let's see, I lost pretty fast. February 4th I weighed 162. Now on May 15 I am 135. I think that's around 1-2 pounds a week.
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If you were 300+ pounds, I'd say yes. But, you're not. Shoot for 1 to .5 pounds a week.0
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27lbs in a little over a month and you're under 200lbs? I'd hate to see how you ate to do it.Let's see, I lost pretty fast. February 4th I weighed 162. Now on May 15 I am 135. I think that's around 1-2 pounds a week.
I think you misread May as March.That is almost three months,not one.0
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