is it healthy to lose 5 pounds in one week?

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limestar
limestar Posts: 198 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
I was wondering if it is healthy to lose 5 pounds in one week? is it all water weight? will you gain it right back. I know somebody that claims to lose 5 pounds in one week. She is exercising a lot. I am worrying that it is unhealthy since in here it recommends one pound a week. Thanks in advance for your input.

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  • laurasimmons
    laurasimmons Posts: 578 Member
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    Unless that person is several hundred pounds, its not healthy to lose that much.
  • BriannaSkye
    BriannaSkye Posts: 135
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    A continuos loss of 5lb a week isnt good, 1-2lbs is recommended by doctors although if you are just starting a the first 1-3 weeks you generally see a big loss and then your body drops down to a1-2lbs loss (which is ideal) losing 5lbs every week can be harmful especially to woman
  • pocketsam
    pocketsam Posts: 134
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    Do you know if she weighed accurately to begin with? or use a different set of scales for each weigh in?

    I know when I signed up I guessed at 112 (we dont have scales in the house) which is my average weight and what I was a couple days before xmas. I then weighed last week with a 6 pound loss. Don't know if that helps?
  • dandynick
    dandynick Posts: 25
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    I've been told that when a person starts a diet and exercise regime, in the first week it's not unusual to lose five pounds. Of fluids. After that depending on your size and a few other factors, 1-2 pounds max per week. I don't know how it works for people who are out to lose a lot of weight.
  • bugnbeansmom
    bugnbeansmom Posts: 292 Member
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    It depends on what the starting weight was, a lot of it might be "water weight." I wouldn't worry right away but if she is doing a workout program that is just too much to stick with long term, might want to keep an eye on it. A lot of injuries happen when someone goes from 0 to 60. And yes, typically that first weight is really easily gained back. For long term success, a slower more controlled gain is recommended but sometimes, big folks just drop a lot more faster in the beginning. We have more to shed! ;)
  • limestar
    limestar Posts: 198 Member
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    that's what i thought. she is about 5'4 starting weight was around 145-150 so she does not have a lot to lose.
  • mallorybriann
    mallorybriann Posts: 1,380 Member
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    In my first week I lost 8 pounds. I'm sure a lot of it was water, but before I was eating two to three times the amount of calories I was supposed to. I didn't try to lose that much it just happened. On these shows like "Heavy" and "I used to be fat" some people will lose around a pound a day which doesn't seem healthy.
  • PTORico7
    PTORico7 Posts: 1
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    .
  • fuzzymel
    fuzzymel Posts: 400 Member
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    First week its not unusal. I lost 4lbs when I was 200lbs and starting my weightloss journey.
  • enmaku
    enmaku Posts: 24
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    Over the course of a single day your body weight can fluctuate by as much as +/- 2 lbs. Assuming she had lots of water weight, food in her stomach, etc she could show as much as 4 lbs heavier on one day than on the other with no actual change in body fat. If she's wearing clothes while weighing then just throw those numbers away unless she wore the EXACT same thing. Weight fluctuates a lot, so unless you're talking about changes of more than 10 lbs or you're doing daily tracking with a moving average trendline you probably can't accurately say how much you really weigh at all. That's why they say you shouldn't weigh yourself too often, even if you lose 2 lbs of fat in a week your weight fluctuates that much daily. It's too easy to lose the signal in the noise.

    Of course if you're an engineer like me you could just sign up for the Hacker's Diet online and track your weight with that moving average trendling I was talking about. If you're strong enough to ignore what the scale says, weigh every day and pay attention to the trend rather than the data points that is :)

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