.5lbs a week for every 25lbs

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  • KateSimpson17
    KateSimpson17 Posts: 282 Member
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    erickirb wrote: »
    kateyb94 wrote: »
    I only had 20 lbs to lose to begin with, so far I've been losing about 1.5 a week and haven't had any problems. If I was only going to lose .5 a week it would take like 10 months to lose that, when it's perfectly plausible for me to lose it in less than half that. It seems like an odd rule to me, and maybe it's helpful for some people, but from my research, as long as you're not consistently averaging more than 2 lbs a week it's perfectly healthy.

    depends how much you have to lose. if you try for 2lbs/week when you only have 20 lbs to go a larger % of your loss will come from lean muscle, not the fat you want to lose.

    What's the science behind this?
  • erickirb
    erickirb Posts: 12,293 Member
    edited July 2015
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    kateyb94 wrote: »
    erickirb wrote: »
    kateyb94 wrote: »
    I only had 20 lbs to lose to begin with, so far I've been losing about 1.5 a week and haven't had any problems. If I was only going to lose .5 a week it would take like 10 months to lose that, when it's perfectly plausible for me to lose it in less than half that. It seems like an odd rule to me, and maybe it's helpful for some people, but from my research, as long as you're not consistently averaging more than 2 lbs a week it's perfectly healthy.

    depends how much you have to lose. if you try for 2lbs/week when you only have 20 lbs to go a larger % of your loss will come from lean muscle, not the fat you want to lose.

    What's the science behind this?

    There are studies, the amount of fat you can metabolize is based on how much fat you have, the more fat the easier your body can access fat. It is also a survival mechanism, the body when in a deficit tries to become more efficient at running, which is why with large deficits things like nails, hair, skin, suffer, as your body slows non-life sustaining functions. One of the easiest ways to use less cals is to have less muscle as muscle requires calories.

    Look at body builders, they lose massive amounts of muscle when cutting for a show, just to get rid of the last layer of fat.
  • mgonyer123
    mgonyer123 Posts: 74 Member
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    So my very last goal I have 63 lbs I want to lose.

    I have it set at losing 2 lbs a week. Should I change it to 1.5lbs or does it matter? I'm confused. I don't want to lose muscle. I want to to this in the most healthy sustainable way.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,972 Member
    edited July 2015
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    @mgonyer123 - at 63 pounds to lose, if you can lose two pounds per week without feeling exhausted or deprived and likely to fall off the wagon, go for it.
  • Jruzer
    Jruzer Posts: 3,501 Member
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    This is the study I've seen referenced most commonly:
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15615615

    The authors posit the following:
    A limit on the maximum energy transfer rate from the human fat store in hypophagia is deduced from experimental data of underfed subjects maintaining moderate activity levels and is found to have a value of (290+/-25) kJ/kgd. A dietary restriction which exceeds the limited capability of the fat store to compensate for the energy deficiency results in an immediate decrease in the fat free mass (FFM). In cases of a less severe dietary deficiency, the FFM will not be depleted.

    where the kg refers to kg of fat, not total body weight. This works out to 31 kcal/lb-day. Bear in mind that this is the MAXIMUM possible rate, not one which is always achievable.

    Making up a generic female whose goal is 25% body fat, ideal weight is 140 lbs, and who has 50 pounds of fat to lose, we find that she has 85 pounds of fat and can therefore theoretically sustain a loss of 2635 kcal/day, or more than 5 pounds per week! In this case the person would be very hard pressed to maintain this deficit (it's tantamount to fasting), and a 2 lb/week maximum seems reasonable.

    To be more specific, in my case I want to knock off those last stubborn 10 pounds. According to the chart I should have a deficit of no more than 0.5 lbs/wk, while by the formula above I can theoretically maintain up to about 1250 kcal/day or more than 2 lb/wk. I stick to 1 lb/wk and this seems to work for me both in the sense of sustainability and in the sense of retaining FFM.
  • atypicalsmith
    atypicalsmith Posts: 2,742 Member
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    Half a pound a week is a lot. If you want to lose more than that, you will eventually give up. Just saying.

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