Is It Ever Okay to Aim for 2lbs a Week?

Options
lucypstacy
lucypstacy Posts: 178 Member
edited April 2017 in Health and Weight Loss
I see posts saying that's too aggressive, but I thought that it was okay if you still have a lot to weight to lose. I have 100lbs to go, so I have mine set for 2lbs a week until I lose more - with the idea I'll set it back to 1lb a day in the near future.
«13

Replies

  • honkinballs
    honkinballs Posts: 34 Member
    Options
    I've been hitting two pounds a week but I'm a fat guy, I think kommo has the right idea.
  • TimothyFish
    TimothyFish Posts: 4,925 Member
    Options
    How much you have to go doesn't matter. If 2lbs is more than 1% of your weight then it is too aggressive. If it is less than 1% of your weight then it is fine.
  • lucypstacy
    lucypstacy Posts: 178 Member
    edited April 2017
    Options
    I'm 5'4" and currently 250lbs, so it's still fine. I have to get to 230lbs to have a hernia surgery. Since I'll be laid up in the hospital for a week, I figure that's when I'll cut back to 1lb a week. Plus, the weight should be about right.
  • nutmegoreo
    nutmegoreo Posts: 15,532 Member
    Options
    lucypstacy wrote: »
    I'm 5'4" and currently 250lbs, so it's still fine. I have to get to 230lbs to have a hernia surgery. Since I'll be laid up in the hospital for a week, I figure that's when I'll cut back to 1lb a day. Plus, the weight should be about right.

    Per WEEK. I presumed typo in your OP, but you repeated per day here, so I just wanted to be clear, people are talking per week. Your first week or two with the bigger drop is fine, because of water shift, which is what you had already said.
  • lucypstacy
    lucypstacy Posts: 178 Member
    Options
    Yes, I meant per week. Odd little typo. I corrected both posts where I wrote day.
  • LAT1963
    LAT1963 Posts: 1,375 Member
    edited April 2017
    Options
    You are not alone. I'm 5' 8" and lost 20 lbs in 52 days starting from 257 lbs. The latest 30 of those days I lost 8 lbs, which I think represents my post-initial-whoosh rate that I should strive to maintain. Current daily target 1670 cals, but that will go down as my weight decreases.

    We will both be fine at these rates, given our similar weight. I'm happy to see your success so far!
  • estherdragonbat
    estherdragonbat Posts: 5,283 Member
    edited April 2017
    Options
    5'3 and just hit 75lbs to go today. 2 lbs is still < 1% of my total body weight, though I am going to shoot for 1.5 starting in three weeks. (Passover starts next week. I've resolved to take a 2-week diet break/eat at maintenance starting this coming Sunday.) Which, sigh, means it's probably time for me to join the 21st century and ditch my analog scale for a digital... Can't really tell fractions of pounds without one.
  • Theo166
    Theo166 Posts: 2,564 Member
    edited April 2017
    Options
    The advice I've seen is not to lose over 1% of your total weight a week.
    I've been averaging just a shade over 2lbs so far this year, which is under 1%
  • nutmegoreo
    nutmegoreo Posts: 15,532 Member
    Options
    lucypstacy wrote: »
    Yes, I meant per week. Odd little typo. I corrected both posts where I wrote day.

    Awesome! Just wanted to clarify. There is nothing wrong with 2lb/week at your current weight. Great job so far!
  • danadikay4239
    danadikay4239 Posts: 2 Member
    Options
    Sometimes I'm loosing more than 2lbs per week. Talked about it with my doctor. No problem, I'm healthy and I'm eating enough. I need the fast results to stay motivated, and if you do some research about it, it's often water inside your body you will loose (of course also fat). Keep cool and do your thing :)
  • LAT1963
    LAT1963 Posts: 1,375 Member
    Options
    estherdragonbat wrote: »
    5'3 and just hit 75lbs to go today. 2 lbs is still < 1% of my total body weight, though I am going to shoot for 1.5 starting in three weeks. (Passover starts next week. I've resolved to take a 2-week diet break/eat at maintenance starting this coming Sunday.) Which, sigh, means it's probably time for me to join the 21st century and ditch my analog scale for a digital... Can't really tell fractions of pounds without one.

    You could also get a balance-scale, which is the most accurate. But digital scales these days can be web-linked to automatically report your weight to the scale company's website and then you can activate an mfp communication app to have your weight auto-reported to mfp. That way you just step on your electronic scale and don't have to worry about recording the weight here (as you must when using mechanical scales).
  • TimothyFish
    TimothyFish Posts: 4,925 Member
    Options
    seska422 wrote: »
    TimothyFish wrote: »
    How much you have to go doesn't matter. If 2lbs is more than 1% of your weight then it is too aggressive. If it is less than 1% of your weight then it is fine.

    Not necessarily. I'm at ~154 pounds and I want to lose about 12 more pounds. There's no way that I could aim for 1.5 pounds per week because that would put me at a daily calorie goal of about 850. The weight loss goal ranges stated above have been a better fit for me but, even then, they are a bit aggressive for me and I've lost more slowly than that in order to have a sustainable daily calorie goal.

    There are a number of things at play here. First, is it safe for a 154 lb person to lose 1.5lbs in a week? Probably, since 1-2 lbs is generally considered safe. Second, is it safe for a 154 lb person to eat less than 1200 calories per day? Probably not. Third, why would a deficit of 750 calories cause a 154 lb person to eat only 850 calories? Because that person is sedentary. Fourth, is it safe for a person to be sedentary? Probably not. Fifth, if a person is as active as health organizations recommend, would they burn enough calories during the day that a 750 calorie deficit has them eating more than 1,200 calories? Probably.

    It seems to me that the issue is one of an unsafe activity level, not an unsafe calorie deficit.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,740 Member
    Options
    I really wish people would express some of these limits as a % of total calories expended in a day, aka TDEE.

    If 1% or 2lbs is a 75% deficit off a low tdee I would not view it the same as i would view an acceptable 25% cut for someone who is obese.

    In general 15-20% cuts (i.e. caloric deficits)when people are normal weight or low overweight, increasing to 25% when obese seem to work fine for results over time with minimal side effects.

    As to the OP, assuming your deficit is not wildly above ~25%, 2lbs a week is fine.

    My only other comment is, that depending on the type of hernia and dangers it presents, and depending on ease of access to surgery and availability of surgical dates in your world, I would be tempted to keep on losing weight as opposed to putting the loss in the backburner for semi elective surgery.

    I am not suggesting that you should keep to a large deficit while healing. To the contrary, doing so will slow down your healing, so reducing or eliminating weight loss while healing makes a lot of sense.

    But there are a few weeks of healing to do and having recently gone through minor hernia surgery I can guarantee you that my thoughts were along the lines of "holly crap this would have been so much harder at my original weight" (and our starting points were extremely similar, if you consider the couple of inches I have on you)

    Of course there are a whole whack of considerations that may make a delay a bad idea... just throwing out to you that weight loss is just as much of a health necessity for you moving forward and that you have no reason to only aim for limited short term results... think of achieving and maintaining long term a large loss.

Categories