.5 pound a week or 1?

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Sub4_2018
Sub4_2018 Posts: 52 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hi All,

Had a couple weeks of vacation and finally getting back to consistent tracking. Just curious what you'd set your goal to in my situation. I'm 5'6, female, 138 lbs with a goal weight of 123-125. I'm set to "not very active" and track my exercise through my Garmin (I get quite a few calories back through running and walking).

I keep going back and forth on setting my goal to .5 pound a week, or 1 pound a week. On the one hand, I like having more calories to eat, and on the other I'm not sure I want it to take me twice the amount of time to lose the weight.

So out of curiosity, what would you set it to?

Replies

  • kimny72
    kimny72 Posts: 16,013 Member
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    0.5 lbs vote here. I'd guess your calorie goal for 1 lb per is pretty darn low. Even the shorter time frame is more than 3 months, and eating bare min for that long is tough. As @malibu927 mentioned, muscle preservation is important as well, especially if you aren't focusing on strength training.

    Patience will be the key though, because half a lb can easily hide behind normal water weight fluctuations, so you might go several weeks without seeing the results on the scale.

    Whichever way you go, good luck!
  • Sub4_2018
    Sub4_2018 Posts: 52 Member
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    @malibu927 @kimny72 - I do 2 strength training sessions a week, about 45 minutes each session. Not sure if that changes anything, but either way, I really appreciate the feedback!
  • Tacklewasher
    Tacklewasher Posts: 7,122 Member
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    Sub4_2018 wrote: »
    @malibu927 @kimny72 - I do 2 strength training sessions a week, about 45 minutes each session. Not sure if that changes anything, but either way, I really appreciate the feedback!

    The concern I would have is that your Garmin (and mine) kinda suck at estimating calories burned from strength training and are better at steady state cardio. So I'd err on the side of caution and go with the 1/2 lb, but be ready to adjust your calories down if 6-8 weeks in you haven't lost at that rate.
  • strongwouldbenice
    strongwouldbenice Posts: 153 Member
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    I'm almost the exact stats as you and I have the same problem figuring out which to use. I've just set it to .5lb for this week (TOM and I was just kind of hangry), but I intend to put it back down to 1lb for the coming weeks.
    I think it's probably just a case of trial and error to figure out what you can happily stick to.
  • Sub4_2018
    Sub4_2018 Posts: 52 Member
    edited May 2018
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    @Tacklewasher - I think I'm going to go with 1 pound a week based on the calories my Garmin gives me. I get SO many additional calories from my Garmin I feel like it's really overestimating (for example, I was given 1800 exercise calories this past Saturday - I was active on Saturday, but that seems really high). So to "compensate" I can set my calories at 1 pound a week instead of .5 since there's not as much room for error with .5/pound.
  • Sub4_2018
    Sub4_2018 Posts: 52 Member
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    strongwouldbenice wrote: »
    I'm almost the exact stats as you and I have the same problem figuring out which to use. I've just set it to .5lb for this week (TOM and I was just kind of hangry), but I intend to put it back down to 1lb for the coming weeks.
    I think it's probably just a case of trial and error to figure out what you can happily stick to.

    I've thought of doing the same thing - switching between the two every few weeks. I definitely agree - trial and error!
  • Sub4_2018
    Sub4_2018 Posts: 52 Member
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    SuzySunshine99 wrote: »
    I think it depends on how accurate you are willing to be with your logging. Are you weighing everything you eat? If you are, then definitely the .5 pound goal is appropriate.

    However, if you do a lot of estimating and measuring with cups and spoons, then maybe go with the 1 pound goal to account for some errors.

    Personally, when I was losing, I kept my goal at 2 pounds per week, even when I got close to my goal weight. I was NOT an accurate logger, so I was not losing anywhere NEAR that amount, which would have been inappropriate for me.

    Really, it is trial and error. You say you are going to go with 1 pound a week...that's fine, just give it some time and monitor your progress.

    That's a really good point. I do log pretty accurately (weighing my food, etc.) but I decided on 1 pound a week because my I use my Garmin for exercises calories and I think it really overestimates how much I'm burning (I mentioned this above, but it gave me an additional 1800 calories this past Saturday which seems really high). For that reason, I'd rather have some room for error and go with 1 pound a week. I'll give it a few weeks and see if I'm losing as expected and then adjust as necessary. Thanks for the input!
  • Seffell
    Seffell Posts: 2,222 Member
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    My stats and goals are similar to yours and I lose (when I actively do) at 0.5lbs to 0.25lbs. This means eating almost at maintanance so this is how I'm supposed to eat to maintain anyway so forms good habits.

    However if you want to get at your goal faster, which I totally get, you could try 1lbs. I'd love to, but I can't sustain such a big deficit (500cals a day) because I'm not very active.
  • ITUSGirl51
    ITUSGirl51 Posts: 192 Member
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    I do 1 lb plus 100 calories. .5 doesn’t move the scale fast enough for me to be happy with the progress.
  • LivingtheLeanDream
    LivingtheLeanDream Posts: 13,345 Member
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    I'm one of the 0.5lb a week crowd, you don't have much to lose and you wont want to lose muscle along with the fat either. And the plus side is, you get a few more calories to work with.
  • jasondjulian
    jasondjulian Posts: 182 Member
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    You can set it to either, but I'd really aim for losing the 1/2lb per week... slower is better, especially with only 15lbs max to lose.

    Thing is, when you get this close to goal, and are aiming for a small amount of incremental loss per week, you'r weighing and logging and calorie consumption needs to be on point, I mean METICULOUS if you can... here is where an extra 100 or 200 calories fudged or miscalculated can mean the difference between hitting weekly weight loss goal or zero.
  • Jadub729
    Jadub729 Posts: 135 Member
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    I have never lost what MFP is set to, personally I'd set it for 1lb a week and expect .5.
  • taziarj
    taziarj Posts: 243 Member
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    If you have 75+ lbs to lose 2 lbs/week is ideal,
    If you have 40-75 lbs to lose 1.5 lbs/week is ideal,
    If you have 25-40 lbs to lose 1 lbs/week is ideal,
    If you have 15 -25 lbs to lose 0.5 to 1.0 lbs/week is ideal, and
    If you have less than 15 lbs to lose 0.5 lbs/week is ideal.
  • tbright1965
    tbright1965 Posts: 852 Member
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    taziarj wrote: »
    If you have 75+ lbs to lose 2 lbs/week is ideal,
    If you have 40-75 lbs to lose 1.5 lbs/week is ideal,
    If you have 25-40 lbs to lose 1 lbs/week is ideal,
    If you have 15 -25 lbs to lose 0.5 to 1.0 lbs/week is ideal, and
    If you have less than 15 lbs to lose 0.5 lbs/week is ideal.

    FWIW, my target is 1% / week. I seldom eat into my exercise calories. But having started at 265#, that is in the 2 pounds / week range. I don't need to be concerned with exercise tracking accuracy if I don't plan to eat into those calories. However, I can see how close the estimates are to the results. I.E. if I estimated I had a 7000 calorie deficit this week, but my weight stayed the same, did I really have the deficit I thought I had?

    I've personally experienced my Fitbit underestimates my calorie burn a small amount, so I probably have MORE exercise calories to use, and still don't use them most weeks. For example, my food logging and Fitbit data projected a 2.7 pound loss, a bit more than 1% Yet I lost 3.5 pounds. Probably due to lower estimates of movement and my policy of rounding up calorie dense foods to build margin.

    I think a PERCENTAGE rate is more realistic than picking a number. Also, understand that when doing it by percentage, the number of pounds lost / week will drop as your weight drops.

    Finally, every 10% lost, I drop my calorie targets another 5% I.E. if I was at 2000 cal/day when I started, after losing 10%, the new target is 1900 cal/day.

    Using this strategy, I've been able to stay on the 1%/week path for the past 13-14 weeks, with a 13.21% loss from my starting weight.
  • ljashley1952
    ljashley1952 Posts: 273 Member
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    I've gone with 0.5 pounds a week. It is an easily doable number. If I'm eating more one week, I simply need to counter it with a little more exercise. If I can't exercise as much, I just cut a few more calories. It is just easy to manage and I'm not really in a hurry. If it takes me a year, I'm fine with it...as long as it's going in the right direction.

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