Can you lose weight "too fast"?
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I WANT to lose the weight ... I just worry about losing muscle and screwing my planned bulk.1
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What's the real risk ? Is it the loss of muscle? Anything else?
I'm down 16 lbs in 32 days and wondering what the potential issues are. Obviously starter water weight is a big chunk.
5' 8" male
SW 186
CW169.2
GW ~149 (acrual goal is 12.5% BF)
To get scare-monger-ey on you for a bit:
Overly rapid weight loss can make your liver deposit extra cholesterol in your gallbladder, where it forms part of what's medically termed "gallbladder sludge." And what may eventually creep forth from the sludge are gallstones - it turns out that most gallstones are made of mostly cholesterol.
The thing about loss of muscle is that your heart is, basically, a muscle. So are a lot of important parts of your other important innards.
It's rare for electrolyte imbalances to get really severe; but when they do get severe, they can lead to kidney failure, liver failure, and/or heart failure. You don't want any of those.I guess I need to say "yes its 17 lbs in 33 days ... but its 10 lbs of water"
So more like 7 lbs in 33 days which is what I could expect if I just kept everything the same. And is reasonable.
We now swap sacre-monger-ey stuff for geeky numbers stuff. The rule of thumb is that you should lose no more than 1% of your body mass per week. For your start weight of 186 lb, that's 1.86 lb/week.
Assuming you lost 10 lbs water weight in your 1st two weeks:
17 - 10 = 7 lbs
32 -14 = 18 days = 0.39 lb/day
7lbs/18 days = 0.39/day = 2.72 lb/week
Or about 1.5 times faster than is considered a safe rate of weight loss. So, depending on just how fast you lost that first 10 pounds, what you're doing now may not be the reasonable way to continue.
And, since you now weigh 169, your current safe-weight loss rate is about 1.7 lb/week. Since 3500 calories excess/deficit = 1 lb gain/loss:
500 calories excess/deficit per day = 1 lb gain/loss per day.
2.72 lb/week current weight loss rate - 1.7 lb/week safe weight loss rate = a very convenient 1 lb/week or 500 added calories/day.
Since this all depends on my assumption about how much water weight you lost how fast, you might want to add just an extra 150-250 calories/day for a few weeks to see how it all plays out.
Early on, people tend to have lots of enthusiasm for their weight loss, but not much data about how the weight loss process works for their individual and idiosyncratic bodies. I'd recommend you take things a bit slower, and pay careful attention to how your body responds.
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I so deeply appreciate the constructive advice and well thought out replies.
I'm going to add a protein shake at night and see how it changes. (Whey protein, peanut butter powder, whole milk)1 -
With your rate of loss, you are not eating at a 500 calorie deficit. There is something wrong in the way you entered your data into MFP. Unless you are very short? And the nutritional minimum for a male is 1500 calories.
Well this makes a lot more sense.
I've been aiming for a 500 cal deficit off what mfp told me to eat. Huh.
As for activity levels ... office job (engineer) ... some working out and jogging but nothing crazy. I put not very active.3 -
As said before ... I WANT to lose the weight... but I want to keep big picture focus and be ready for my bulk as best as possible0
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The number MFP gives you already includes your deficit.11
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There we have it.I've been aiming for a 500 cal deficit off what mfp told me to eat. Huh.
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I recommend setting your goal calories a little higher that what MFP recommends, but not eat your exercise calories back. The reason for that is that your daily calories may fluctuate wildly if you do eat them back and you'll have a hard time forming good habits that way.
My recommendation for my desired loss is ~1800 calories a day, but I eat 2000. If I were to eat back calories for exercising some days I'd have 1800, other days 3000. That almost seems like a disorder to me. I do have 2500 calories on my long run days so I can have energy gels and a recovery chocolate milk when I get back from the rum.
I'm losing a steady 1,1 pound a weak on average and have lost 60 pounds in 18 months. I've had periods of weight gain when sick (yes, opposite everyone else, but when I'm sick I figure my body needs all the nutrients it can get to become healthy again) and on holidays.
I will say that your aim appears to be pretty low, weight wise. If you want to hit 12 percent body fat maybe you should lift a lot of weights to preserve/gain muscle?
I have a smart scale that measures fat/water/muscle/bone ratios and it's really helpful. In spring 2018 I didn't lose any weight, but I gained 5 or 6 pounds of muscle and lost the same amount of fat and that was really visible. Lately I've been too busy at work to lift as much as I need and have lost muscle while losing fat too, but I've lost too much muscle and have started lifting again*.
It's an withings body+ scale
*note one the lifting: I do my workouts in 20-30 minutes and lift eccentric only, except for core. It is very heavy, but not that hard on the joints. For example instead of Pushups/bench press i do negative push-ups where I only do the going down part, but very slowly. When that became too easy I started doing them one handed on my knees and now it's regular one handed negative push-ups. For chin-ups it's the same. I let myself drop down in 4-5 seconds then stand up using my legs and do it again.0 -
That first 10 or so coulda been a water drop from burning your glycogen stores and adjusting your salt intake depending on your diet and activity levels before and after you started losing, respectively.0
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I've been aiming for a 500 cal deficit off what mfp told me to eat. Huh.
So since MFP’s calorie goal already includes the appropriate deficit for the weight loss rate you gave it, you’ve actually been eating at a 1000 cal deficit. And not eating back any calories from jogging and working out.
Well I think we’ve solved the problem of why you’re dropping weight so fast...
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