Weight Loss Duration

dcward219 · March 2019

I have read that if you cut 3,500 calories per week, you can lose around 1 pound per week. However, no one mentions how long that weight loss will last. For how long will you continue to lose 1 pound per week? I assume at some point your body weight normalizes. Obviously you aren't going to lose 1 pound per week forever.

If I started at 170 and cut 3,500 calories per week, what should I expect. Assume that exercise and activity level have not changed.

Thanks.

spiriteagle99 · March 2019

It depends on age and activity level. When your Calories in = your calories out you'll stop losing weight. As long as you are eating less than you are burning, you'll continue to lose.

apullum · March 2019

You can continue at a 1 lb/week expected pace until you can no longer safely cut 3500 calories from your week anymore. Eventually as you get closer to your goal weight, your body's calorie needs will decrease until it will not be safe or sustainable to continue a 1 lb/week loss. At that point, you will need to switch to a slower pace of loss.

lorrpb · March 2019

You will lose 1 lb a week as long as you cut 3500 below maintenance calories. But as you lose weight, your basic maintenance calories drop, so it is harder to achieve the 3500 deficit. Plus women should never go below 1200 and men below 1500. So at some point, you cannot create a 3500 deficit and have a healthy level of nutrition.

salburda · March 2019

AS a senior citizen I did not lose any wieght till I was in my 60's it has taken me me 8-9 years.

AnnPT77 · March 2019

There are two answers to this, if you think about it.

1. If you start with today's weight, figure out the estimated calories that would maintain that weight at current activity level, then subtract 500 daily, and eat that many calories, you would in theory** lose a pound a week. If you continue eating that calorie level, your weight loss will very gradually slow down as you get lighter, because your smaller body burns fewer calories than a larger body did, doing everything you do, all day long. When you reach the point where your calorie burn = your calorie intake, you'll stop losing weight.

2. If you start the same way, but instead of eating the same number of calories indefinitely, you keep the same calorie deficit (i.e., 500 calories less than you're burning daily), then you'll keep losing about a pound a week (subject to estimating error). That would require you to re-evaluate your calorie intake regularly, and gradually eat less as your body gets smaller and burns fewer calories. (Re-evaluating every 10 pounds is probably close enough.) Eventually, it will be dysfunctional to lose weight at that fast a rate, so it would be good to slow down. Sooner or later, you'd want to stop losing weight, and maintain.

Either strategy will work, in general.

Some people like to figure out how many calories it would take to maintain their goal weight, and eat that all the way to goal. Weight loss will automatically slow as they get lighter. It has the advantage of no transition to maintenance.

Other people prefer to manage their calorie level to keep weight loss at a sensible rate based on how much weight they have left to lose. It still makes sense to slow down as goal approaches (for health reasons), but this method - assuming a person can stick to it - is going to result in an overall quicker loss unless a very slow loss rate is selected up front.

** Calorie estimates are just statistical estimates, not magical insights: Given correct inputs to the estimate, they'll be close for most people, further off for a few, and quite far off for a very, very few. That's the nature of statistical estimates. So, you know you're actually in a 500 calorie daily deficit when you actually lose a pound a week on average, not when some "calculator" estimates that you're in a 500-calorie daily deficit.

Weight Loss Duration

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