Ladies that are losing 2lbs/week, what is your secret?
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I am pretty sure that the secret to sustained 2lbs/week loss is morbid obesity.
^^^^This.
I have no problem admitting I was morbidly obese and simply by adjusting my diet (which was hard at first but easy now) I have lost 54lbs in 15 weeks. It was faster near the beginning, a little slower now, but obviously I have averaged 3.6lbs per week overall. I in no way expect that to keep up, and last week I lost 1.8lbs. I am still obese and probably morbidly so, so I expect my weight loss to continue at a good clip for awhile, before slowing down. I have done this so far with diet only, though I am becoming more active, I also plan to start lifting in the not too distant future.2 -
I have been losing 2 pounds a week for the last 3 weeks since I started. I started doing zumba at the local gym three times a week. I'm cataloging what foods I'm eating, and it makes me aware of which foods are really high in calories. if I eat a high-calorie lunch, I eat a simple dinner. With the extra exercise, it has not been hard to stick within the calories. Of course, I never have eaten much junk food. I don't eat candy, cakes, sweets of any sort, and only have low-fat chips once a week or so. I also have never really eaten fast food as it typically makes me feel sick. I also do not drink my calories, meaning I do not drink sugary drinks, juices, alcohol, etc. So depending on your lifestyle to begin with, it may mean a more drastic change then what I've had to do which is just add some exercise in and be conscientious of that chicken quesadilla that was high in calories. If you need to examine your calorie intake, the app has worked great for me for that. It's easy to see which foods or drinks are really high. Then you can make a decision as to what you could cut and make a big difference. for the most part, my changes have not come through eating, they have come through exercise. The Zumba changed my results, not what I was eating. However being conscious of what I'm eating can't hurt.2
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I have been losing 2 pounds a week for the last 3 weeks since I started. I started doing zumba at the local gym three times a week. I'm cataloging what foods I'm eating, and it makes me aware of which foods are really high in calories. if I eat a high-calorie lunch, I eat a simple dinner. With the extra exercise, it has not been hard to stick within the calories. Of course, I never have eaten much junk food. I don't eat candy, cakes, sweets of any sort, and only have low-fat chips once a week or so. I also have never really eaten fast food as it typically makes me feel sick. I also do not drink my calories, meaning I do not drink sugary drinks, juices, alcohol, etc. So depending on your lifestyle to begin with, it may mean a more drastic change then what I've had to do which is just add some exercise in and be conscientious of that chicken quesadilla that was high in calories. If you need to examine your calorie intake, the app has worked great for me for that. It's easy to see which foods or drinks are really high. Then you can make a decision as to what you could cut and make a big difference. for the most part, my changes have not come through eating, they have come through exercise. The Zumba changed my results, not what I was eating. However being conscious of what I'm eating can't hurt.
How much weight do you have to lose?
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I'm losing around 2lbs per week right now! I find that low calorie ice cream and chocolate chip peanut butter balls help me not feel deprived! I don't exercise right now but I make sure I get at least 5,000 steps per day (I know, it's not much but I sit on my *kitten* at work all day). I aim to eat around 1400 per day. I'm 5'9ft and 203.3lbs at the moment. I also joined the 10 day challenges which I've found to be very motivating. You can check out my diary; it's open.2
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This thread was started in 2012! there's alot of zombie threads being resurrected lately....
ps 2lb a week is only an option for those who have more than 50bs to lose.15 -
My metabolism has shot through the roof within the past couple of weeks but I've been losing about 2-3lbs consistently since mid-July 2019 (excluding a two week break from exercise). The following list are things I've done to keep it moving:
1. Significantly reduced processed foods and make most of my meals at home (mix of lean meat, veggies and fruits),
2. Eat about 5 to 6 snacks/meals daily,
3. Increased protein intake and spread evenly throughout each snack/meal to reduce hunger pangs and cravings (supplement with protein powders/shakes),
4. Drink a protein shake after exercise,
5. Replaced coffee cream with liquid protein shakes,
6. I don't eat heavy after work. My largest meal is lunch and I keep it light for dinner,
7. Rollerblade and Walk/jog (HIIT style) 6 days a week (I walk at work, home, stores, etc. It all adds up at the end of the day),
8. Sync Fitbit (set goals - I burn about 800 to 1500 calories a day from exercise. For the entire day, I tend to burn between 2,800 to 4,000 calories depending on how active I've been) with MyFitnessPal,
9. I wake up early to exercise before work and may exercise again after work (depends on time and if I feel up to it),
10. Manually set macro-nutrient percentages and calorie (I eat btwn 1,650 to 2,000 a day) in MyFitnessPal to where I'm comfortable and not hungry,
11. I allocate about 250 calories a day towards a sweet treat, (no depriving myself),
12. I have one to two cheat meals a week (preferably on the weekend when I do more exercise),
13. I plan activities with friends and family that involve walking,
14. I don't feel guilty if I overdo it one or two days, especially when my period is coming,
15. I love everything, including condiments, vitamins, and calorie overages, etc.,
16. I weigh or measure everything and try to only eat things that have a package with nutrition facts,
17. When eating at restaurants, I preview the menu and decide on my meal including appetizers, breads, etc. in advance so I can adjust the whole day if necessary,
18. I pack my tote with food for the whole day for work,
19. I take a tote with snacks when I'm running errands to reduce the urge to grab food on the go,
20. I plan my meals ahead of time and log it into MyFitnessPal, and
21. Carry a water bottle everywhere filled with water.
I hope this helps and between all the responses, you find what works best for you. You can do it! :-)2 -
Amy911Gray wrote: »Well, I'm losing about 2 lbs a week continuously. I did some research on "negative calorie foods" and loaded up the week day diet. Things like apples, broccoli, spinach, etc. I usually make a salad for lunch with fat free dressing, sunflower kernels and some type of protein (staying away from any fish because I'm new to the office and don't want to be the stinky lunch girl) or a stir fry with cabbage, onions, green peppers and meat, and yogurt, fat free cottage cheese, apple pears/tangerines/bananas or some type of fruit, and I eat breakfast around 9:30--either sugar free or lower sugar oatmeal or cream of wheat. I'm really big on the Special K cereal bars too. A lot of the foods I eat are what I consider volume foods (love to eat and that doesn't go away). Large portions, low calories!
I think the key to the success I'm having is my workout routine. I get up in the mornings at 4:00 and start working out on the elliptical around 4:30/5:00 and I don't stop until I've reached 60 minutes. I get about 2 hours of exercise on weekends too. On the weekends, I usually stick with egg whites and laughing cow cheese for breakfast and then what ever we are doing for lunch and dinner---but I keep it simple and snack on popcorn.
Today I noticed--my jacket will button, my necklace is too long, and I'm standing and sitting straight in my chair.
Here's a list!
Negative Calorie Vegetables
Asparagus
Beet Root
Broccoli
Cabbage
Carrot
Cauliflower
Celery Chicory
Hot Chili
Cucumber
Garden cress
Garlic
Green Beans
Lettuce
Onion
Radish
Spinach
Turnip
Zucchini
Negative Calorie Fruits
Apple
Blueberries
Cantaloupe
Cranberry
Grapefruit Honeydew
Lemon/Lime
Mango
Orange
Papaya
Peach Pineapple
Raspberry
Strawberry
Tomato
Tangerine
Turnip
Watermelon
There is no such thing as a negative calorie fruit or vegetable.17 -
If you look back in this thread, there’s a ton of misinformation and anecdotes. All you need is a calorie deficit of the right amount. Use a good calorie calculator.
Exercise if you enjoy it, or don’t if you hate it. Eat keto, or don’t. It doesn’t matter how the deficit happens. It just matters that it happens.8 -
Vfleming6416 wrote: »My metabolism has shot through the roof within the past couple of weeks but I've been losing about 2-3lbs consistently since mid-July 2019 (excluding a two week break from exercise). The following list are things I've done to keep it moving:
1. Significantly reduced processed foods and make most of my meals at home (mix of lean meat, veggies and fruits),
2. Eat about 5 to 6 snacks/meals daily,
3. Increased protein intake and spread evenly throughout each snack/meal to reduce hunger pangs and cravings (supplement with protein powders/shakes),
4. Drink a protein shake after exercise,
5. Replaced coffee cream with liquid protein shakes,
6. I don't eat heavy after work. My largest meal is lunch and I keep it light for dinner,
7. Rollerblade and Walk/jog (HIIT style) 6 days a week (I walk at work, home, stores, etc. It all adds up at the end of the day),
8. Sync Fitbit (set goals - I burn about 800 to 1500 calories a day from exercise. For the entire day, I tend to burn between 2,800 to 4,000 calories depending on how active I've been) with MyFitnessPal,
9. I wake up early to exercise before work and may exercise again after work (depends on time and if I feel up to it),
10. Manually set macro-nutrient percentages and calorie (I eat btwn 1,650 to 2,000 a day) in MyFitnessPal to where I'm comfortable and not hungry,
11. I allocate about 250 calories a day towards a sweet treat, (no depriving myself),
12. I have one to two cheat meals a week (preferably on the weekend when I do more exercise),
13. I plan activities with friends and family that involve walking,
14. I don't feel guilty if I overdo it one or two days, especially when my period is coming,
15. I love everything, including condiments, vitamins, and calorie overages, etc.,
16. I weigh or measure everything and try to only eat things that have a package with nutrition facts,
17. When eating at restaurants, I preview the menu and decide on my meal including appetizers, breads, etc. in advance so I can adjust the whole day if necessary,
18. I pack my tote with food for the whole day for work,
19. I take a tote with snacks when I'm running errands to reduce the urge to grab food on the go,
20. I plan my meals ahead of time and log it into MyFitnessPal, and
21. Carry a water bottle everywhere filled with water.
I hope this helps and between all the responses, you find what works best for you. You can do it! :-)
Losing at a rate of 2lbs per week requires creating a 7000cal per week deficit. Creating a deficit this large is only safe or even possible if you have significant amounts of weight to lose.
Most of the items on that list are completely irrelevant with the rest being perhaps, incidentally relevant in so far as they might contribute towards creating the required 1000cal per day deficit.7 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »I am pretty sure that the secret to sustained 2lbs/week loss is morbid obesity.
Well, I managed it for about 14 weeks (not sure if you count that as "sustained") starting from "only" severe (Class II) obesity.
I lost 2 lbs a week by starting out severely obese, logging my food and my exercise, and maintaining what MFP predicted would be a 500 cal/day (1 lb a week) deficit. (Sorry, I'm an outlier, a statistical anomaly, an uncontrolled mover when music plays, a late-to-perimenopauser. That's all I've been able to come up with to explain it.)5 -
The point that a 2lb per week loss is only safely possible for those very overweight to begin with seems to be lost on some posters.
If you have a smaller amount to lose, the pace will be slower.
If you have a lot to lose you can lose 2lb per week with an appropriate calorie allowance.
Things like taking lunch to work, pre logging,cutting out sweets, taking a water bottle everywhere etc etc which have been recomended above - sure, they may well have helped the posters of such to adhere to calorie allowance - but they dont change basic fact that only those with a lot to lose will lose it consistently as 2lb per week.15 -
paperpudding wrote: »The point that a 2lb per week loss is only safely possible for those very overweight to begin with seems to be lost on some posters.
If you have a smaller amount to lose, the pace will be slower.
If you have a lot to lose you can lose 2lb per week with an appropriate calorie allowance.
Things like taking lunch to work, pre logging,cutting out sweets, taking a water bottle everywhere etc etc which have been recomended above - sure, they may well have helped the posters of such to adhere to calorie allowance - but they dont change basic fact that only those with a lot to lose will lose it consistently as 2lb per week.
I feel this reply should be in BOLD, so have done just that11 -
I know it's a generally accepted wisdom that 2lbs a week is only a safe rate of weight loss for people who were very obese to start with, but where has that figure come from? What are the risks/harms that come with losing weight at that rate from a lower starting weight?
(not saying that anyone should try to lose weight faster than this or change their goals - just wondering the reasoning behind a figure that is thrown around a lot on here)2 -
3011sophie wrote: »I know it's a generally accepted wisdom that 2lbs a week is only a safe rate of weight loss for people who were very obese to start with, but where has that figure come from? What are the risks/harms that come with losing weight at that rate from a lower starting weight?
(not saying that anyone should try to lose weight faster than this or change their goals - just wondering the reasoning behind a figure that is thrown around a lot on here)
It's simple math.
Firstly. Losing weight comes from a calorie deficit. There are 3500 calories in a 1lb of fat therefore in order to lose 2lbs of fat in 1 week you need to create a calorie deficit of 7000cal per week or 1000cal per day.
Next thing that needs to be understood is that a human requires a certain amount of calories per day to sustain life. As in not have organs (including heart and brain) begin to deteriorate and shut down. This is different for everyone but the ballpark figures are approx 1200cal/day for females and 1500cal/day for males.
Finally a person needs to eat a certain amount of food each day just so that they don't mentally fall apart from hunger.
So lets look at two extreme cases to illustrate in simple terms.
Person A is a 350lbs man who is 6' tall. Maintenance for this person would be somewhere in the vicinity of 3200cal per day. So in order for this person to lose at rate of 2lbs per week he would need to eat approx 2200cal per day. This 2200cal per day is still well in excess of the minimum required to sustain life and is sufficient food that this person shouldn't have too much trouble eating enough to not feel constantly hungry, miserable and deprived.
Person 2 is a 130lbs female who is 5'1. Maintenance for this person would be around 1500cal per day. So trying to achieve a 2lbs per week loss would require dropping their daily calorie intake to around 500cal per day. This is WAY below the number of calories needed for the body to function and very quickly the body would start to be damaged. This is not to mention how unrealistic trying to eat this little food every day would be from a mental point of view. This person would very quickly find themselves constantly miserable and wracked with hunger pangs.17 -
Next thing that needs to be understood is that a human requires a certain amount of calories per day to sustain life. As in not have organs (including heart and brain) begin to deteriorate and shut down. This is different for everyone but the ballpark figures are approx 1200cal/day for females and 1500cal/day for males.Person A is a 350lbs man who is 6' tall. Maintenance for this person would be somewhere in the vicinity of 3200cal per day. So in order for this person to lose at rate of 2lbs per week he would need to eat approx 2200cal per day. This 2200cal per day is still well in excess of the minimum required to sustain life and is sufficient food that this person shouldn't have too much trouble eating enough to not feel constantly hungry, miserable and deprived
I know that in reality it's a combination of the two - which is why I'm questioning how readily "1200/1500 calories minimum" and "no more than 2lbs a week" are quoted everywhere without consideration of how to calculate what might be safe for each individual, or how these figures were calculated in the first place, or what the specific risks are if you lose faster or eat a lower intake.
(sustainable is a whole different question - I'm asking more about the safety)0 -
Zombie threads are fine if they're still relevant!
I started out on calorieking and then moved over here when when CK shut down the logging function - basically I just set that I wanted to lose 1kg a week and then followed the guidance.
I am on week 37 and have lost 31kg so far - aiming to lose 32 in total, so in the very last stages of the weight loss journey...scales are teetering and will probably teeter for the next week or so.
I lost 1kg most weeks for the first few weeks. It took a little while for me to figure things out so in the beginning, I was eating less and eating low calorie substitutes. Over time, as I was losing weight, my preferred option was to maintain a deficit by doing more exercise so that I could eat more/eat the things I liked - and fitness and endurance became as important to me as the weight lsos. After the 25kg mark, i changed the settings to lose 1/2 kg a week instead of 1kg and also allowed my deficits to go down so that it took a few more weeks to lose 1kg. But 1kg a week was definitely possible.1 -
As well as @danp’s excellent example of calorie requirements for different size and weight people, there is also the amount of body fat one can burn in a day. (Not high fat ingestion like in Keto)
There is research out there that shows there is a limit in how much body fat the body can burn in a day no matter how fat you are, before the body resorts to fat free mass.
Nutrition wise, burning body fat as energy, as we do in a deficit, does not provide us with the nutrition we need.
Unless one is under a doctor’s supervision, bloodwork drawn regularly to check vitamin and mineral levels as well as other health markers, a high rate of loss, 2lbs a week for a woman 5’1, 145lbs (overweight at 27.5 BMI), for example, has a higher chance of nutritional deficits and short and/or long term negative health consequences.
The 1200 for women and 1500 for men has been shown, through published research, to provide the minimum nutritional needs for someone within average height and bone structure (outliers under 4’8-10, or over 6’6-8 may have different minimums, I don’t know).
Men have a higher calorie need (1500) than women (1200) even at the same height, as they have a higher muscle mass than women (not an absolute statement, a generalization), muscle burns calories even at rest, body fat doesn’t.
You could google scholar for the research on the minimum cal intake, fat burn, etc.
Cheers, h.3 -
Vfleming6416 wrote: »My metabolism has shot through the roof within the past couple of weeks but I've been losing about 2-3lbs consistently since mid-July 2019 (excluding a two week break from exercise). The following list are things I've done to keep it moving:
1. Significantly reduced processed foods and make most of my meals at home (mix of lean meat, veggies and fruits),
2. Eat about 5 to 6 snacks/meals daily,
3. Increased protein intake and spread evenly throughout each snack/meal to reduce hunger pangs and cravings (supplement with protein powders/shakes),
4. Drink a protein shake after exercise,
5. Replaced coffee cream with liquid protein shakes,
6. I don't eat heavy after work. My largest meal is lunch and I keep it light for dinner,
7. Rollerblade and Walk/jog (HIIT style) 6 days a week (I walk at work, home, stores, etc. It all adds up at the end of the day),
8. Sync Fitbit (set goals - I burn about 800 to 1500 calories a day from exercise. For the entire day, I tend to burn between 2,800 to 4,000 calories depending on how active I've been) with MyFitnessPal,
9. I wake up early to exercise before work and may exercise again after work (depends on time and if I feel up to it),
10. Manually set macro-nutrient percentages and calorie (I eat btwn 1,650 to 2,000 a day) in MyFitnessPal to where I'm comfortable and not hungry,
11. I allocate about 250 calories a day towards a sweet treat, (no depriving myself),
12. I have one to two cheat meals a week (preferably on the weekend when I do more exercise),
13. I plan activities with friends and family that involve walking,
14. I don't feel guilty if I overdo it one or two days, especially when my period is coming,
15. I love everything, including condiments, vitamins, and calorie overages, etc.,
16. I weigh or measure everything and try to only eat things that have a package with nutrition facts,
17. When eating at restaurants, I preview the menu and decide on my meal including appetizers, breads, etc. in advance so I can adjust the whole day if necessary,
18. I pack my tote with food for the whole day for work,
19. I take a tote with snacks when I'm running errands to reduce the urge to grab food on the go,
20. I plan my meals ahead of time and log it into MyFitnessPal, and
21. Carry a water bottle everywhere filled with water.
I hope this helps and between all the responses, you find what works best for you. You can do it! :-)
Losing at a rate of 2lbs per week requires creating a 7000cal per week deficit. Creating a deficit this large is only safe or even possible if you have significant amounts of weight to lose.
Most of the items on that list are completely irrelevant with the rest being perhaps, incidentally relevant in so far as they might contribute towards creating the required 1000cal per day deficit.
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I'm not significantly overweight and completely well nourished. I eat almost 2,000 calories a day with well balanced macronutrients. I work out daily and walk a lot so I create a 7000cal or more deficit a week. I also have a set of habits that contribute to me staying fed with mostly whole foods and not eating much junk food so the additional information was provided to help the poster (and anyone else) with creating good habits for managing their nutrition. What works for one may not work for all so 2lbs a week is acceptable if health and nutrition isn't being sacrificed.0
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