Why is losing weight too fast a bad thing?
Replies
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You were aggressive but I am not sure you were aggressive enough to be in danger of being malnourished. You may have at times been fighting with yourself on retaining muscle. You may have wanted to go fast but did you need to go that fast? Would taking slightly longer been that big of a deal?
I am not sure what this post is meant to accomplish though. You seem happy with the outcome so does this mean everyone should abandon recommended safe weight loss levels because you got away with it? Not everyone does get away with it. Some people go much faster and it does do damage. Some do suffer terrible side effects and/or disordered eating.
I think it's important that people lose weight safely and sustainably. There's no point being slender and dead or slender and almost dead. Admittedly when I first started out weight loss was my primary goal - along the way, overall fitness and strength became equally important and I didn't have a deadline in particular. To be honest, I think I was able to lose so much relatively quickly because I had never really exercised before or moderated what I ate so my body probably just reacted to that.
I think I am struggling with whether there is an objective standard irba simplistic truth. The boards often seem to imply half a kg per week is the limit unless you are very obese and anything more than that is bad. I am not sure that is the case if you are making sure you don't under eat in proportion to calories expended. I agree my weight loss was relatively aggressive but I genuinely believe that it wasn't unsafe. In the last few months, I have been eating 1900, 2000 calories a day with a pretty small deficit as a short female but still losing so I don't think you have to deprive yourself to lose.
Sorry if you think I was advocating unsafe weight loss. I think I was just thinking that slow weight loss over a period years isn't necessarily automatically "healthy" unless it's accompanied by a healthier life style. For instance calorie deficit alone will make you lose weight but it won't automatically make you healthier if you don't do some sort of physical activity/reduce stress levels/eat healthier not just less. Similarly if you exercise like mad but don't eat enough, you'll just harm your own body .2 -
koalathebear wrote: »You were aggressive but I am not sure you were aggressive enough to be in danger of being malnourished. You may have at times been fighting with yourself on retaining muscle. You may have wanted to go fast but did you need to go that fast? Would taking slightly longer been that big of a deal?
I am not sure what this post is meant to accomplish though. You seem happy with the outcome so does this mean everyone should abandon recommended safe weight loss levels because you got away with it? Not everyone does get away with it. Some people go much faster and it does do damage. Some do suffer terrible side effects and/or disordered eating.
I think it's important that people lose weight safely and sustainably. There's no point being slender and dead or slender and almost dead. Admittedly when I first started out weight loss was my primary goal - along the way, overall fitness and strength became equally important and I didn't have a deadline in particular. To be honest, I think I was able to lose so much relatively quickly because I had never really exercised before or moderated what I ate so my body probably just reacted to that.
I think I am struggling with whether there is an objective standard irba simplistic truth. The boards often seem to imply half a kg per week is the limit unless you are very obese and anything more than that is bad. I am not sure that is the case if you are making sure you don't under eat in proportion to calories expended. I agree my weight loss was relatively aggressive but I genuinely believe that it wasn't unsafe. In the last few months, I have been eating 1900, 2000 calories a day with a pretty small deficit as a short female but still losing so I don't think you have to deprive yourself to lose.
Sorry if you think I was advocating unsafe weight loss. I think I was just thinking that slow weight loss over a period years isn't necessarily automatically "healthy" unless it's accompanied by a healthier life style. For instance calorie deficit alone will make you lose weight but it won't automatically make you healthier if you don't do some sort of physical activity/reduce stress levels/eat healthier not just less. Similarly if you exercise like mad but don't eat enough, you'll just harm your own body .
I don't think anyone here has suggested that it's shameful or fatal to lose weight aggressively. I do personally believe there are drawbacks to losing that aggressively, and if you were my friend in real life, I would be concerned about the sustainability of your weight loss. But that doesn't mean that losing weight quicker automatically means you have done damage to your health or will gain weight back. It's all about the risks and benefits of any strategy - while the strategy you took may have risks, risks aren't guarantees and it's up to each person whether they feel the risks are worth it to them. I just want someone thinking about taking an aggressive strategy to make that decision knowing the risks and making an informed decision.
I would respectfully disagree that losing weight doesn't necessarily make you healthier - a person who keeps the exact same lifestyle and diet but goes from obese to a healthy weight will almost certainly see most if not all of their health markers improve. Obviously, improving your lifestyle and activity level is optimal.
Congrats on your weight loss!5 -
koalathebear wrote: »I am 5 feet tall (150cm) and have lost 32 kg in 9 months going from 86.6kg to 54.4kg working with my PT.
I assume that's considered too much too fast - although I eat a tonne and exercise a tonne... Although I worked really, really hard - counted calories eaten and my training regimen included cardio and strength training.
Although I feel fitter and stronger than I have ever felt, based on threads like this I always feel like I have done something wrong and shameful... and should be waiting to die suddenly - hairless, tired, dizzy, sallow - pitifully gnawing on my toenailess toes with pale toothless gums... while clawing feebly at a nearby wall with nailess fingertips...
I don't think that's the kind of aggressive loss we were talking about.
I'm 5'3 and went from over 200 (probably 220, but I didn't weigh at my highest) to 125 in about a year. I lost the first 50 lb I actually tracked (200 to 150 I think, could have been 210 to 160, hard to remember and I deleted my old account) in 6 months. I don't think I did anything dangerous, and my health was fine and I never ate below 1200 + exercise except accidentally at the very beginning (but am not counting activity level toward exercise). I also ate 100+ g of protein most days and 10+ servings of veg, and was generally nutrition conscious.
But when someone who is not even obese wonders why it's problematic to lose 3 lb/week or some such, I think it's worth noting that there are negative experiences that people have, and I also wonder -- despite the fact that I exercised and gained strength while losing -- if at some point I lost more muscle than necessary.
I think the 1% of body weight per week on average is a pretty good goal when one is not under a doctor's supervision. It's not about shaming people, it's about people (especially smaller women) who want to aim for 3 lbs when losing vanity weight (or even a kg), or others who seem to assume that 5 lb a week is possible or express disappointment and a feeling of failure when losing 1 lb a week at 150 or some such.2 -
Hi! OP here. I saw a lot of posts about me vanishing. Honestly I posted this when was browsing the forums and saw a few comments about losing too fast and never checked it again. Oops.
To clarify - this was ABSOLUTELY not about me. I’d love to be able to lose 3lbs a week on 1800 calories a day, but I’m pretty sure thats near maintenance for me. I think I’d have to workout 24 hours a day to lose 3lbs a week on that amount of calories. My weight loss is at maybe 1lb a week or so depending on other factors. I don’t really know, I check my weight monthly so I’m estimating weekly values. I wasn’t looking for anyone’s permission or anything to lose 3lbs a week. With my stats I’d literally have to eat 0 calories a day for that to happen, and I’m not trying to starve to death.
It was a general question. I always see people commenting in the forums advising others about slowing down and losing too fast. I know that the human body can’t function without protein, carbs, and essential nutrients and that eating too few calories is not good because you won’t be able to get the energy your body needs.
I was just wondering why someone who is in the morbidly obese category wouldn’t be able to eat 1800 calories, even if it would give them a higher daily deficit. At 1800 calories most people would be able to fill their macro and nutrition goals, even if they’re morbidly obese and burning more than that. I’m looking at this from an example perspective, assuming their body is burning 3300 calories a day assuming activity. A moderately active woman who weighs somewhere around 300lbs could easily be in that range.
I guess my question was more about if there are any actual medical issues that can occur. Is it bad for your heart, other vital organs, etc. Thanks for the replies though...3 -
I'm not sure the posters being told they should slow down their pace are typically morbidly obese. It's unfortunate you didn't say "morbidly obese" in your OP as it would've greatly changed the responses and direction the thread took.
While I believe the less than 1% of your body weight would still generally apply, I think someone morbidly obese does have a bit of wiggle room in the beginning and their risk/reward calculations will be different. If they would like to lose weight more quickly or greatly increase exercise, they should probably talk to their doctor to ensure their cardiovascular system can handle the exercise and their diet is nutritionally sound at that deficit.
I guess all the posts about the random 400 lb man were on point after all :drinker:3 -
Burning fat is a process - like burning wood, you don't just light it on fire and the whole pile goes poof! Your body can only burn so much fat at once.
If your body needs more energy right now than it can get from burning fat right now, it has two choices - either get energy from somewhere else (by going after muscle tissue) or don't do something it needs to do (like repair damaged cells, efficiently digest food, grow hair). If you ask it to make that decision consistently, it will start to try to get you to lower your activity to save calories with fatigue, weakness, and accelerated appetite & cravings. That combo is often what causes those who lose weight aggressively to gain it back aggressively.
Do you know of any scientific papers to explain this, the fact that parts of the body's systems don't work properly when a deficit is too much? Also, at what point does it get to the detriment of various biological systems?0 -
kshama2001 wrote: »
I don't understand why the "Suggested" weight loss rate for under 20 pounds is so low. A deficit of 250 isn't much, I'm sure that a lot of people here would agree.1 -
koalathebear wrote: »I am 5 feet tall (150cm) and have lost 32 kg in 9 months going from 86.6kg to 54.4kg working with my PT.
I assume that's considered too much too fast - although I eat a tonne and exercise a tonne... Although I worked really, really hard - counted calories eaten and my training regimen included cardio and strength training.
Although I feel fitter and stronger than I have ever felt, based on threads like this I always feel like I have done something wrong and shameful... and should be waiting to die suddenly - hairless, tired, dizzy, sallow - pitifully gnawing on my toenailess toes with pale toothless gums... while clawing feebly at a nearby wall with nailess fingertips...
The following questions are ones describing the issues you will come up against now you've reached goal.
How are you coping with the shift into maintenance? Maintaining weight is just as hard, if not harder than losing weight, because there's no end in sight, and we see so many in the Maintenance forum speak of the battles in changing their mindset and their dieting habits.
How will you cope with an injury if you keep eating a tonne?
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The following questions are ones describing the issues you will come up against now you've reached goal.
How are you coping with the shift into maintenance? Maintaining weight is just as hard, if not harder than losing weight, because there's no end in sight, and we see so many in the Maintenance forum speak of the battles in changing their mindset and their dieting habits.
How will you cope with an injury if you keep eating a tonne?
How are you coping with the shift into maintenance? Maintaining weight is just as hard, if not harder than losing weight, because there's no end in sight, and we see so many in the Maintenance forum speak of the battles in changing their mindset and their dieting habits.
Fine. I was essentially been in maintenance mode the two months prior to hitting goal anyway, with a very, very small deficit in the last few weeks prior to hitting goal. In addition, during the period of weight loss, I had wisdom teeth surgery - to make sure I recovered properly, I had to essentially eat at maintenance levels. I don't really struggle with the dieting habits because my right from the beginning, my PT and I came up with an exercise and a nutrition plan that factored in that I wanted to be able to eat food that I liked and that if I denied myself food, I was more likely to fail. Thus, throughout the weight journey (the fitness journey will continue), I've always factored in food I liked within my daily calorie budget and I have remained within my calorie budget. If I I want to eat something that might put me over, generally I'd just tell myself to eat it the following day. For maintenance, I'm continuing to log calories in and calories out as I have been doing throughout. I don't see myself ceasing logging as it's a useful tool and very little effort. I also continue to receive the support and guidance of my PT and I've gone from never doing any exercise at all to exercising every day - albeit not necessarily at the gym.
How will you cope with an injury if you keep eating a tonne?
Eating a tonne is perhaps an overstatement, I was merely making the point that not everyone who loses a lot of weight eating below the safe threshold prescribed - which I have observed is the usual assumption made by many posters - i.e as mentioned above I have been eating well above my minimum threshold but also staying within my calorie budget.
I totally understand that a lot of the posters here are very experienced and have been here a long time and seen people lost weight and fall off the wagon and I'm certainly not saying that that won't happen to me because no one ever knows what will happen - but it is a little disheartening for people to automatically assume that everyone is doing things blindly for vanity reasons that are counter intuitive and diametrically opposed to a healthy outcome. Some of us embark on the journey for sound fitness reasons, with the guidance and advice of professionals in relation to nutrition, exercise and physical constraints. I worked really hard and was very lucky that the weight came off - if it had taken me a year to do it, i would have been fine with that as I had no deadline, I just knew that carrying around all that extra weight was really, really bad for me. I just find it a bit sad/disappointing (which was why it actually took me a while to make my first post on this forum in the beginning), that successes can be twisted around to make people feel like they've done something wrong. Then again, this is the Internet and it's always a bad idea to debate/argue on the Internet
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I don't understand why the "Suggested" weight loss rate for under 20 pounds is so low. A deficit of 250 isn't much, I'm sure that a lot of people here would agree.
When you have only vanity pounds to lose, weight loss is slow because you generally don't have as much body fat to lose as someone who is obese and quite often with that amount to lose you're already in a healthy weight range.
Let's take a Sedentary 30 year old Average Height 140lb female (that would be at the higher end of normal weight per BMI), you're talking a maintenance of around 1550 calories.
If they wanted to lose 20lbs )lower end of healthy BMI range) and chose 1lb per week (500 calorie deficit) that would require their intake to be 1050 calories, which would put them below the recommended 1200 calorie intake for a woman.
If they chose 0.5lbs per week that would be 1300 calories, which is above and likely to be more sustainable too.
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kshama2001 wrote: »
I don't understand why the "Suggested" weight loss rate for under 20 pounds is so low. A deficit of 250 isn't much, I'm sure that a lot of people here would agree.
"Isn't much" needs context of for who though.
I think charts like that really need to be put in personal context so would question the benefit of why it gets posted so freqently. "General Suggestions" in great big text seems to get ignored and it becomes another example of group think being proferred as a universal truth.
Seems daft to recommend the same calorie deficit for petite sedentary female with a TDEE of under 1500 to me with a TDEE of 3,000 - 3,500.4 -
Ok, my Last thoughts on this. To quote a obesity researcher who I contacted with my issues told me. "The adipostat is much like a spring. The farther you pull away from a resting point, the harder it pulls back." Notice he did not say quicker? No denying that quicker weight loss may get you to a pull back point quicker, but even folks who lose weight at a more modest rate get compensation issues. I think there is a place In weight loss where one can have some tension on the spring, but not that much pull back. When one pushes past those, the spring tightens some more.1
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Burning fat is a process - like burning wood, you don't just light it on fire and the whole pile goes poof! Your body can only burn so much fat at once.
If your body needs more energy right now than it can get from burning fat right now, it has two choices - either get energy from somewhere else (by going after muscle tissue) or don't do something it needs to do (like repair damaged cells, efficiently digest food, grow hair). If you ask it to make that decision consistently, it will start to try to get you to lower your activity to save calories with fatigue, weakness, and accelerated appetite & cravings. That combo is often what causes those who lose weight aggressively to gain it back aggressively.
Do you know of any scientific papers to explain this, the fact that parts of the body's systems don't work properly when a deficit is too much? Also, at what point does it get to the detriment of various biological systems?
No I don't, sorry. As to at what point, I would expect that would depend on a whole host of variables: How lean are you trying to get? How much excess fat do you have? How active are you? How much muscle do you currently have? How healthy did you start out? What is the macro distribution of your diet? What foods do you eat? Do you have other lifestyle health-risks? How stressful is the rest of your life? I'm sure there are more.
Cases of anorexia tend to show the ways the body will cut back body processes as long as it can before it starts using muscle and organs for fuel. And lots of people will report that several months after periods of sickness or undereating that caused fast weight loss, they experienced significant hair loss and muscle fatigue. It makes sense that the body uses the energy we give it to do all the things that keep us healthy and alive, and if we hold too much energy back over a long period of time, it's going to drop the ball here and there as it scrambles to make do with a lot less.
I don't think there is hard science that suggests a very specific rate of loss or calorie deficit guidelines for every single person. All we can do in most cases is throw up general guidelines. I think we tend to err on the side of caution here because we don't have all the personal info for each poster, and we'd rather cause someone to lose weight a little slower than they need to, rather than risk encouraging someone to lose quicker and possibly hurt themselves or crash & burn. And obviously there is a certain amount of personal opinion and bias, and personal firsthand experience.5 -
psychod787 wrote: »psychod787 wrote: »cmriverside wrote: »What Azdak said.
All you people disagreeing with him have been drinking the MFP Kool Aid.
Someone who is morbidly obese would do fine on 1800. It is way more important to get that weight off as soon as possible (for the obese/morbidly obese.)
That person has plenty of body fat to use as fuel. It's important to get good nutrition with that 1800, but it would be more than sufficient - regardless of activity level.
This is not a statement that is true across the board though. Being morbidly obese does not mean a person is in any imminent medical danger and that losing weight at an aggressive pace is always justified. People in their ideal weight range can have substantial medical problems and a morbidly obese person, while at a higher risk, can go on like that for years although at the very least they are causing problems for joints. Genetics play a large role.
"Getting the weight off as soon as possible" mentality kept me morbidly obese. I was not in perfect health but I was not in any immediate danger either.
This is why a doctor's visit is needed. Get checked and get a real report on your current health. Make informed decisions so that you can find an appropriate pace for yourself.
It is likely going to be safer to go at a slower sustainable pace and actually get the weight off then keep trying to go fast and failing. That does not mean a 440lb person must only lose a maximum of 2 pounds per week though. That is ridiculous. Something higher than 2 and less than 4 should be fine with the caveat that losing more aggressively should be paired with good nutrition habits.
Activity does matter though and 1800 calories could create too steep of a deficit even for a 440 pound person. Rate of loss and sustainability should decide calories not the other way around.
Well.. I usually agree with most of what you add, but here is just a small hole in this logic. We have no idea what might have brought someone into their "ideal" weight. That's the problem with using population studies. We have no idea if those people who are "sicker" at their ideal weight may have been larger, but lost weight d/t say, cancer, M.S. dementia... ect. I do agree one can be larger and still be healthier.
So you have never known people that have never carried extra weight that suffered from diabetes, heart disease, and various other conditions that are often associated with people who carry too much extra weight? I certainly know several. I know a guy that was always the picture of health. Super active, never carried any noticeable weight, was super cautious about what he ate, and still nearly died from heart disease.
That's what I am saying. Its hard to use population research/ demographics to tell health issues with people. Lol.. I am "nurse" like thing?🤔 So, yes, i have seen much. Including kids with cancer who never smoked.... I state that genetics and environment plays a part in everything. All I was saying is we have to be careful how we use these studies.
Edit.... some people just seen to be more resistant to weight gain. There is no telling how "bad" some of the lean peoples diets were. Also, little known fact about type 2 d.m. is that uncontroled blood sugar causes a wasting effect. People with high b.s. can and do lose lots of weight!
Then I am not sure where you find the problem with my logic. Maybe I should restate:
Statistically speaking if you are obese or heavier you need to make weight loss a high priority. It does not mean, however, that you need to go on crash diets and lose weight at breakneck speeds unless you have an immediate medical threat to your health. Unless a doctor tells you otherwise I think people should start by assuming they have time to lose weight and pick a speed that is sustainable. A lot of progress can be made in a single year.
Thanks, that's what I was trying to get at as well.0
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