I am 5’3” and began eating low carb January 2019 with the goal of reaching 135 (30 pound loss). Early in the process I was losing close to 2 lbs a week. As I neared 135 I recognized that was not the most comfortable weight for me so I stayed in loss mode until I felt I had reached the best weight for my body. I am not sure I could have stayed motivated with a huge weight loss goal at the beginning. I would encourage you to stay with the five pound weight loss goals until you are happy with where you are. I am much thinner than I have even been, so I didn’t know where I wanted to be weight wise until I arrived. Best of luck on this journey.

Just know going in that the closer you get to goal, the less weight you will lose every week. This particularly starts being an issue when you get btw 15-20lb of your ideal weight, as weight loss can start to slow down. Since your body decreases the amount of fuel it needs over time as your weight goes down, it's possible to reach a point where you have have to actively cut portions to continue to lose if you aren't a calorie counter, especially if you are like me and don't get the appetite control with low carb (as many folk do not), so you'll have to settle for slow losses. Also, weight loss isn't linear sometimes. As other posters have mentioned, things will derp around, and you may not lose anything one week. The scale is a liar and sometimes we can only see progress in our body measurements (another important non-scale metric.) We retain water, which masks weight loss, for so many reasons and at such random times sometimes.

All this to say that when the losses start to slow down, these are some things to look out for. Knowing this going in, I think, is better than being blind-sided by it. It can be frustrating. And when this happens, keep your gaze focused on your 5-lb goals and Keep Calm and LC On.

Reasonable weight loss is generally 1/2 -1% bw per week. So for a 150 lb person .75-1.5lb/week. Its also recommend to have a higher protein diet so you minimize muscle loss.

Also, i would think hard what you truly want for a goal. Too many people look for aggressive weight loss thinking it will give them the body they desire. And often they hit their goal weight and its not what they true want. For example, if you want a "toned" body, aggressive weight loss make it more difficult to sustain the muscle you need.

I do recognize you may not even know, but its much easier to develop a plan now for your ultimate goal than trying to play catch-up when you hit your initial goal.

AKTipsyCat wrote: »

Hey guys. So I was doing a little research today, trying to keep myself motivated and educated, blah blah... I was looking up the "ideal" weight charts for women... and it spanned from like 110 to 144 for someone my height. (I'm 5'4) I'd like to shoot for something like 135 lbs - but that's almost 50 lbs away and it seems SO FAR (insert whining gif here) - BUT at 2lbs a week I can get there by November. For those of you who have managed to stick to this lifestyle... does 2 lbs a week sound doable?? I've lost weight quickly doing low carb before, but have a tendency to see-saw and this time I'd like to just keep going. I'm currently down 42 from my highest weight and 30ish from the weight I get back to before I rally and cry *NEVER AGAIN* and start all over... LOL.

Also, 135 sounds tiny to me now... I wonder if I'm just setting myself up for failure by thinking long term and should just focus on each 5 pound increment or something. 135 was my average weight when I was in my 20's - but that was a LONG time ago... and even then I wanted to be 125 and never quite could...

@AKTipsyCat I think the rate of loss that works best for you will become clear now that you are researching the subject. The key to real weight loss is learning a Way Of Eating that can last a life time. After 40 years of 100%+ regains I finally gave up dieting to lose weight forever.

My new eating goal was to lower my pain level and clear my mental fog. That started working in about 14 days but it was 45 days before I lost the first pound of weight. After the first few weeks people started commenting on my weight loss but I knew they were just making fun of me because I was weighing every day and was well aware of what the scales were reading.

Thanks to people in this group I read one could become thinner without losing a pound. Finally one day I realized I had to tighten my belt by one hole and my fat jaws were melting but I had not lost a pound yet. Without a weight loss objective I lost 50 pounds over the next year.

Best of success and the info in this group has been key for my health for over 5 years now. What works for you is all that counts in the end.

The average human body can only metabolize about 1% of it's weight in body fat in any given week. Any losses above that are water, or muscle or other non-fat lean mass.

I assume you are looking to lose fat and not aiming to lose other lean mass. As others have noted, losing fat is the key to being smaller and being happy with how your body looks, not to mention improving your health.

Whatever your 1% is, that's the max you should aim to lose in a week. If you are 185 lbs, that's about 1.8 lbs this week. It will reduce over time as you get smaller.

Not sure what your current body fat percentage is, but in theory it could be 25% less in that same 25 weeks...you could go from 50% body fat down to 25% body fat...just as an example (no idea what your current body fat is, but you can find online calculators and do measurements to estimate).