How to lose 4 pounds per week for 6 weeks?

The basic math of it:

If eating 1200 per day then in order to lose 4 pounds per week, you would need to burn enough to have a 2000 calorie daily deficit. Meaning you would need to burn an extra 2000 daily beyond the 1200 you are consuming.

Your BMR is probably 1600-1650, and if your daily activity (job, hobbies not counting exercise) is fairly light then your total daily burn is probably around 2000-2100. So you'd need to burn 1200 in exercise. At roughly 100 cals burned per 1 mile walked: walk 12 miles a day? But to do that, you'd need more food/fuel to have the energy so then you'd probably need to walk 15-20 miles daily so that you could earn an extra 300-800 calories to keep going. But walking the extra 3-8 miles would require MORE energy, so another few miles to earn a few hundred more calories to keep going. And repeat.

This is why it is not a reasonable goal. In order to exercise enough to burn the extra large deficit, you need to eat into your deficit. Its kind of like a cat chasing its tail. Losing 1-2 pounds weekly, up to 1% of your body weight if you're over 200-300 pounds, is reasonable and safe. You may lose a few extra pounds in the beginning (water weight) but then it will level off.

Accept that your $500 is gone and use it as motivation to create a safe, healthy, and sustainable weight loss routine. In a year or so, the lost money will sting less because you'll have successfully worked towards your goal without hurting yourself.

All I ask is that you come back after the challenge and give us an update about how you did please!!!

Wow, your gym is promoting very unhealthy practices. $500.00 is a big incentive. What did they record your body fat as?

When people talk about it being okay to lose that fast if you are seriously overweight, they are talking about folks who weigh 400 pounds. At 189 pounds, you are unlikely to be able to accomplish this. Even if by some chance you are able to starve yourself into this kind of weight loss, you are likely to be unable to sustain it long term and will quickly put the pounds right back on. Do it smart not fast.

ximenavictoriaxo wrote: »

Oof. This challenge I’ve accepted from a kickboxing gym. So they’ll require that I attend 3 sessions per week and meet with a nutritionist/coach my 3rd and 6th week for the weigh-in. So it’s whatever comes first the 25lbs or 6% body fat, I’m focusing on building muscle instead so I hope to meet the body fat percentage. I actually forgot what my body was but I believe it was prob around 34-35%. I’m 27 and I hope I at least come close to losing 15 pounds. I was 165lbs a few months ago before quarantine, so I hope to bounce back to that weight and start weight lifting.

I didn’t think it was gonna be that bad, considering that years ago (when I was at 150 lbs), I did an all-liquid diet under the supervision of a doctor. They called it “medical weight loss”, they charge $1,500 to put you on 500 calorie plan 🤦🏻‍♀️


My 3rd day of the challenge and I’m already down 4.4 lbs. I have no pre-existing health condition so I hope to keep it that way. Of course I don’t want to keep this up in the long run. 😭 Thanks for the advise everyone.
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Sorry.

I assume you already did your starting weigh-in. If you'd checked in here before hand, and still insisted on going forward after we said things like the above, we would've suggested that you eat lots of salty carby things, to the point of as much intake as you could possibly manage, and drink water to capacity right up to the time of weigh-in, to basically bloat up like a puffer fish and inflate your intake weigh in. (We would've told you not to do that, too, of course, because it's counterproductive to the actual goal of weight loss and health, but it would've given you slightly higher odds on the bet.)

If you make it through this, you can still do the reverse of that (i.e., ultra low carb, low fiber/bulk for maybe the week before the final weigh-in, dehydration the day of (not longer)). That will be a punitive experience, too, unfortunately.

There's an additional couple of potential point of bad news:

1 Gaining muscle mass is a slow process. It would be a remarkably good result for a woman to achieve a quarter pound of mass gain per week, and that would be under ideal conditions (which include a calorie surplus, i.e. gaining weight, not losing it). A well-designed progressive strength training program, relative youth, favorable genetics, and good nutrition (especially protein) are other elements. If the gym has made this bet, the likelihood they'll give you the very best possible strength training program are pretty low, IMO. It's not in their best interests, and the program you describe wouldn't be that. If you've not been exercising routinely before now, the described workout schedule sounds pretty intense, and may bleed energy (so calorie burn) out of the rest of your life.

2. Presumably, they're using some kind of bioimpedance device to measure your body fat (like a scale you stand on, or a device with hand-holds) . The error percentage on those measurements is pretty high, so there's a bit of a crapshoot there evn if they don't manipulate it in some way. Others here can possibly give you tips on how to game such a device on the final weigh-in. I have goals to get stronger and stay at a healthy weight, but I've never cared about accurate body fat estimates, so that's not something I've looked into.

Both the weight loss goal, and going from zero to full speed on training, seem designed to drive people into giving up, frankly.

One piece of good(-ish) news. If I rerun the TDEE calculator (I used https://www.sailrabbit.com/bmr/) with the data you've given us, your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure, i.e., expected daily calorie burn) would be 2300-2600, so probably a few more calories on the table to start. That number will decline as you get lighter. (a smaller body requires fewer calories to move through the world.)

Someone may be able to run the numbers about what might be possible on the 6% body fat goal. It's more complicated math, because as your weight declines, 29=30% body fat is a different number of pounds at each new body weight. IIRC (which I may not) it's normal to lose something like 25% lean mass and 75% fat mass in each pound of weight loss, as a generalized sort of number. This is not necessarily as bad a thing generically as it sounds, because a smaller body requires less of certain things that count as lean tissue compared to a bigger body. (Think blood volume, for one: A 125 pound person needs less of it than a 200 pound person.) To do the calculation of some of the possibilities for you, I'd need to set up a spreadsheet from scratch, and while I do improbably care about you even as a stranger (and even if it doesn't seem like it), that's more work than I'm willing to invest. It's possible that some of the trainers or experienced people here will have some thoughts on body fat percentage changes.

If your true goal is to lose weight, and keep it off, your better bet would be to chalk up the $500 as a learning experience, and move ahead with a higher-nutrition, more moderate weight loss strategy, and to phase in a manageable, enjoyable exercise program with cardio and strength dimensions to it alongside. You wouldn't need to pay anyone, other than perhaps a low-cost gym for equipment access. (Even that might be optional for a while, if things like running and bodyweight exercises would be doable for you. Folks here would help you find the info you need.)

IF you decide to go ahead, you may indeed be able to lose some weight (maybe even 15 pounds) and gain some fitness. Those are both useful goals. Please don't risk your health for either one.

Sincerely, I wish you all the best in your life and health/weight-loss/fitness goals. I second the request above that you come back to this thread and share your experiences and outcomes. Other beginners could benefit from that, successful or not.

Good luck, stay healthy!

You're a good sport and you took it really well.

No. Just. No. I can't even understand why you'd think this possible or worth it. You might be lucky in the first week or two to lose a lot of water weight but it will slow after that.