1-2 lbs/week not enough

1-2 lb a week is great! Anything more would be quite ambitious and possibly losing too fast (yes there is such a thing)

If you lost more than 2 lbs a week you would be losing lean body mass, not fat, and you dont want to lose that. Sounds as if you are doing great.

Not in any way or shape thats healthy.

Too much of a deficit can lead to muscle loss. 1-2 pounds per week is considered the optimal for healthy weight loss by most experts.

Muscle is a calorie burning engine. Keep in mind also, that if you start to lose muscle, you will invariably burn less calories

If you lost more than 2 lbs a week you would be losing lean body mass, not fat, and you dont want to lose that. Sounds as if you are doing great.

Is that true in all cases? I am doing P90X, losing inches where I dont want it, and adding where I do... eating about 2000 calories of lean protein, multi grain carbs and no dairy but I have lost a total of about 10 pounds in two weeks.

Patients IS the key to weight loss. For me in the past I'd get frustrated that I am not seeing results fast enough & then I'd quit and gain back whatever weight I did lose & then some. 1-2 lbs a week is the golden number to losing weight & keeping it off. P90X is great if you want to get more active & for the first few weeks you will probably see an increase in your weight loss, but just remember that more than that for too long can become harmful to the body.
So again just be patient & be careful!

Mcdonl,

It's possible for the first couple weeks to have a dramatic weight loss and body change, especially taking into account all of those components, but 5 lbs of fat loss a week over the long term is not going to continue.

Unless your weigth is MORE than 300lbs, 2lbs per week is the maximum recommended.

You can technically lose more than that... but in reality, you won't lose any more FAT than that 2lbs/week. If you succeed to loose 4lbs/week, you'll technically loose about 2.5 lbs of MUSCLE and less than 1.5 of fat (because your body will go in starving mode).

It's a slow progress... but trying to get shortcut will only cause as many health problems than obesity.

I Hope that helps!

Unfortunately, yes. I lost 149 pounds and would LOVE to say that it was all fat. It isn't like I didn't have that much!! Sadly a noticeable amount of it was muscle. My massage therapist told me that she could not feel any muscle in my legs--only bone. And I was unable to lift my leg more than an inch off the bed due to almost non-existent hip flexors. It has taken a year of working out in the gym to rebuild some of that. I walked 1.8 miles this am and then did some strength training. including leg lifts. IF your body perceives that fat is being lost too quickly, it will start using muscle mass to protect you. Great if you are in a famine. Not so good if you just want to lose weight quickly. Good luck.

The safe AND healthy amount of weight is 1% of your body weight. (for example: 200 lbs --> 2 lbs per week)

Also, make sure you review your calorie settings. If you indicated that you exercise 3 times a week for 30 mins, then MFP has already adjusted your calories for that 90 mins of exercise.

Last but not least, don't forget to take measurements!!!! It's not just about weight. (At minimum arms, waist and legs.)

Don't get discouraged, slow and steady wins the race.

...and quit watching 'The Biggest Loser'.

I aim for 1200 cals a day rarely eat my exercise calories unless I am hungry and try to get all my vitamins etc from the foods I eat (No supliments) other than a protein shake for breakfast as I tend to have this meal on the run and the shakes help me avoid skipping it compleatly.

I had a long chat with my DR before starting and a full health check - he agreed my diet plan.

I would be really happy with 1-2lbs a week however my body for now is sheding more....

So the answer is yes you can lose more but focus on health and a lifestyle change you can maintain or all your hard work will be in vein as the weight will creep back on...

Good luck

Lucy

Lucy- Thanks for this post, I was just about to ask about this 1-2 lb/wk thing. I see you are also on 1200 cal/day, like me, and your Dr approved your plan. That makes me feel so much better. I was afraid that because I was losing more than 1-2 lb/wk (except zero last week due to hormonal crap from PCOS and endometriosis) that I may be losing muscle. I lost 8 lb's in the first week, zero the 2nd, and now have lost a pound a day for the last 3 days. I feel better than before the diet change. I had some aching in my calves and thighs the first week until I started taking a multivitamin.


To those in the know, my first question is, how do you know you're losing muscle? Do you have muscle aches or weakness? I believe everyone's body is unique and while I'm sure 1-2 lbs is a good average, I want to figure out how much I personally can lose without losing muscle. Is there a way to calculate or measure this without going somewhere where they put you in that egg-looking thing? I like my progress so far, and want to maintain it as long as possible, but clearly not if I'm losing muscle, which I have very little of left anyway from being inactive so long.

...and quit watching 'The Biggest Loser'.

BINGO!!!! THATS what frustrates! me! I'm 308 lbs so no lightweight and could lose 80-100 lbs.

I was 325 with a mean streak to boot... I went on the weightloss yo-yo diet and kept getting grouchier.

Losing it slowly has kept it off for almost three years now. Much happier too... I can't remember the last time someone really p!ss3d me off

So since I've started MFP, im eating back my calories but still coming in with a little deficit every day. if I have pulled a pound or maybe 2 a week I'm lucky. I walk on treadmill and ride stationary bike 4 times a week for an hour averaging 450 or more calories/workout. I'd sure like to push 3-5 lbs per week. I want to start P90x to increase my deficit every day. Will that get me where I want to be?

We can't say for sure what will work for you but I, like a number of other people here, have lost lots of weight and done it very quickly.

I was on a diet of 800-1000 net cals/day for about 7 months and I lost 95 pounds. My BP is down (I'm off BP meds) and I'm very healthy - blood work is excellent, pulse is under 50 BPM, and I ran a half-marathon in August and am training for a full marathon in December.

My diary is open and you can see my weight loss here:

http://cbeinfo.net/weight.htm

(Scroll down to the center of the page and you'll see summary data in the form of a table that shows how much I was averaging over time.)

There's nothing wrong with losing one or two pounds a week — at two pounds a week, you will drop your 124 pounds by Christmas of next year. Can you amp it up to five pounds a week? Perhaps but that very, very rapid weight loss and it's far more than any number I've heard of (my GF runs a weight loss clinic here in Southern California and she's told me that my loss rate is one of the highest that she's seen.) When I was losing weight, I was averaging about 0.8 pounds per day but you can see that I went through "loss phase" followed my a "recovery phase" so my overall average was much less than 0.8 PPD.


This link provides a little different view:

http://cbeinfo.net/weightlosspercentage.htm


Note that the amount of weight that I lost varied significantly (that's the blue line) but the percentage of weight loss had only a slight downward trend:

http://cbeinfo.net/weightlosspercentage.htm

(I had Excel add the trendline)



The good news is that, like I was, you've got a lot of weight to lose. That's good in that you can lose weight faster with124 pounds than if you had only 24 pounds to lose.

Also males tend to lose weight more easily than women. I won't theorize as to why but it is something that I think is generally accepted.


Regarding losing lean mass - it's very hard not to lose lean body mass. One reason is that there's less of you to haul around so losing some lean mass is probably inevitable. On the other hand, you want to try to retain some of the muscle mass that you have now but, again, losing the amount of muscle you have sort of makes sense since there's less of you to move around.

Regarding lose skin - I don't have any. I recently had a conversation with a 25 year old named Ian about a product called "Body Glide". Runners use it to stop chafing but I didn't know what it was for! Ian and I were two of the 8,000 people waiting for the starting gun at the half-marathon in San Diego in August and the reason that I didn't know what it was for was that, thanks to my diet, I don't have anything that rubs!

Regarding gaining the weight back - this can happen. If you lose weight, you can gain it back. If you lose weight slowly, you can gain it back. If you go on a fad diet, you can gain it back. Barring medical issues, the only way to gain weight is to put something in your mouth and ingest it. If you lose weight and don't learn good eating habits (if you don't "create a new relationship with food") it increases the chances that you will gain weight. I can't cite a source for this but some of the reading that I've done explains the reason why people regain weight though most sites don't.

Lean body mass - the only metrics I've seen on fat loss to lean body mass loss is that you should try to have s 3 to 1 ratio so if you lose 124 pounds, you should lose 3/4 of that as fat and only 1/4 of that as lean body mass. When I lost weight, my varied from 0.75 to -35.71 with an overall average of 3.00/1
I've been measured by three different body comp machines and none of them agree. One is the machine at a Lindora clinic, the other two are the Omron handheld devices. And all three give me a different number. Hmm.
I've used the machine at the clinic as my reference.

OK, why the detailed info?

Cause I hope it can help you make a decision about changing your diet (and 'cause you ride). And because it's clear that there's lots of variance in how people think people should lose weight.

As we've seen in this thread, there are absolutes thrown about with folks saying "Y will result if you do X". Fortunately, my body never got that memo! In a large group, many people are well served by losing 1 to 2 pounds a week, drinking 8 glasses of water per day, and eating back your exercise calories so that you consume at least 1200 calories per day. Those numbers and those behaviors work really well for lots and lots of people. And, as experience shows us, in most endeavors, there are many ways to accomplish a given goal and one size does not fit all.

If you are not content with how quickly you're losing weight, here are two things from my approach that might help - cut your calories and swap your carb and protein percentages.

1 - Cut your calories. Yes, if you eat below 1200 calories you will go into MFP "starvation mode" or, perhaps burst into flames but, as hundreds of thousands of people who have gone through the Lindora weight loss program here in SoCal have discovered, that calorie level can be a very safe way to lose weight. Lindora puts their clients on 800-1000 cals/day so I decided to use that calorie level and it worked very well for me.

2 - Swap your carb percentage and protein percentage. I'll refer to that as "protein heavy" and MFP's percentages as "carb heavy" (I'm using those terms not to cast dispersions on a given carb-protein mix, rather only to identify them).
I can't say that protein heavy "worked for me" because I can't identify exactly why I had such a great weight loss experience (except for MPF which totally rocks!) but when I was using a protein-heavy diet, I felt five times (I counted…bu no spreadsheet for that) Starting in June, I've been averaging over 20 miles per week (running) and, based on the advice I've gotten in the running world, I've switched back to carb-heavy. And I've gotten hungry and, at times, very hungry. Protein "stays with you", carbs "run through you".

My weight loss experience, like many, many other folks who have followed a diet of 800-1000 net cals/day allowed me to lose well over two pounds per week and have a superb outcome. Try it and see if it works for you.

3,500 calories = 1 pound.

If you are losing 2 pounds a week, that means you are burning an additional 7,000 calories a week. That's pretty damned good. You didn't gain 3-5 pounds a week during your gain. So you won't lose it that quickly either. I too would LOVE to lose a ton of weight quickly. But I'm proud of what I have lost, and more importantly, I'm proud of the changes I've made. Non-scale victories are things you should be looking at, along with the scale.