Who lost weight more than 2 pounds in a week? And, what helped you most?

Being obese.

I came close to that for a while accidentally, and it was a terrible idea, even though I was obese at the time.

Aggressively fast weight loss increases health risks. It can also cause appearance problems, like thinning hair and more. On top of that, it's hard to stick with long enough to lose a meaningful total amount of weight.

Bad plan.

2 pounds a week might be OK for a while if someone's well over 250 pounds, relatively young and resilient, doesn't have other major stressors in their life, has no significant pre-existing health conditions, eats very nutritiously on those low calories, and has ready access to a medical team in case of deficiencies or complications.

Otherwise, I wouldn't endorse it.

I'm certainly not going to vote to help determine the best way to do a bad thing.

Maybe stop paying attention to tabloids, "reality" TV weight loss shows, internet influencers pushing idealistic and injurious practices as clickbait to market unnecessary things they're selling . . . .

I did. I was sick. (Upset tummy from blood pressure medication). My hair fell out. My skin flaked off. I hurt.
I definitely don't recommend it!

There's healthy and easy, and then there's losing more than 2lbs per week

That's your first piece of advice!

Lugrunk wrote: »

@Alatariel75 what do you mean? I’m not giving any advice to anyone. I'm here to learn people’s experiences on losing weight. Can you take this conversation serious? If not, please do not reply.

I was giving you advice, not saying that you're giving advice.

As you may have picked up from the responses, losing more than 2lbs a week is very rapid, requiring a big calorie deficit, and generally won't happen consistently unless you're significantly overweight. If you're looking for healthy weight loss, first thing to do is to moderate your expectations of how fast it's going to happen.

So how about you tell us all a bit about you, what's your starting point, your goal, your plan, and see what wisdom people have for you? We're genuinely a helpful bunch when we have info to work with.

OK, being serious: Losing weight isn't a quick project with an end date, after which things "go back to normal". That's how yo-yos happen.

The big prize here isn't getting to goal weight, it's finding relatively happy new habits that are also relatively easy to stick with, and that take us gradually to goal weight then keep us there long term, ideally permanently. (I was overweight to obese for around 30 years, lost weight for about a year, have maintained a healthy weight for 9+ years since. The quality of life improvement has been huge. I want that for other people, too, including you.)

What I'd suggest, assuming you're here because you want to calorie count, is:

- Pick a weight loss rate that's around 0.5-1% of current weight per week, with a bias toward the lower end of that unless severely obese to the point it's a significant health threat, and if also under pretty close medical monitoring for deficiencies or complications. Slower is fine.

- Set up your MFP profile as honestly as possible without obsessing over it.

- Start logging your food, every bite, lick, taste. Even if an off day happens, log it to the best of your ability too, even if you have to estimate from memory. It's OK, we're all human.

- Try to stay close to your calorie goal, like averaging within about +/- 50 calories of goal, when looking at weekly average. Don't try to lowball calories. Try to be as accurate as manageable and practical.

- Review your diary regularly. Think about what helped you stay reasonably full and happy on reduced calories. Might be food timing, might be food choices, whatever. If something you did helped, use that eating pattern more often. If there's a bad day, don't beat yourself up. Think about why it happened. Could be appetite, boredom, stress, poor sleep quality/quantity, non-ideal food timing or food choices, over-exercise, emotions, whatever. Improve your plan to avoid repeats of that. For many of us, some easy changes jump out pretty quickly at first, but we may need to get a bit more wily as time goes on to find addition tweaks that help the plan. That's OK.

- Weigh yourself, record the result, but don't worry if it goes up and down. That's normal.

- After 4-6 weeks of pretty close compliance with calorie goal, average your weight change per week over the whole time period. Compare that average weekly loss to the loss rate you requested at the start. If it's lots lower or higher, adjust goal calories using the idea that 500 calories a day is roughly a pound of fat per week. If you have menstrual cycles, compare your body weight at the same relative point in at least 2 different cycles, rather than using a plain 4-6 weeks. Hormonal water weight can be weird.

This is process, kind of like a fun, productive science fair experiment for grown-ups. Make a plan, follow it, check the results, adjust the plan to be better. "Better" is not faster or more extreme; "better" is easier and smoother. Losing any meaningful total amount of weight takes weeks or months, even if going pretty fast.

That puts a priority on finding a routine we can stick with that long . . . and then can continue almost on autopilot at goal weight, so we'll keep going even when other parts of life get demanding . . . because they will. We get a few more daily calories after we reach goal; that's about the only difference. I'm talking not only about eating habits, but also activity - exercise and daily life activity - sleep, and more.

Habits, routine things we do day in and day out, are the power tool for weight management. That one day when we eat too much cake, or work out for 5 hours, is a drop in the ocean. The ocean is the daily routine we have on repeat the overwhelming majority of the time. Focus there.

Finally, realize that this process isn't a character test or a measure of a person's worth as a human being. Like I said, it's a science fair experiment. If something unexpectedly goes wrong, we learn from it, change the plan, and move forward with that improved plan. Beating ourselves up about it adds no value, and feels icky. Tweak the plan to improve it, keep going. Only giving up leads to failing at the goal.

You can do this. I hope you won't feel afraid to participate in the Community here, based on the initial response to your post, because IMO participating can be very beneficial. So many people arrive here on MFP with a radically restrictive eating plan, maybe stack punitively intense, miserable daily exercise on top of that, to "lose weight fast". That usually doesn't end well, but it usually does end quickly. Witness the number of "I'm back having regained" posts in the Introductions section.

Many of the folks who've been successful have done something much more boring than adopting the latest tricksy named diet and hyped exercise routine: Just figuring out a personalized routine that works for them, that they can stick with long term. It's not as glamorous to discuss with friends as the "lose weight fast using the latest fad" approach, but it can work. I recommend it.

Wishing you the best, sincerely - the quality of life benefit is more than worth the effort, in my experience.

Also not going to vote because the answer to the question is ‘Nope’, and ‘None of the above’ to the options.

I lost at a rate of about 0.8lb for the first few months, decreasing to 0.4lb for months and 0.2lb-0.1lb as I approached my goal. It’s not a linear process so there were ups and downs along the way - it’s the overall trend that matters.

Single best advice I read was ‘Trust the process’. That means: set the right target/s; be honest about logging; stick to the plan; be kind to yourself; repeat as necessary.