For those who lost all the weight. What was your rate of weight loss for your entire journey?

I lost 22.5 kg (about 50 lb) over 9 months which averages just over 1 lb per week. However, I am (and was then) retired, so I have holidays, days out, meals with friends, etc. So I had many weeks when I lost 2 lbs, but also many weeks with no loss (even gained a little when away on holiday for a fortnight) and of course, all amounts on between. My weight loss was not linear, and in fact, very few people will have a linear weight loss pattern.

As the others have said above, everyone is unique and should follow their own route, with the goal of being healthy.

another thing, if you’re closing your diary that “you will weigh Xxx in five weeks” thing drove me barking crazy. M

I sincerely beleive that’s what drives away many users. They feel they’ve failed if the don’t meet that digital goal.

I lost about 11.5 lbs my first month (it was actually down lower after about 3 weeks but I took a weeks vacation in there and popped up a bit). Was down 21.5 lbs after 2 months. I slowed it down after that and I am maintaining about a 25-29 loss for the past few months.

I actually started a low-FODMAP diet at the end of May, and started keeping track of my weight just to see if I was having other "issues" besides by digestion, and the weight just FELL off. I've slowly reintroduced some food that are on the naughty list and they seem to be ok for me, but wow I know that diet isn't about weight loss but boy howdy did it drop off weight for me!

In total, I lost about 50 pounds. It was faster at first, intentionally very slow at the end.

I lost close to 2 pounds a week at the start, which was too fast. I got weak and fatigued, then took multiple weeks to recover even though I corrected as soon as I realized. No one needs that. I was lucky. I may've had a little hair thinning, had some problems with my nails peeling/splitting, but it could've been much worse. It is for some people: Muscle loss, immune system supression, gallbladder problems, and more.

A common recommendation around here is to lose around half a percent of current weight per week, maybe up to one percent if severely obese and under medical supervision for nutritional deficiencies or health complications. Maybe someone can lose faster than half a percent without health risks if young, resilient, and in an otherwise very low stress lifestyle, At 200 pounds, half a percent is a pound a week. At 400 pounds, it'd be two pounds a week.

Another different rule of thumb is to cut no more than 20% to maybe 25% from current weight maintenance calories.

Fast weight loss can be a trap: Harder to stick with long enough to lose a meaningful total amount of weight, and doesn't much help a person realistically learn how to eat long term in order to stay at a healthy weight. (Most people find keeping weight off harder than losing it in the first place.) On top of that, there's no way to get minimally adequate nutrition on too-few calories, because we need certain minimum volumes of protein, fats, and micronutrients. Pills and powders are much hyped, but not an equivalent substitute for nutrients from food.

I averaged a pound a week weight loss over the whole time I was losing. Like I said, faster at first, very slow at the end. In my case, the loss didn't slow by itself - a thing many do experience. I had to intentionally increase calories to slow down.

The too-fast loss lasted maybe as much as a month or two before I crashed. After that, the loss rate was down to around a pound a week for most of the time I kept losing. When I got to maybe 10-15 pounds remaining, I started slowing down, aiming for more like half a pound a week. Once I reached a good weight, I gradually increased calories so overshot goal weight by a few pounds while trying to find accurate maintenance calorie level. I've been maintaing my weight in a healthy range for around 10 years since loss, while old (just turned 70), of course menopausal, and severely hypothyroid (medicated). That was after being overweight to obese for around 30 years, the last dozen of which I was already athletically active, working out hard generally 6 days most weeks.

Personally, given my experiences, I wouldn't try losing as fast as 2 pounds a week unless I were waaaay over 200 pounds. More difficult, more unpleasant, more health risk. Last time I'd let a literal few pounds creep on in maintenance, I crept them off again: Looking backward, it was around a pound a month of weight loss. 😆 Yup, slow, probably not ideal for someone with lots to lose, but for a few pounds, I'd do it again if I had to. It was pretty much painless.

Best wishes!

.7 lbs a week and I treated the entire 4 months like I was going to the Olympics. Accuracy and consistency with zero room for error.

Crazy thing is, maintenance isn’t that much different. You still need to be accountable, eat roughly the same things, you just get slightly more calories.

When I see people needing to lose less than 50 lbs shooting for “a slow 2 lbs a week”, I just shake my head. 2 lbs is Formula 1 fast in the game of weight loss, and grueling. Just don’t.

In the beginning it's easy to lose two pounds per week when you have a lot of weight to lose. The body uses stored body fat for energy.

After a while at a low enough calorie level that would facilitate a two pound per week loss, vitamin and mineral intake has become a problem. Unless you're under doctor or Dietician supervision, that's inevitable. It's nearly impossible to get sufficient nutrition on very low calories. So health and vitality are going to suffer, there's really no way around that. Fatigue, irritability, trouble sleeping, depression, hair/nail/skin problems are common side effects a couple months in. Trust me, you don't want to have to deal with that.

So no. I lost around 80 pounds over a period of two years. It was fast at first and then like Ann, I hit a wall and it took a couple months to recover from under-eating. I went up in calories and lost the rest of the weight at a more reasonable rate.

Thank heaven for coaches and trainers who will speak their minds when necessary, right? This is exactly what happened to me.

What I thought would be the “perfect goal weight” simply was not. Weight sits differently at 56 than 26.

My first time losing weight on MFP, I dropped about 50lbs in a little under a year, was very bony, but that was before I discovered a love affair with weightlifting and packed on muscle (and fat with it).

This past year I made an effort to drop fat while keeping the muscle I'd earned, and I lost 35lbs in almost exactly a year, keeping almost all of the muscle along the way. Now I really like the way I look!

If you do the math, this second weight loss effort averaged out to 0.67 lbs/wk, but here's the thing: out of those 52 weeks of the year, I think I lost that magic 0.67 lbs/wk for maybe two of the weeks. The rest of the time I was losing a pound here, a half a pound there, go up a pound, maintain, drop two pounds…the weekly numbers were all over the map.

Even now in "maintenance" my weight has fluctuated up two pounds in one week, down two pounds the next week…without changing the way I eat, exercise, sleep, etc.

So the question "for your entire journey" seems a bit disingenuous to me.