how fast should you lose weight?

In an ideal world weight loss would be just take a couple of hours with minimal effort needed. Maybe hours is too long too, minutes. Minutes would be ideal.

Unfortunately that’s not the kind of world we live in and there really is no such thing as losing weight quickly. Well lemme rephrase that, there’s no such thing as losing weight quickly and keeping it off.

You want to lose weight quickly? Eat nothing except water for the next couple of days you’ll confirm shave a couple of kgs off instantly. But obviously you can’t not eat forever, so what happens after you go back to eating regularly? You gain all that weight you lost from not eating back. And so begs the question of what’s the point of losing weight if you can’t keep it off? Doing something extreme can change the number on the scale temporarily, but what’s the point if ultimately you end up where you started?

That right, it’s pointless.

That’s the problem of losing weight too fast.

The thing about losing weight too fast is it’s always the result of doing something extreme. Now fast & extreme could vary, you could be doing something so extreme you couldn’t even keep it up for 3 days, or something less extreme that you could keep up with for 3 weeks but after that you still ultimately end up quitting. The end result is the say just with a delayed effect.

So what is the right pace of losing weight?

I think instead of looking at numbers, the first thing to ask yourself is can you see yourself following your diet plan for the next year. If you can’t see yourself hanging on for that long, chances are the diet you’re following is on the extreme side. If you can, then it’s a good pace to start with.

Numbers wise I’d say losing more than 1% of your total body weight per week would be considered too fast. Of course there are exceptions to that as the first couple of weeks of starting any diet usually reaps faster/more results, but after the first couple of weeks 1% can be a reliable guide on the speed of your progress.

What does that look like in numbers?

If you’re around 50kg, you’ll wanna maximum be losing 0.5kg a week. If you’re 90kg then you’ll wanna go no faster than losing 0.9kg a week.

Remember these are maximum speeds, not minimum.

There is no minimum.

As long as you’re making some kind of progress even if it’s not progress on the scale, you’re going a great job and there’s nothing more to do except to keep going.

There’s nothing wrong with going slow. Slow is a good thing when it comes to weight loss cos the likelihood of you being able to stick to your program is a lot higher. Losing 0.5kg per month isn’t slow, that’s still 6kg lost in a year. 6kg lost in a year permanently is HUGE progress. It beats losing 20kg a year but then gaining it all back the next.

So how fast should you lose weight?

Start by going as slow as possible focusing on the process rather than results. The goal is to make habits and lifestyle changes that you can stick to in the long run. Once you’re comfortable with your routine and feel you can kick up the intensity a lil then do that. Losing weight is a long long process. The goal is to do whatever it takes to not quit and hang on for a long as possible.

Stop trying to go faster.

The quickest path to your goals is being as patient and as consistent as possible. When you go too fast and end up back where you started ultimately you’re just adding unnecessary time to your journey.

Hope this helps!

Till the next one~

—Po