how fast can you lose weight?

Let's talk about the realistic expectations of the speed of sustainable weight loss.

Sustainable being the key word here.

I mean sure, we’ve all been sold on those magical methods that promise you 10kg in a week or two and some of them actually work. The thing is, you lose that much in 2 weeks it’s likely you gain it all back 2 days later. Then you’re back to where you started and all that effort and suffering was basically pointless.

If the weight you lose isn’t sustainable then it’s not very meaningful.

So what’s a realistic speed of losing weight?

Roughly 0.5-1% of your bodyweight or less per week.

So if you weigh 80kg currently, 0.5% is 0.4kg per week. If you keep that up consistently that’s 1.6kg per month. Sounds slow right? Well it is if you compare it to those crash diets, but check this out. If you lose 1.6kg per month for a year, that’s 19.2kg per year.

19.2kg is a lot. It’s nothing to scoff at.

Being normal humans it’s natural for us to always feel impatient and want results as fast as possible. I get it. Our desires is what those crash diet programs use against us.

The hard truth is 0.5-1% per week is basically as fast as it goes when we take sustainability into consideration. For weight loss to be sustainable you gotta change your lifestyle, your habits. Lifestyle and habit changes take time, a lot of time. You’re not gonna change your habits over night, or over a week, or even a mere month. It’s gonna take a lot of adjusting, a lot of trial and error.

Also remember that weight loss isn’t a linear path. It’s quite impossible to lose exactly 0.5% of your bodyweight week after week for a whole year. Some weeks you might lose 0.1%, some weeks completely zero, some weeks maybe 1.2%, it’s gonna fluctuate up and down. On average though, expecting 0.5-1% bodyweight lost per week is realistic as attainable.

All of us going through a fat loss journey I think we’re just too stuck up on wanting fast fast fast. We forget that little things add up. Can you imagine the past 10 years, every year you lost 2kg? Sounds little right? But that means 10yrs ago vs now you’d be 20kg lighter.

How much effort would losing 2kg a year take?

Not much at all.

Moral of today’s letter? Take it slowly.

Progress is progress. Even losing 0.1kg in 2 weeks is progress. It’s incredible. It’s headed in the right direction. What you wanna put all your efforts in is to be as consistent as possible, and not to try to go as fast as possible.

Fast is what gets us in trouble and makes us go back to the starting line. Take it one step at a time, progress becomes inevitable.