Weight loss expectations
 

My goal is to lose two pounds (i.e. fat) a week, which I think is entirely doable. However, I surely haven't experienced this in a while, so I don't know how realistic this goal is. I don't think losing one measly pound a week is going to keep me on my diet much longer. I don't expect rapid weight loss, but a one pound a week loss is ridiculous. I might as well be losing half a pound a week at this rate.

I think I'm going to have to not skip exercise days like I've occasionally done. And make my 20-min. bike ride a 45-min. ride, etc. I think it'll add up in a week's time.

How tall are you?

As I'm sure you know the more you have to lose the easier it is to lose. 2 lbs a week might not be realistic.

Your s/c/g thingy says you have twenty pounds to target. At a pound a week, that's only twenty weeks. Isn't that pretty cool? And if twenty weeks seems like a long time, remember we're only twenty weeks into the year, and New Year doesn't feel like it was all that long ago.

Twenty minutes to forty five on a bike sounds like quite a big jump to me. Obviously, different people can handle different things, but I know if I were to more than double the size of my daily cycle in one go I wouldn't be able to cope. It'd be like jumping from easy difficulty to the hardest setting. But over time I'd be able to work up from what I now do, and eventually double it. A gradual increase would have the added benefit of you likely finding that, for example, an extra five minutes daily would get the weight moving that bit faster. And it'd be better to find that out before imposing five times that much extra on yourself every day.

As for "might as well be losing half a pound a week at this rate" - not so. At a pound a week you'll hit target on October the eighth. At half a pound a week you won't get there until the twenty fifth of February next year. A whole pound a week's about twice as good at half a pound a week, I reckon. :)

I am large and I have only lost 1-2 lbs a week aside from my first week when I lost 6. As big as I am, I should be losing much more than that. I'm very discouraged. This week I didn't lose an at all and my food and exercise with on point for the week. It doesn't make sense to me!

Better to be losing 1lb a week than not losing or gaining which is what will happen if you stop. 1lb a week is actually pretty good to be honest, what's the rush?

What kind of diet are you doing?

Losing 2 lbs. a week seems to be widely regarded as a safe rate of loss and attainable for a lot of people. However, what's wrong with losing a pound or 1/2 lb. a week? It'll take you longer to reach your goal, but you'll still get there.

I am happy for the loss I have had, 23 lbs in 14 weeks, but people my size usually lose at a much faster rate from what I have witnessed. I don't want to lose it to fast because I want to allow my body time to adjust to the loss, but at the same time, I want to see results. 23 pounds and I am only one jean size down, my shirts fit better, but there is no size change there. I did have to throw away all of my underwear and buy new, but it is still so discouraging. I'm just in a rut. I have had a horrible day and the weigh in just iced the cake.

I'm counting calories and using the lose it and fitness pal apps. I do exercise on my Wii.....Latin Dance Workout and Wii Fit.

I'm averaging a 1.25 pound loss per week, and if I manage to stick with this rate I won't be at my goal until December of next year. Although I have my share of weak moments, I refuse to be discouraged. Being discouraged will make me give up and I won't continue to lose. Even worse, if I get discouraged and give up I'll probably gain like I did last year.

One pound a week is actually above average, since most people don't even lose or if they do, they gain it all back and then some. I'd say embrace any loss you make, but first and foremost concentrate on taking care of your body by making healthy choices with food and exercise. It's not a race. So what if you're not losing as quickly as you'd like? Which is better, losing slowly or giving up altogether?

I'm not giving up, I'm just not happy today. Like I said, my diet is on point. I eat the right things and the right portions and I usually fall 200-400 calories below my daily calorie allowance before I factor in my exercise. It just doesn't make sense to me.

You might want to have a checkup. I was experiencing the same thing for months - extremely slow (or not at all for a few months) loss, despite being pretty tight with diet and good with exercise. I really didn't think there was anything wrong with me, but it turned out that I was low thyroid. I do take thyroid, but have been stable at the same dose for over 10 years so never expected that I'd now be low - especially after having lost weight. But I guess things can inexplicably change. :?:

It's certainly worth exploring anyway, since your frustration level seems to be building. GL!

I've thought of that too. I just started a second job since school is out for the summer for me, so maybe I can get caught up enough on bills to get to the doctor. I work 2 part time jobs and go to college full time, so I don't have insurance. Divorced with nothing and had to buy everything so on top of my weight loss struggle, I have regular life struggles times 10! ugh!

Today is just not my day......

I'm happy if I lose a lb. a month! 2 lbs a week is just not realistic for some people... You'll just have to see what your body is willing to do for you.

I have gone WEEKS without losing a pound. Just because it isn't showing on the scale doesn't mean you are not losing inches.

I know that it is frustrating but time will keep moving if you continue to try to lose weight or not. In 20 weeks do you want to be 190+ pounds or your goal weight?

Sorry but one pound a week IS RAPID WEIGHT LOSS, even if you start out at nearly 400 lbs.

For most of my (weight loss failing) life, I felt as you did. I felt I was owed a certain rate of weight loss, and if I didn't get the weight loss I'd try to make it happen with drastic exercise and calorie cuts, and if it still didn't happen (if I felt I was putting in more work than I was getting out of that work) I would get frustrated and demotivated and I would give up.

I always gave up because the weight always slows to less than one pound a week, and it usually happened long before I got anywhere close to my goal weight.

Then with each new diet I'd promise myself, "this time I'm going to be ready for the weight loss to slow, and I'll learn to cope with the slow loss EVENTUALLY, but the eventually never came, because I was never prepared for weight loss of less than one pound per week.

I doomed myself to failure just by refusing to accept "slow" weight loss.


I complained to my current doctor early on in my weight loss journey that I was only (at that time) not even losing one pound per month. I told him I should be able to lose at least 2 lbs a week like a "normal" person, and he let into me like I'd said something idiotic (because I had).

He told me that it's not at all "normal" to lose 2 lbs a week. That "normal" wasn't even losing one pound per month. He said I wasn't losing weight slowly, I was losing weight faster than most people do it, because most people get discouraged when the weight loss slows to "real normal" and they give up. We give up for losing too slow, when we're losing faster than the average just by sticking with it, because it's normal to lose weight only so long as the weight loss is extremely rapid, and as soon as it slows to a normal rate, we give up because we think we're failing.

We're failing because we've defined sucessful weight loss in such a way that nearly no one can succeed. We're labeling very rapid weight loss as slow weight loss, not based on the evidence as to what people can realistically expect to lose, we base it on a myth that has nothing to do with reality.

Two pounds a week isn't slow weight loss, it's "holy moly, that's killer-fast rapid weight loss, Batman," and yet we're all taught to see even a smidge less than two pounds as barely squeaking by weight loss.

We see magazines promise "lose up to 40 lbs in a month" not mentioning that their article's subject started at 600 lbs and they only lost the 40 lbs the first month, and fell down to barely 1.5 lbs per week by month 2 or 3.

As I said, thinking as you and many others do, I always failed. "This time" I believed my doctor and accepted that one pound per month (and reminded myself that one pound a month wasn't slow weight loss, it was fantastic, "hardly-anyone-else-is-doing-it" weight loss, and that 1 to 2 lbs per month has gotten me where I am not with a more than 100 lb loss. Yes it took me seven years to do it, but I hadn't been able to do it in the 30 years prior because I couldn't deal with the weight loss slowing.

My previous record was 60 to 70 lbs and that was with the aid of prescription stimulants and meal replacements, and I never kept with a weight loss program for more than a year to 18 months.

By simply deciding that my goal is "not gaining" and that I'll put in the effort at improving my diet and exercise and will celebrate "not gaining" regardless of whether I lose more weight, and while I'm working at "not gaining" maybe I can lose one more pound. This means that weight loss isn't the goal so much as the reward for the goal. I also get to celebrate "not gaining" almost every day.


You can learn to put in the effort you're willing to and let the results be whatever they are, or you can set up conditions for your continued cooperation hoping reality meets your conditions. From my experience the second usually results in failure, and the first results in virtually effortless weight loss. Every one of my 105 lbs and the past seven years, has been easier than any single pound in the past 30 years prior.

Consistency with your calories and exercise, folks! That's the key. If you have been on point without overages on your calories for two or three months and aren't losing, then we may have an issue. But slightly slow losses over the course of a few days or weeks? That's NORMAL. We aren't machines or mathematical equations, energy expenditure by our bodies can vary wildly depending on our intake, outflow, efficiency of digestion, you name it.

You're doing wonderfully, but brow-beating yourselves for slow losses isn't going to make it come off faster. It just might, however, be the discouragement required to make you cheat. Know that you can do this, commit to consistency and discipline on your chosen plan, and exercise a little patience. You didn't put it on in a month, it ain't coming off in one!

I needed to hear this today! Thank you!

I'm 5'10". I think my exercise regime has been lacking of late. I used to ride the exercise bike 45 min. a day. I've lately just gone bike-riding for about 20 minutes, hence my desire to up that amount.

In the past four days or so I've kept my calories to no more than 1600/day. I also walked about a bazillion miles Saturday at Disney World. And since Saturday I put on two pounds as of this morning. :?: I would be really, really discouraged if not for the fact that I saw a drop in the tape measure this morning. The two pounds are probably due to water-weight, but still, seeing the jump back into the hated 190s again made me want to scream. I've been stuck there forever. It's my purgatory.

I don't think losing a pound a week is ridiculous. I think you'll have weeks when you'll lose nothing and weeks when you'll lose more than a pound. You just have to stick to it and if you feel like you're not losing fast enough, change your weigh ins interval (perhaps twice a month would be better?).

Ah, I see. That could easily explain your weight loss tailing off then. Has its slowing coincided with the change in exercise?

The thing with a normal bike is you can coast along, not pedalling constantly. A lot of the bike's motion comes from its momentum rather than your muscles. You've not just halved the time, you may well have halved your energy expenditure in that time too. You're still doing fantastic losing a pound a week, as everyone else has said. And it looks like you know what to do if you want to speed things up a bit more. The question is, do you really want to lose weight faster? I've seen a lot of people round here saying when they've lost weight fast it's gone straight back on, but when they've lost it slowly it's stayed off. That's definitely worth bearing in mind. Good luck however you decide to tinker with your workout.

how bout switching it up. Like maybe the juice diet. Of course, I don't have that big expensive juicer, but my husband and I did it for 4 days on store bought Naked Juice (Green machine) and Bolthouse Green goodness. Just make sure you're taking in enough, but not TOO MUCH calories with the juice. I diluted mine. It was actually very filling and I kept up my intense workouts during, and lost 8 pounds. When I was done, obviously, I gained a couple back, but the juice thing got me on track again after cinco de mayo cheating .. Good luck and whatever you do, just stick to a plan and I promise, you'll be fine :)

2lbs a week would be pretty tough at your current height and weight but it would seem likely that at 5'10" you could drop a lb a week pretty easily but obviously that is not the case. Just have faith that if you stick with restricting calories your body will use the fat for energy.

I have suggested it before but I can't remember if you said you had or had not started weight lifting?

I have started back lifting some weights, but that's since my weight loss has stalled, unfortunately. My wife likes to make dishes in which it's difficult to determine what their calories are - like chicken quesadillas, burritos, lasana, etc. For the next while I think I'm going to just stick to my grilled/baked chicken, since it can easily be weighed and quantified. I may have been undercounting the calories in some of those dishes.

It's true that I'm probably expending far less calories biking in the neighborhood than I do on the exercise bike. Time to get back on that thing. It's really easy to do when I can watch Netflix on the iPad while I bike.