When you eat fewer calories than you burn, you lose weight. Your gender, age, starting weight, how much sleep you get, and the size of your calorie deficit are all things that affect how fast you lose weight. A safe and long-term way to reach your goals is to lose 1 to 3 pounds (0.45 to 1.36 kg) per week.
People often say that it takes four weeks for you to notice that your body is changing, eight weeks for your friends to notice, and twelve weeks for everyone else to notice. You will feel and look better in a few months, but remember that regularity is key.
Most of the time, losing weight happens inside your body. First you’ll lose hard fat around your organs, like liver and kidney fat. Then you’ll start losing soft fat, like fat around your waist and thighs. When you lose fat around your organs, you get leaner and stronger.
Usually, it happens in the first few weeks. At first, most of the weight you lose will be water. For instance, if you’re on a low-carb diet, your body will keep less water and lose it overall.
What Makes It Hard to Lose Weight?
It’s not easy to lose weight and figure out how fast you can do it. Losing weight can be affected by many things, most of which you can’t change. Some of these factors are sex, age, and genetics.
Age
The way your body looks and feels changes naturally as you age. As people age, they tend to add fat and lose muscle mass. What you eat can change your resting metabolic rate (RMR), which is how many calories you burn when you’re not doing anything.3.
More than 25% less RMR has been found in people over 70 years old compared to younger adults.3. It might be harder to lose weight if your RMR is low.
Physique
Genetics play a role in being overweight or obese, according to research. Some genes can change how hungry you are and how full you feel. Genes can also change metabolism, which is the process of turning food into energy.4
Sex
It has been found that biological females have a smaller RMR than biological males because they have more fat than muscle. At rest, women of the same height can burn up to 10% less calories than men of the same height. For this reason, it might be harder for women to lose weight.3.
Weight at the Start
There isn’t a single best way to control weight, according to research. However, the most important thing for weight loss is to have less energy or calories than you use.5 Because changing your food may leave you with fewer calories, you may lose weight faster if you need to lose more weight.
For example, a 200-pound, five-foot-four-inch woman in her 40s who doesn’t do much would need to eat 2,190 calories every day to keep her weight steady. To stay the same weight, a 150-pound woman of the same age, height, and amount of activity would need to eat 1,873 calories every day.6 If they both start eating 1,500 calories a day, the woman who weighs 200 pounds will lose more calories each day.
The rate of weight loss slows down as you get closer to your goal weight, no matter where you started. This is because the deficit goes down as you drop weight. If you want to lose those last 10 pounds, you might need to cut back on calories or work out longer or harder.
What Kind of Calories
How much weight you lose can depend on the food you eat. To help you reach your weight loss goals, eat more whole foods like fruits, veggies, whole grains, beans, lean meats, and low-fat dairy products, and less processed and ultra-processed foods.
Other Things
When you try to lose weight, your metabolism (the way your body burns calories) plays a big role. Weight loss is also helped by chemicals that control hunger.7 Both can be changed by things like not getting enough sleep, worry, and the microbiome in the gut. The gut microbiome is made up of bacteria and other germs that live in the digestive tract.89
Researchers have found that the gut microbiome can change both sides of the calorie balance issue. It changes how the body uses the calories it gets from food and whether it saves them or burns them.10
What’s the best food plan?
You don’t have to have a hard time starting to lose weight. These things can help you eat well:2
- Getting an idea of where you stand with your height, weight, risk factors, food, and way of life
- You should find a workout and routine that you enjoy.
- Finding ways to get educated and pay your own expenses
- Looking into your way of life
- Finding ways to deal with stress
- Promise yourself that you will lose weight.
- Track your progress and treat yourself as you go.
- Giving yourself clear, attainable goals that allow for mistakes
- While everyone wants a quick fix, the best way to lose weight is to do it slowly and steadily. Most of the time, quick fixes come from fad diets that don’t work in the long term. If you want to lose weight, the best way is to make healthy habits a permanent part of your life without having to take drastic steps. Some fad diets can make you hungry and are bad for your health.11
It’s important to know that losing weight doesn’t always happen in a straight line. Like everything else, your weight can change every day or even every hour. Body fat, muscle, bone, waste, and water volume are all things that have weight that you measure when you step on the scale.
Do not give up if you notice that you gain a few pounds. As an example, if you’re lifting weights and getting bigger, the scale might go up.12 Focus less on the number on the scale and more on how you feel in your clothes.
How Fast Is It Safe to Lose Weight?
It’s possible to tell what kind of weight you’ll lose by how fast you lose it. Researchers have found that losing weight slowly is better than losing weight quickly because it leads to losing more pounds of fat and a lower body fat percentage.13
A lot of people want to lose weight quickly, but it’s more likely that they will keep the weight off if they lose it slowly and regularly. For long-term weight loss, experts say to lose about one to two pounds per week.1. It has been shown that losing even a small amount of weight (5% to 10% of your body weight) is good for your health. Some of these perks are lower blood sugar, lower cholesterol, and lower blood pressure.14
It’s not possible that a very low-calorie diet (VLCD) will give you all the nutrients you need, and most people shouldn’t follow one. A VLCD usually gives you between 600 and 700 calories a day.15 This kind of diet is meant to be short-term and is generally done under the supervision of a doctor.
There may be side affects to these strict diets, such as1 Medline Plus. Plan to lose weight quickly.
- Gas and bloating
- Having diarrhea
- Weakness
- Gallstones are tough bits of stuff that build up in the liver.
- Gout is a type of arthritis that makes joints painful and stiff.
- More likely to have eating disorders
- Sickness
- Not getting enough nutrients
Not getting enough calories can make it harder to lose weight. In times when the body doesn’t have enough energy to fuel itself, it stores every calorie as if it were food.
Also, it’s important to know that rigid diets can make eating disorders more likely. If you want to cut back on calories, it might be helpful to talk to a doctor or nurse.16
Loosing too much weight too fast
Hilbert says that cutting calories too much can lead to a number of health problems, such as not getting enough nutrients, being irritable, tired, and having trouble going to the bathroom. “This is why it’s important to meet your body’s daily minimum needs,” she says. The US Department of Agriculture says that the daily recommended amount of calories is between 1,600 and 2,400, but this depends on age and level of exercise. An RDN, on the other hand, can help you find your “sweet spot.”
Scott says that other bad affects of losing weight quickly are
- Loss of muscle: Losing weight quickly can cause muscle loss, which can get in the way of your metabolism and body structure.
- Gallstones: Losing a lot of weight quickly can stop the liver from emptying properly, which raises the risk of getting gallstones.
- Misbalances of electrolytes: This can be bad for the body.
- Effects on the mind: Very strict diets can make people feel deprived, cause problems with their eating, and make them have a bad relationship with food.
How long does it take to get thinner?
As long as you stick to a calorie shortage, Scott says you should start losing weight in a few weeks. Hilbert also says that some people might notice changes in just one week.
People usually think that a weight loss goal of 0.5 to 1 lb per week is safe and attainable, says Scott. “Losing weight slowly helps you keep your muscle mass, stick to healthy habits, and be successful in the long run.”
But it’s important to remember that weight changes are normal.Hilbert says, “Progress isn’t always straight lines, so remember that some weeks you may lose more and other weeks you may hit a plateau. This is all part of the process.” “Losing weight takes time.”
Along with a healthy exercise plan, Scott says that to get the best results, you should work with a qualified dietitian to make a personalized weight loss plan.
A Quick Look Back
It’s hard to say for sure how much weight you’ll lose in a certain amount of time because weight loss is complicated. It’s actually much more important to focus on good, balanced habits that you can keep up.
If you need help coming up with a safe way to lose weight, talk to a doctor or nurse. Most of the time, losing one to two pounds per week is a healthy weight loss rate that can be maintained.
