subject: How Fast Can You Lose Fat? [print this page] How Fast Can You Lose Fat? How Fast Can You Lose Fat?
Have you ever needed to lose fat, but fast? As in, a surprise wedding has been announced next week, and the ex that dumped you is going to be there, and you need to lose like fifteen pounds before you can even think of attending? An emergency can have you contemplate all kinds of radical diet plans and stratagems in order to lose weight, but we inevitably have to ask: what is the fastest that you can lose fat? Are some goals simply physically impossible, no matter how much willpower you have? Let's take a little closer look at this question in today's article, and see if you really can achieve the impossible sometimes.
First, common wisdom states that you can only lose two pounds per week. Everybody says this as if it were a fact, but where does this wisdom come from, which study, which scientific paper? Perhaps what is being said is that you shouldn't lose more than two pounds a week. Why is that? Let's get a little scientific here. We're going to crunch some numbers, but it's simple math, so hold on.
One pound of fat represents about 3,500 calories. That means a weight loss of two pounds per week = a total of 7,000 calories. That means you have to set a 7,000 calorie deficit in your weekly diet in order to achieve that. Say your average woman eats about 1,500 calories to maintain her weight. In one week she would consume 10,500 calories. If you subtract 7,000 from that, this poor lady is left eating 3,500 calories all week long, or about 600 calories per day, and that's starvation levels.
The only way she would be able to pull this off is with tons of exercise, so that she can eat more but also burn more calories, keeping herself above starvation levels with obsessive amounts of exercise. Yet we frequently hear about people who have lost seven pounds in their first week, or fifteen pounds. What's going on here? Clearly they haven't burned 21,000 + calories?
The answer lies in the difference between fat loss and weight loss. You can easily lose lots of weight's worth of water in the first week, which will make you feel as if you are losing fat when you are not. Water loss is often the first thing to happen on a new diet, so be aware in the beginning that you are not losing fat, but rather water.
