Losing weight is a frequent desire, whether it’s for a special occasion or just to get healthier.
You might want to know what constitutes a healthy weight reduction pace in order to set reasonable expectations.
The variables that influence how long it might take you to lose weight are discussed in this article.
How Loss of Weight Occurs
When you regularly consume fewer calories than you burn off each day, you lose weight.
On the other hand, when you continuously consume more calories than you burn, you gain weight.
Everything you eat or drink that contains calories contributes to your total caloric intake.
However, the amount of calories you burn on a daily basis—also referred to as energy expenditure or calorie expenditure—is a little more nuanced.
The three main components of calorie expenditure are as follows:
- Metabolic resting rate (RMR). This is the number of calories your body requires to sustain regular biological processes like breathing and blood circulation.
- Food’s thermogenic effect (TEF). The calories needed for food digestion, absorption, and metabolism are referred to here.
- Activity’s thermogenic effect (TEA). You burn these calories while you work out. Non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT), which accounts for the calories burned during activities like yard maintenance and fidgeting, can also be included in TEA.
You maintain your body weight if the number of calories you take in and burn off is equal.
You need to produce a negative calorie balance, either by eating less than you burn off or by increasing your activity level, in order to lose weight.
Factors that influence losing weight
Several factors influence how quickly you lose weight. You have little control over many of them.
Gender
Your fat-to-muscle ratio significantly impacts your ability to lose weight.
Women often have a 5–10% lower RMR than men of the same height because of their higher fat-to-muscle ratios.
This means that while at rest, women typically burn between 5 and 10% fewer calories than men. As such, men who follow a diet low in calories tend to lose weight faster than women.
Males lost 16% more weight than women during an 8-week trial involving nearly 2,000 individuals on an 800-calorie diet, with a proportionate weight loss of 11.8% for males and 10.3% for women.
Men lost weight more quickly than women, but the study did not examine how gender affected how long people could keep the weight off.
Age
Body composition changes with aging include an increase in fat mass and a decrease in muscle mass, among other numerous physiological changes.
A reduced RMR is a result of this shift as well as other elements, including your primary organs’ decreasing calorie requirements.
It is indeed possible for persons over 70 to have RMRs that are 20–25% lower than younger adults.
As we age, this drop in RMR may make losing weight more challenging.
Beginning point
How soon you lose weight may also depend on your starting body mass and composition.
It’s critical to realize that similar relative (%) weight decreases in various people can be caused by varying absolute weight losses (in pounds). In the end, losing weight is a difficult procedure.
The Body Weight Planner from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is a helpful tool for estimating how much weight you can lose based on your starting weight, age, sex, and caloric intake and expenditure.
A person who weighs less may lose an equivalent percentage of their body weight (10/250 = 4% versus 5/125 = 4%), even though a heavier person may drop twice as much weight.
For instance, a 300-pound (136-kg) individual may lose 10 pounds (4.5 kg) by increasing their daily exercise for two weeks and cutting 1,000 calories from their diet.
Deficit in calories
To lose weight, you have to balance your calories negatively. The rate at which you lose weight depends on the size of this calorie shortfall.
For instance, losing more weight is probably going to occur from eating 500 fewer calories per day for eight weeks as opposed to 200 fewer calories per day.
But watch out not to create an excessive calorie deficit.
In addition to being unsustainable, doing so would put you in danger of dietary inadequacies. Additionally, it may increase the likelihood that you lose weight as muscle rather than fat.
Sleep
Sleep is a sometimes disregarded but essential part of losing weight.
Persistent sleep deprivation can impede weight loss and the rate at which pounds are removed.
It has been demonstrated that even one sleep-deprived night will heighten your cravings for high-calorie, low-nutrient meals like chips, cakes, cookies, and sugary drinks.
In a 2-week study, subjects on a calorie-restricted diet were assigned to sleep for 5.5 or 8.5 hours every night.
Compared to individuals who slept 8.5 hours per night, those who slept 5.5 hours shed 60% more lean body mass and 55% less body fat.
As a result, there is a substantial correlation between long-term sleep deprivation and type 2 diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and some malignancies.
Additional elements
Numerous additional variables may impact your rate of weight loss, such as:
- Prescription drugs. Numerous drugs, including antidepressants and various antipsychotics, have the potential to either facilitate or impede weight loss.
- Health-related issues. A number of illnesses can hinder weight loss and promote weight gain, such as depression and hypothyroidism, a disorder in which the thyroid gland produces insufficient amounts of hormones that control metabolism.
- Genetics and family history. People who are overweight or obese are known to have a genetic component that may have an impact on weight loss.
- Varying your diet too much. Due to a decline in RMR, this pattern of weight loss and gain back might make weight loss more challenging with each try.
The ideal diet to lose weight
It cannot be easy to decide which weight-reduction plan is the best when there are so many options available, many of which promise remarkable and speedy results.
There isn’t a single optimal weight reduction diet, despite the fact that advocates and developers believe their plans to be better than others.
For instance, studies show no appreciable differences in long-term weight loss even though low-carb diets like the ketogenic diet may initially help you lose more weight.
Most important is your capacity to maintain a low-calorie, healthful eating plan.
That being said, many people find it difficult to stick to an extremely low-calorie diet for an extended period, which is why most diets fail.
Only slightly cut calories, customize your diet according to your preferences and health, or consult a qualified nutritionist to improve your chances of success.
Exercise, particularly resistance and aerobic training, should be combined with diet to maximize fat loss and avoid or minimize muscle loss.
You can further enhance weight reduction and general health by removing overly processed items from your diet and adding more complete, healthful foods like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, healthy fats, and proteins.
In summary
When you consume fewer calories than you burn, you lose weight.
Your beginning weight, age, gender, amount of sleep, and the size of your calorie deficit are just a few of the many variables that impact how quickly you lose weight.
A healthy and long-term strategy to achieve your goals is to aim for weekly weight loss of 1-3 pounds (0.45–1.36 kg).