How fast can you lose fat?

Have you ever needed to lose fat, but fast? I mean, there’s a surprise wedding announced next week, and the ex who dumped you is going to be there, and you need to lose, like, fifteen pounds before you can even think about attending? An emergency can have you contemplating all sorts of crash diets and weight loss gimmicks, but we inevitably have to ask ourselves: what is the fastest way you can lose fat? Are some goals simply physically impossible, no matter how much willpower you have? Let’s take a closer look at this question in today’s article, and see if you can really achieve the impossible sometimes.

First, common wisdom says that you can only lose two pounds a week. Everyone says this as if it were a fact, but where does this wisdom come from, what study, what scientific article? Perhaps what is being said is that you should not lose more than two pounds per week. Why is that? Let’s get a little scientific here. We’re going to do some numbers, but it’s simple math, so wait.

A 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 establish a 7,000-calorie deficit in your weekly diet to achieve this. Let’s say the average woman eats about 1500 calories to maintain her weight. In a week she would consume 10,500 calories. If you subtract 7,000 from that, this poor lady is left eating 3,500 calories for the entire week, or about 600 calories per day, and that’s starvation levels.

The only way you could achieve this is with lots of exercise, so you can eat more but also burn more calories, keeping you above starvation levels with obsessive amounts of exercise. However, we often hear about people who have lost seven pounds in their first week, or fifteen pounds. What’s going on here? They clearly haven’t burned more than 21,000 calories?

The answer lies in the difference between fat loss and weight loss. You can easily lose a lot of water worth of weight in the first week, making you feel like you’re losing fat when you’re not. Water loss is often the first thing to happen on a new diet, so keep in mind at the beginning that you’re not losing fat, but water.