Friday, January 16, 2009

How much fat to lose per week: The safe limit

“Lose 40 kgs in 40 days” – I am sure you would have seen ads with such claims, and perhaps with even higher numbers. It may be possible but then you would be confusing weight loss with fat loss.

The human body contains 70% water and any diet that dehydrates can very quickly cause weight loss. Or the weight loss could come from muscles degradation. Both are technically undesirable and instead of dehydrating yourself or losing valuable muscle, you should aim to lose body fat and not body weight.

The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) is generally considered to be the largest and most respected health, medical and exercise organization in the world. ACSM has a position statement on "Proper and improper weight loss programs" which recommends a weight loss goal of one to two pounds per week. In terms of body fat, that works out to about a half a percent per week.

It may appear to be infuriatingly slow, but it is the safest and most intelligent guidance on the amount of ideal fat loss.

Any weight loss caused by losing water will be gained back immediately when the body gets re-hydrated. As for the muscle loss, it leads to a slowing down of basal metabolism rate and makes the body go into a “survival mode” or a “starvation mode”. This can be real bad, since when you come out of a very low calorie diet, chances are you will certainly put back the weight you lost and at times even more.

There are physiological limitations to how quickly AND safely the body can lose fat - Do not strive for more than two pounds of fat loss per week.

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