How much FAT can you lose in a week?

F

Falco

New Member
I've always been of the thought that a human really cannot lose more than 1 - 2 pounds of fat a week. When people say "I lost 15 pounds on diet x," I tell them most of that is water & muscle, and the fight begins.

It was my understanding that it takes 3500 calories to mobilize a pound of fat. Therefore in order to lose 1 pound, you have to be 500 kcals/day under calories burned, for 2 pounds, 1000 kcals, etc. So it is highly unlikely that a person can maintain a 1500 + kcal/day deficit.

I guess if you were really overweight and did a lot of cardio, you could create a large enough caloric deficit to lose more fat. But is it simply a matter of not physically being able to create a caloric deficit large enough, or is there some other reason why 2 pounds/week is roughly the limit? Are the claims that lowering your carbohydrates burns more fat just crap?

I like the science behind all this stuff so don't be afraid to kill me with the technical sh!t.

Thanks!
 
It is definitely possible to lose more than 2lbs OF FAT per week.

But by doing so you increase your chances of losing muscle. So even if it's possible to lose 3lbs of fat/week, it's rather pointless for us BBers.

That's if you are natural, otherwise of course you can loose faster without much risk of losing muscle.

This reminds me of when I was talking to a trainer some time ago. That guy is obviously on steroids.. I asked him what kind of caloric deficit he had when he cut, and he said.. 1500 calories from the diet plus some cardio.. mamamiaa!!
 
Well, ok, you could lose 3 pounds if you got your calories low enough, popped some ephedra and drank a lot of coffee, but that 3 pounds would come at the expense of water/muscle.

So when this chick loses 8 pounds in a week, there is no way she lost 8 pounds of pure fat, especially since she's not obese and not working out at all.

I guess what I'm asking is if going on a low-to-no carb diet does anything magical that allows you to lose more than a few pounds of fat per week without sacrificing *some* muscle. There is no secret chemistry going on there that lets your body just burn fat at a higher rate than lower calories alone. If you're losing 8 pounds of week, you are losing more than just fat.
 
I lost ~4kg in a week once. Hadn't started BB'ing then, but it is possible. I know it wasn't water as I was throwing down about 2 litres a day.
 
It's not because you were drinking a lot that you didn't lose a lot of water!

You can drink as much as you want while doing a low carb you will still be flat like a pancake.

Losing 8lbs the first week of a low carb is not impossible. Personally I lose about 5 lb after a few days of keto. So if you cut fast, 8lbs is possible.

8lbs of FAT, on another hand, that's another story! It is not impossible to lose say up to 2/3 lb of FAT per day if you do a LOT of cardio and cut calories A LOT. A good amount of muscle will be lost at the same time however.

The thing is that you can't cut really faster than that because it's going to start to hurt somewhere. There's a limit to the amount of cardio that you can do without starting to have problems. 2/3lb per day is REALLY the max. Even at that, you'd better watch your joints.

1/2lb per day is relatively easy to do if you don't really care about muscle. That's just 1000 calories from cardio plus 700 from the diet. Very feasable.

A low carb - a keto in particular - can help so lose really fast. Doesn't mean that you will not lose muscle. You WILL lose muscle at such rates.
 
Owen et al. during a 21 day starvation study of obese participants showed an average of 1.7 lbs per day. Granted they were obese but the really interesting part (actually what was being studied) of the study was substrate oxidation during the period.
 
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