How Much Weight Can You Lose in a Week (and Is it Healthy?)

How much weight can you lose in a month? How about a week? Or even a day?

These are common questions, but the answers aren’t as straightforward as you might hope.

Lose it for good

You might be able to lose a ton of weight in a month, but the real question is if you’ll be able to keep it off? Let alone keep losing weight.

After all, what’s the point of losing weight if you’re just going to gain it all back again?

It’s generally believed that the more weight you lose in a shorter period of time, the more likely you are to gain it right back. If not more.

Many trainers and fitness professionals recommend you take a slower approach to fat loss.

The accepted norm for healthy, sustainable weight loss is just 1-2 lbs a week.

If you’re looking to drop 30 lbs in a month, this isn’t great news.

However, if weight loss is your goal, there’s a lot you can do to improve your results.

And look on the bright side. At a weight loss rate of 1-2 lbs a week, you have the potential to lose between 5-10 lbs in a month and keep it off.

It may not sounds like a lot (or maybe it does), but 5-10 lbs of weight loss in a month is a huge success. And you can do it.

One contest you don’t want to win

But what if you really want to lose more than 1-2 lbs a week. What’s actually possible?

Unfortunately, we’ve got reality tv shows like The Biggest Loser where extremely overweight contestants are subjected to grueling fitness regiments and strict diets to increase their weight loss.

However, there are two big problems with that:

Contestants can’t sustain the insane same level of exercise and nutrition they did during the show.
Most contestants gain some of the weight back and a few are even heavier than before the show.

So it’s technically possible to lose an absurd amount of weight in less time, but beyond the risk of likely gaining the weight back, it’s also dangerous.

One winner of the show (and many other contestants) has permanently ruined his metabolism as a result of dropping such an extreme weight too quickly.

Real-world problems

While weight loss reality shows demonstrate the possibility to lose 100 lbs in 7 weeks or 30 lbs in one week, the circumstances and methods don’t translate to the real world.

Contestants usually start off extremely heavy. One even weighed in at 526 lbs!

Because of their level of obesity, it’s much easier to lose a large amount of weight.

Additionally, contestants workout 5-6 hours a day and are forced to stick to highly supervised diets.

The combination of these factors:

High volume of weight to lose (100+ lbs)
Intense workout regiment (5-6 hour a day)
Supervised diet plan

Are what lead to double-digit weight loss each week.

But that doesn’t work in the real world.

Most of you aren’t starting off at such a high weight
You don’t have 5 hours to workout each day
A nutrition expert isn’t regulating your every meal

Even personal fitness trainers don’t have the time, energy, or physical stamina to keep up with such an insane regiment, and yet they sustain a healthy physique while teaching others to do the same.

Losing drastic amounts of weight too quickly increases your risk of:

Gallstones
Mineral deficiencies
Exhaustion

Even if you don’t care about your health, and only care about your looks (which we DO NOT recommend), your looks will actually suffer as well.

You’ll lose muscle mass and increase your chances of keeping excess skin and stretch marks in the end.

A false measurement of success

There’s a natural tendency to fixate on weight as a measurement of health or progress because it’s so easy. Just step on the scale each week and track your number.

But we both know there’s more to it.

It’s easy to “trick” the scale and manipulate our weight drastically within a couple days by cycling water intake, sitting in a sauna, and taking hot epsom salt baths. But this is dropping water weight and has nothing to do with burning fat.

Which is what we’re really after.

Burning fat by establishing sustainable habits that improve our health like regular exercise, tracking our macronutrients, and a supportive system.

What is your fitness goal? Share it on Instagram and tag us!

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