When you begin an exercise and diet plan to lose weight, it is important to keep in mind what is your healthy weight loss per week?. Losing too much weight, too quickly can cause you to gain the weight back. If you are losing too much weight per week, you may be losing the wrong kind of weight, and you don’t want that to happen, you want to be successful in your weight loss and long term weight management.
Most diet and health professionals recommend that healthy weight loss per week is between 1 to 3 pounds.
You probably want to lose as many pounds per week as quickly as possible, but it is not going to help you maintain control of your weight if you lose more than the recommended pounds each week. There are a few reasons why you should not, and they can have adverse effects on your overall weight loss goals. Healthy and maintainable weight loss is a marathon, not a sprint.
The faster weight comes off, the faster it returns.
The key to long term weight loss is making changes in your lifestyle. Anybody can lose weight by doing something as drastic like starving themselves or drinking only juice. The minute you go back to eating regular foods, the weight will just come back on, and just as quickly. If you focus on making lifestyle changes that keep you within the loss per week guidelines, it will be much easier to keep the weight off because you will have established new patterns of eating and exercise that will allow you to easily maintain your weight loss.
Pay attention to the type of your weight loss.
If you are eating properly, meaning you are eating to provide your body the nutrients it needs, you should be experiencing a healthy weight loss per week of fat, instead of muscle. Fat weighs less than muscle, so if you are losing pounds too fast, you could be losing muscle. You want to keep as much as your muscle as you can. Muscle takes more energy to maintain, and that makes your body burn fat and any excess energy that would be stored as fat, if it isn’t used. Muscle also makes you look fit and sexy.
If you are starting a new exercise routine after being inactive for some time, you may lose less than 3 pounds per week. That is completely normal and should be expected. You will be building and gaining muscle as you exercise, and remember that muscle weighs more than fat. When losing weight, your goal is to lose fat weight, not muscle weight.
Moderation and consistency are the keys to successful weight loss.
When you begin your weight loss program you will probably see ups and downs in the first month or so. You should not feel discouraged, and remember that it is normal. Your body is adjusting and you will soon see steady and consistent healthy weight loss per week.