Q&A: How Quickly Can I Lose Weight?

How quickly can you lose weight? Now, this is a question that I actually got asked earlier today whilst I was on a consultation for someone who's just joined my online Metabolic Accelerator program. Now, it's one of those things, it's a relatively common question, as in people obviously when they're joining a program or even when they're thinking about starting their weight loss journey, they're like, how long is this going to take? Like, how quickly can I actually lose this? Because I've been stuck like this for a long time and I'd like to get results very quickly. Now, what we have to understand, of course, is it's a very nuanced subject and each person is different. That doesn't mean that we can't give an answer. It just means that, for example, some people are willing to do far more than others, willing to go and to kind of go completely all in and change your diet, your recovery, and your exercise all at once. Plus maybe a few other things as well, then of course you're going to get far quicker results than someone that just wants to kind of dabble with their nutrition, maybe think about doing a little bit of exercise here or there and so on. Now, of course, that's pretty obvious. The more you do, the more weight you're going to lose. But the key thing to, to kind of acknowledge is the more weight you have to lose, the quicker you're going to lose it in the beginning, and the less body fat you end up with over time the slower your results are going to become, generally speaking. Now, I say generally speaking because there's always something you can probably do somewhere to accelerate the process. But generally, the lower we get in body fat, the, the slower that progress will be because we get to a point where the body starts to reach its survival points and, and what we would call homeostasis or balance for your particular body and physiology. And once we get to that point, things then tend to start to slow down a bit and we have to kind of tweak things more aggressively or make more specific changes or recommendations before we can get those accelerated results again. But let's say, for example, at present you are 50+ pounds overweight. What you might find is that in the first couple of weeks you're able to lose 3, 4, 5, maybe even 6 pounds per week for the first couple of weeks. And then, of course, that's going to slow down. If, however, you're starting at a place where you've only really got maybe 10, 15 pounds to lose, you may be not going to be losing 5, 6 pounds. Instead, maybe what you'll get is 2 to 3 pounds for the first week or so, and then it will slow down. You may even find that actually you won't even get anywhere near, near 2 or 3 pounds, and instead it would just be around 1 pound a week. Either way, the recommendation that we tend to go for or that we would recommend to people is to aim for around 1 pound per week. Not because, oh, slower is better, even though it is, but it's because it's sustainable. It doesn't require extreme changes in lifestyle and behavior and therefore doesn't require extreme shifts in identity. So therefore it's much easier for us to adhere to those new habits and behaviors because they were relatively small compared to where it is we're trying to go. And what we find is if we can make changes at the minimum effective dosage, We don't overwhelm ourselves and then get to this point where we hit the fuck it button, sabotage ourselves, and throw all our progress out the window. So 1 pound a week is the ideal recommendation, but that doesn't mean that you will only lose 1 pound a week, because you may find that your physiology is very adaptive, very responsive, and even minor tweaks result in very quick weight loss. The truth is, with this game and, oh well, how much can I lose, We don't really know until you begin. Once you begin and you start taking action, that— excuse me— that is what actually gives you the data that you need. Because you might turn up with this exact same body fat percentage as me, for example. We both go off and do the exact same things with our nutrition, our exercise, but you might get results at double the rate that I do. And that can be down to a number of reasons. Maybe our physiological capacity is, is different, even though we look the same aesthetically. Or have the same body fat percentage and lean mass and so on, but physiologically our body might handle things different. We might find that our body handles foods differently. So for example, you might find that you get better results with higher protein, whereas I might find I get better results with higher fat and so on. So once we get down in the layers, we find, oh, each individual has their unique approach that's going to work best for them to get quickest results. But on average, as long as you're moving in the right direction and you're eating a diet that's comprised predominantly of healthy whole foods, and you're engaging in regular exercise, and you're making sure you're recovering well from that, then what you will find is you will lose weight regardless, um, particularly if you're overweight, of course, and you're not crazy overeating. You'll find that you'll lose the weight regardless, and then the rate at which that happens will depend how intense your workouts are and how dialed in your nutrition is relative to not only your physiology but also the goal that you're trying to achieve. Because of course, if our goal is, is burning body fat and essentially changing the scale on the weight, as in we want the weight on the scale to go down, if that's a necessary requirement, then we might find that, that overconsuming calories, of course, isn't going to get us there. But if, on the other hand, we don't care about the scale weight, we want to burn fat but we also want to build muscle, well, now we might find that the scale weight change is totally different and we maybe need more calories than we were consuming for the fat loss. Instead, we might need to eat at maintenance or even above that slightly so that we have enough resources on board for the body to rebuild us with new muscle. So we've got additional calories there to provide that, plus to provide resources required for the full recovery that we need. But then because we're doing all this additional activity and the metabolism's high and we're gaining extra lean mass, we are burning body fat at the same time. So we might say, well, the scale weight's not really changing, but our body composition is shifting. We're gaining additional lean mass and losing body fat mass, so therefore beginning to look better aesthetically regardless of what's happening on the scale. And ultimately, that's the point we want to get to. We want to get to this point where the scale weight is completely insignificant to us. It means nothing. Now, of course, in the early days, it's a great way to measure and kind of prove to us that we're getting progress. But ultimately, the scale weight means very little because what's important is what that scale weight is made up of. Because let's face it, there's, there's a big difference between being 20 pounds— sorry, 20 stones— as a couch potato, or being 20 stone in weight and being a rugby player. That's obviously got a lot more muscle mass, has a far lower body fat percentage. Well, you're both 20 stone, so we could argue, well then, well, you're both heavy, you're both overweight. Overweight for what? You know, one is overweight for lifestyle because obviously being a couch potato isn't an ideal lifestyle, but the other one might be the perfect weight for their sport regardless of the fact that they're still 20 stone, which is a very heavy weight based on averages. So we have to consider little things like this as we go. And then of course, as I mentioned, it's when we start taking action on the specific actions that we're going to take, whether it's in food, exercise, recovery, hydration, breathing, and so on. Once we start doing those things, our body will tell us exactly whether we're doing the right amount or not enough. Do we need to dial it up, back things off, and so on, based on the progress that we're getting? When we start collecting data through the actions that we're taking and the results that we're getting, That's when we can then make those informed decisions and go, oh, actually, I can dial this up a bit because I'm finding these habits and behaviors easy and I'm getting results. So if I dial things up, I'm going to get even quicker results and get to my, my goals even faster. And if on the other hand, we're like, holy shit, I'm losing weight far too quick, we can just dial things back and then of course get it to a level where we're happy with the progress. We don't feel wiped out and exhausted, and we know that we're not losing weight at a rate that is actually detrimental to our health. So hope that helps, people. If you have any questions on this, as I always say, drop them in the comments below. And if not, I look forward to chatting with you all in my next video. Take it easy, people.