Hey everyone, I’ve been on Keto since 01/01/2019 and loving it so far. No major stalls yet, I do a lot of IF and very few EF here and there, and have had pretty consistent fat loss each week. I also exercise (mainly weight training) 4-5 days week. I know everyone’s body is different, so I’m just curious to know how much folks are typically losing each time they check the scale.
Thanks!
Hi George.
Five to ten pounds a month when the going was good. But I believe that a gradual loss is less shocking to our bodies. Our hunger hormones tend to over react when we drop a lot of weight in a short amount of time. I’ve also read that hair loss can also be a result of drastic dietary changes that lead to large amounts of weight loss (but the hair can grow back thicker and less gray in some cases).
Yes definitely less of a shock. Hardly any loose skin that I can see too, so everything’s been getting sucked in pretty nicely. I’m a little over 3 months in and down 45 lbs. as of last week, so I’m hoping to keep up a consistent 2 lbs./week and hit my goal by December.
I did not keep a list of my weekly weights until week 11. Weeks 1-5 I lost an average of 1.5% of my body weight per week. Weeks 6-11 was an average of 1.0% of my body weight.
From weeks 12 on, it has been an average of 0.8% loss, ranging between a 1.4% loss to a 0.4% gain, per week. I am currently in week 32.
When you have a lot to lose, you can lose faster. As you approach your goal weight, you should expect the loss to slow down, so that 2 pounds per week probably won’t be linear.
Common weight loss wisdom is that an AVERAGE of 1 to 2 pounds per week is a solid sustainable rate of true loss, not counting the initial water weight loss of 5 to 10 pounds.
So when I do my (fantasy) projections, I calculate for both and look at it over a 2-year horizon. That puts me at goal weight sometime between November 2019 and June 2020. Both of those dates will eventually get here, so I will let time and persistence take care of the results.
If I use the most recent few months, it’s about 0.75% per week average, which, if continued, would get me out of the BMI obese category in June, and down into the upper end of BMI normal category by Thanksgiving, and goal in January. Because my body weight would be decreasing, the same percentage of loss would result in less actual weight loss, so that’s probably a better metric.
However, I am wary of excessively rosy projections, especially with something as challenging as achieving and maintaining long term weight loss. I will be very happy if the June 2020 projection is accurate.
Congrats on your progress John, and I hope your projections are accurate! I know that eventually my -2lbs/week will slow down, but I’m crossing my fingers that the momentum keeps going at least till the 3rd quarter of this year, but we’ll see. After factoring in my average loss, then moving that to a .5-1.0lb/week loss beginning mid Summer, I should, hopefully, be at 225 lbs. (I started at 297 on January 1st). Goal marker for me is at or under 200lbs by year-end