Fat Loss – How Long Does It Really Take?
Whichever amount of body-fat people want to shed off they always want to do it all in as little time as possible, which I understand, but how long does it really take to get from A to B.
Before we can answer that we need to consider a few things.
RATE OF LOSS (ROL)
Generally speaking, the range of 0.25-2% of your weekly weight loss is what is most common. What that means is week on week you’d expect to see the average weight loss fall within that percentage range.
To get reliable data you should take your daily scale weight each morning and then divide that over 7 days to see the weight loss for the week.
1.It is normal to see really big changes in scale weight in the initial 1-3 weeks of a diet for both larger and smaller individuals hence the 2% range.
This largely comes from a change in glycogen stores, water being dumped, changes in intracellular triglycerides, lighter bowels and of course body-fat.
2. Thereafter, and whilst body-fat is relatively higher (males 15% +, Females 20%), drops between 1-1.5%% are still pretty normal with no risk to muscle loss. Provided your nutrition and training are set up well.
3. For Lean individuals (males 10% <, females 15% <), the inherent risk of muscle loss creeps up due to the reductions in fat mass and thus the ROL has to be slowed down accordingly.
The range of 0.25-1% per week is much more normal. Once you’re legitimately under 10% it would be wise to pull off the weight slower as your body fat gets to the lower end of single digits.
I HATE THE SCALES
Now… I know up to this point I’m basing a lot of this article on scale weight so before I get hate mail from anyone about scale weight I’m going to caveat all of these rates of loss with this.
1.If you are holding strength or increasing it on your training programme there is a high chance that you are maintaining your muscle mass or even building more of it. This is why scale weight alone isn’t enough data when assessing progress.
Those newer to resistance training are more likely to see this happening vs more advanced lifters.
2. Your weekly picture updates front, side, back will visually allow you to assess your physique, muscle retention and fat loss changes.
3. Circumference measurements can be useful in determining changes.
4. It’s worth nothing, for females in particular, scale weight fluctuations are much more variable and this has to be considered due to the menstrual cycle.
5. Lastly, factors such as worsened digestion, poor sleep, high stress, hard training sessions and more can impact scale weight, but despite that you will still see a linear trend in the reduction overall body mass over time.
WHO ARE YOU?
By that I mean how much muscle are you carrying, how much body-fat are you carrying, what’s your daily activity like, how often do you train, how consistently have you been training, for how many years, how strong are you, what’s your relationship with food like, have you dieted before and how long can you commit to dieting.
ALL of these points are determining factors in your overall dietary set up, protein needs, carb/fat preferences and requirements, the potential duration of a diet as well as how aggressively you can diet.
I’ll give two examples:
Example A –
- Carry more body-fat (Let’s say male 25%+)
- Have a lower training age (Less than 1 year lifting)
- Have less muscle mass
- Not consistent with training
- Very committed to dieting
- Sedentary lifestyle
Example B –
- Carrying low body-fat (Circa, male circa 10%)
- High training age (+10 years lifting)
- A lot of lean muscle
- Very consistent with training
- Uber committed with diet
- Extremely active outside of training
The way these two examples could diet and how long it would take would vary a lot based on their goals.
We could make a case for example A being able to be uber aggressive with dieting whilst putting on muscle given the circumstances and equally we could assume that example B should diet more slowly given the lower body-fat and higher training age.
Whilst that would just be a general rule of thumb, there’s nothing to say that client A couldn’t do this more slowly, or that Client B couldn’t be more aggressive.
TELL US HOW LONG IT TAKES?
The million dollar questions remain – How long does it take?
The answer is, It depends…
The obvious fact here is the heavier you are the more that needs to come off and thus the longer the dieting period.
HERE’S HOW I DO IT
Time permitting, I like to run dieting phases for 8-12 weeks blocks with scheduled 7-14 day maintenance periods. This way it allows the dieter to have a solid period of time eating more food, to have a psychological breather and then push on afterwards.
For example:
Week 1-12 (Fat Loss)
Week 13-14 (Maintenance)
Week 15-20 (Fat Loss)
If you’ve got a lot of weight to lose this itself can be highly motivating as you know you’re working in blocks and then that you have some time out of the diet.
If you haven’t got the time available to do this you’re going to have to ‘ suck it up ‘ and soak up some hard dieting, perhaps on the higher end of the ROL to achieve what you want.
1ST TIME DIETING
If you’ve never dieted before it’s really hard to give you an exact amount of weight that you need to lose, so with that it’s hard to give specific timelines. Some people need to lose more and some less. I know that’s vague and annoying but that’s the nature of these things.
From experience it’s usually MUCH more than you think. If you think you’ve got 5kg to lose it’s probably 10-15kg, and if you think 10kg it’s more like 15-25kg. In some cases it can be more. Provided you follow the criteria above you’re going to do this safely and effectively.
My advice to you is this – Set up milestones to achieve at different stages and then review your progress as you tick them off. Don’t get caught up in the end goal, rather focus on the process of dropping week on week and go as low as required until you’re satisfied with the level of leanness.
EXPERIENCED WITH DIETING
If you’ve gotten as lean as you wanted to before you’ll have a gauge of the kind of weight you’ll need to be so you can reverse engineer your weight loss and ensure performance remains a high priority so that the end of the fat loss phase is achieved successfully.
Hopefully that’s gone some way in helping you understand rates of loss and how long your diet might take!