Well, there’s fast fast, and there’s smart fast, and there’s sustainable fast.
Let’s start off this dumpster fire by explaining a couple of things.
At the heart of it all, losing weight is just math. Burn more than you consume. The more you burn, and the less you consume, the faster you will lose weight. But that gets a little complicated.
A pound of fat in your body Is roughly the equivalent of 3,500 calories of stored energy. So in order to burn off 1 lb of fat, you have to burn 3,500 calories. There’s just no two ways around this. It’s physics.
When you burn fat, there’s also an associated loss of other things that go with it, some stored energy, some storage toxins, some stored water etc. So it ends up being a little bit more than that per pound of fat burned. So that’s kind of a little bonus.
The problem with this basic equation, is that it’s not so basic. While the math is fairly straightforward, burn x, consume y, and as long as the end result is negative then you lose fat. there’s a couple of confounding factors that make this a little bit more challenging.
Do you truly know how much you’re eating? if you have paid attention to some of our other posts this week, you’ll know that people often underestimate just how much food they’re consuming. Even when they’re trying to track it accurately, there’s about a 25% margin of error. That can be fairly substantial when you’re trying to lose body fat.
How effective is exercise at increasing your energy out? this one is probably the hardest to wrap your head around because it seems like you’re doing so much work. I can tell you that personally, after about 11 km of running, I may just barely crack a thousand calories of expenditure. And I’m a fairly large person moving for a very long time. To put that into perspective, a thousand calories goes out the window with two and a half Grande pumpkin spice lattes.
Losing weight this fast comes as the expense of muscle, in extreme diets, upwards of 18% of weight lost was the good stuff. So that’s a problem as, down the road, it means a lower metabolic rate, and draws back alot of that progress you’ve been working so hard to attain.
So to lose weight fast…cut out most calories, crank up your exercise, and boom, weight loss….AND muscle loss, hormone disturbance, sleep disturbances, mental clarity issues, mineral deficiency,…seems like a riot!!
So that’s fast fast. Still going with that option? Good, didn’t think so.
So is it possible to do it safely? Yes absolutely, just remember, that safely doesn’t necessarily mean comfortable, fun, or easy…or sustainable!
I think that’s a pretty good Cliffhanger for the day, as the next part of that question will end up being way more involved.
