How much weight can one lose in two weeks?
For what it’s worth, at my most successful I have done about five pounds over two weeks, with interval training and weights three times a week and a very modest change to my diet (cutting out beer and confectionery). On the other hand, I’ve never been that overweight, and I’m a mid 30’s male with reasonable muscle mass underneath. My understanding is that many people can lose rather more than that – say 10-15 pound, BUT: – a little bit of that is stored glycogen in your liver and muscles and therefore a one off – quite a lot of that is water retention, and therefore a one off – some of the remaining extra is lean tissue, and therefore NOT GOOD FOR YOU – once you go past 1-2 lb per week your body will wise up and your metabolism will go down, so this is not sustainable and will actually make more weight loss harder – if you’re a man, and fairly overweight, you’ll lose more than a merely chubby woman, as every woman who’s ever been in a mixed Weight Watchers group will attest. Anyway, do
You can lose a lot of weight very quickly if you don’t eat much. I know from personal experience (while ill and eating very little) that it is possible to lose 20lbs in a month. This is definitely not healthy though, just an answer to your (literal) question. If you want to lose weight, do it reasonably and responsibly.
Well, I think it’s technically possible to lose 10 pounds or more, but a lot of that will probably be water weight, which will come back pretty quickly. The standard formula for losing actual fat is 1 lb = 3500 calories. To lose 1 lb, you have to create a 3500 calorie deficit. If you need 2000 calories a day to “break even,” and you eat 2000 calories in a day, you won’t gain or lose. If you eat 1000 calories, you would lose 2 lbs in a week. If you eat 1000 calories, plus burn off 1000 by exercising, you could lose 4 pounds a week. That’s a simplistic way of looking at it, which doesn’t take into account that your body will want to hang on to the weight by slowing you metabolism down as a defense against what it sees as starvation. If this is something you are actually wanting to do, good luck, but be healthy.
i_am_joe’s_spleen has a lot of great info there. I would say 15lbs is very doable in 2 weeks. I would not even try to exercise 3 to 4 hours a day, that is kind of absurd and more dangerous (assuming you are semi-sedentary right now) than actual crash dieting in 2 weeks. I don’t know that any top athlete would even exercise that amount of time very regularly. I have lost 20 lbs in 3 weeks before doing a low carb diet coupled with low calories (~1200-1500 a day). I was not that overweight (180 at 5’6″ and fairly muscular) and realized it was unhealthy. A seriously obese person could lose 30lbs in two weeks (look at biggest loser for example). It sounds like you really want to lose a ton of weight in 2 weeks, that this isn’t purely speculation. I wouldn’t do it if I were you, since it sounds like you have never done anything like it before. But with that said a good way to do it would be the induction phase of south beach diet (Adkins but without all the unhealthy fats) and watch calories
When you say “lose weight” I assume you mean “lose fat”. You can lose weight by reducing the amount of water, muscle or fat in your body. The way that some fad diets work is generally by making you lose water or muscle (by eating so little your muscles atrophy). From the NHS website:Gradual weight loss of around 0.45-0.9kg (1-2lb) per week is usually recommended. From the National Institute of Health:Slow and steady weight loss. Depending on your starting weight, experts recommend losing weight at a rate of 1/2 to 2 lbs per week. Weight loss may be faster at the start of a program. If you want to lose much more than that, talk to your doctor first. If you eat too little there’s a big danger that you will lose muscle, slow your metabolism, and just put even more fat back on as soon as you come off the diet.
