I want to lose 15 pounds in 3 months. Well, 17, but that doesn’t sound good.
By Thanksgiving, I want to hop on the scale at 205 pounds. That’s going to be my goal weight for the time being. I’m not going to commit to it being my maintenance weight for the future as I want to see how I look when I get there. Right now though, I think that’s my “ideal” weight considering the amount of muscle (much!) and fat (not so much!) I want to carry.
Oddly enough, at 205, being physically fit, and having a clean bill of health I would still be considered slightly overweight on the government’s BMI scale.
Say it with me, class: BMI is a rough guide, not a precision tool.
Anyway, back to the whole having a new goal thing and wanting to lose 15 pounds in 3 months. I want to lose it by Thanksgiving, meaning I have 3 months and some change to get the job done. It’s a fairly realistic goal and I should be able to achieve it without much difficulty. I’m committed to it, but I’m just not sure how muscle building is going to impact the process.
Regardless, it’s clear that this 205 will be not the same as the old 205 pounds.
How to lose 15 pounds in 3 months (long version):
It all comes down to math. I take it for granted these days that I can quickly calculate how many calories I need on a daily basis,how many calories a certain food has, estimate how many calories were burned in an exercise or gym session, etc. It’s fairly easy information for me to figure out today, but thinking back to when I started and reading all the e-mail I’ve received on the topic I realize that it all can be overwhelming to figure out.
When something is confusing, I break it down.
To lose 15 pounds in 3 months I need to lose 5 pounds a month. 15 divided by 3 equals 5. Simple, right? Then, divide by 4, as there are 4 weeks in a month. That means I need to lose a pound a week, plus a little change.
So, let’s say you’re like Patricia from California who e-mailed me and wanted to lose 50 pounds in 6 months for a wedding coming up in 2011. 50 divided by 6 equals uh, something. So let’s say Patricia wants to lose 60 pounds in 6 months. Yeah, that’s better. So, 60 divided by 6 equals 10.
Patricia (can I call you Patty?) needs to lose 10 pounds a month, or 2.5 pounds a week, to reach her goal of losing 50 60 pounds by February.
Well, how do you lose 1, 5, 10 pounds a week?
To lose 1 pound a week, you need to have a deficit of 500 calories a day (because 7 x 500 equals 3,500) as 3,500 calories represents a pound. If you wanted to lose 3 pounds a week, you’d need a deficit of 1,500 calories a day and so forth. A deficit means you eat less than you burn.
Caution, though, starving yourself or eating too few calories will have the reverse effect. You will lose weight at first, but you’ll quickly stop progressing and your general health will start deteriorating. You won’t find any expert recommending you lose more than a couple of pounds a week.
Personally, it took a while before I started losing less than 3-4 pounds a week, but that’s because I was so big to start with.
So, how did my friend lose X (5, 10, 15) pounds last week?
I get this question a lot in my inbox. Someone has a friend who started some fad diet or ridiculous craze and they lose a lot of weight the first week, proving that the diet is the best thing since sliced bread. The reason it was possible to lose 5/10/15 pounds or whatever is because of initial water weight being loss and the drastic shift in calorie consumption. Usually, while generally healthy and unsustainable, a lot of these fad and craze diets are still low in calories. People go from eating 4,000-8,000 calories a day to like 1,500.
So, they lose weight. Math, remember?
Lastly, how do you calculate how many calories you need?
That’s the million dollar question.
You figure this out by using an online calculator to calculate your BMR — don’t worry about what acronym means, it’s not important. It’s the number that this magical BMR calculator gives you that is important. Unfortunately though, the number calculators give you should be looked upon as an estimate and is probably over-estimated by 10-20%.
As I sit here today, I still second-guess how many calories I should be consuming every day to lose weight. 1,800? 2,200? 2,500? A good rule of thumb is to subtract 10% from a BMR estimate, then subtract 500 calories (to lose 1 pound a week, remember?) or 1,000 (2 calories a week), whichever you’d like to lose. Today, I personally aim to eat 2,200 calories a day.
How to lose 15 pounds in 3 months (short version):
Count calories.