I know it can seem as if losing 2 oz is not losing weight- but let me share a little of the science behind fat loss vs water loss. But think about it like this. If fat contains about 3500 calories, and most women’s metabolism is around 1400-1800 calories burned per day, and you are eating 500 calories per day, this means your “net” calorie deficit each day is somewhere around 1100-1300 calories. If that’s the case how many days will it take you to lose 1 lb of fat on the scale? About 3 or a little more than 3 right? So if you lost in a span of 3 days, .2, .5, .5, you are actually already above this average!
BUT RAYZEL you say, I LOST A LB A DAY my first week. So keep in mind here that especially at the beginning of a diet, you lose a lot of water weight- think about two 8 oz glasses of water- doesn’t seem like much but that’s 1 lb of water! So a lot of weight loss the first week is water.
Also, if a person is heavier and has to say 60-100 lbs to lose, they typically do have a higher metabolism, as well as even more water weight than someone smaller, and as a result, will lose more weight overall at the beginning than later when they are leaner.
Lastly, keep in mind your overall weight loss. If you’ve recently lost some bigger chunks on the scale, give your body time to catch up. If you lose 2 lbs one day on the scale, remember the idea that it’s not physically possible to lose 2 lbs of fat in one day unless you were like doing some Ironman triathlon or something, so you need to allow for lower weight loss days surrounding it.
As you saw, we must consider what our metabolism is and how much actual fat we can truly burn in a day depending on that.
Of course, there are times when there’s a legitimate problem to troubleshoot that is indeed causing a slow down in weight loss – I have a post that discusses stalls/slow weight loss further, as well as other possible ways to troubleshoot slow weight loss if there is indeed something going on.
