Undertaking a physical transformation can be a daunting task. It’s a dramatic change in lifestyle, new routine, new food, new challenges every day. It’s also often a time of insecurity, as the decision to change your body usually comes from a place of self-judgement, and that judgement tends to pervade every aspect of your thinking and decision-making.
One of the toughest and most harmful things to be exposed to during this time is advertising for “rapid body transformation” programs, regularly seen in magazines or advertised online. These programs offer extreme solutions to weight loss, often advertising amazing feats like “lose 9kg in 6 weeks”, and can often set a perceived standard for how fast a person should be able to lose weight. When somebody who’s been dieting and lost 9kg in the last SIX MONTHS sees these promises, it can lead to feelings of failure and inadequacy, that they should’ve done better, that they’ve made mistakes and let themselves down.
But these programs are not what they seem, and often do more harm than good. Here’s why.
- Rapid weight loss is unhealthy, it causes hormonal imbalances that can slam the brakes on your long-term progress.
- The exercise and diet programs prescribed are unsustainable, you’re not going to continue losing 9kg every 6 weeks if you do multiple rounds.
- These programs are marketed as “weight loss” instead of “fat loss” for a reason, they often lead to losses in valuable muscle mass, and a large portion of the “weight” that you lose is just stored carbohydrate and water, which bounces back the minute you stop the program.
- They survive mostly on their marketing, cherry picking client testimonials to suggest that their results are typical, when many people fall short.
Keep reading below for a deeper examination.
Now if I’m going to call out these weight-loss practices as unhealthy, I first need to set a bar for what IS healthy. The American Center for Disease Control defines healthy weight loss as 1-2 pounds (0.45kg to 0.9kg) per week, the British National Health Service says 0.5-1kg per week, and the Australian Health Department suggests you should aim for 0.5kg per week. These findings are obviously universal, but serve more as a stepping off point, as no universal rule applies to everybody.
The truth is that everyone is different. Almost any overweight person could safely lose 0.5kg per week until they reached their goal, but for somebody who weighs 150kg that’s going to be a long, grinding journey. As a rule, the bigger you are, the faster you can afford to lose weight. Very overweight people can see drastic reductions in their bodyweight by undertaking very small changes that won’t upset their body’s equilibrium, but people who are only looking to lose 5kg to get “ripped” will have to make severe changes to their diet and exercise to force those last couple of kilos off.
Here’s a simple way to figure out how much weight you should be trying to lose. First, calculate your BMI.
- If it falls under 30, aim to lose 0.5kg per week. It might feel a little slow but you’ll continue to lose weight right up to your goal, and you’re much less likely to rebound.
- If it falls over 30, you can lose 1% of your body weight per week (e.g. 150kg body weight/100 = 1.5kg per week). This needs to be continually re-calculated as you lose weight, and once you reach a BMI of 30 you should return to 0.5kg per week.
But why does this even matter? Surely any weight loss is a positive, right? Well, no. Excessive weight loss and calorie restriction can cause metabolic damage, and even stunt your potential for weight loss in the future on more moderate diets. It all comes down to the hormonal responses our bodies have to weight loss, and the incredibly effective survival abilities we have built in.
When you start to rapidly lose weight, your body assumes that there must be a food shortage. Historically there’s been no way to tell the next time food might be available, so your body begins to cling to its energy stores (your fat cells). The longer this goes on, the surer your body is that a famine is happening, so when you get to your goal weight and return to your regular eating patterns, it starts hoarding all those extra calories as fat. This is the classic weight-loss rebound, and it’s a devastating feeling to watch the pounds creep back on after you worked so hard to lose them.
This is why aiming for rapid weight loss is so harmful, because even if you succeed, you’ll probably end up right back where you started anyway. Additionally, the methods prescribed to achieve these kinds of results are often borderline abusive. High intensity training sessions 5 days per week, carbohydrate restricted low-calorie diets, and regular cardio exercise work together to drive participants into the ground. An experienced trainer might be able to push through this kind of program for 6 weeks, but for most people it’s Hell. And what do you do at the end? If your weight loss goal is 30kg you’ve still got 21kg to go, and you’re already burned out. Jumping right back in for another 6 weeks would be a lot to ask, and even worse, you won’t lose another 9kg for one very good reason.
Fat is not the only way that your body stores energy, another major source of energy especially for high intensity exercise is Glycogen, or stored carbohydrate. Your body is able to store about 500g of glycogen, but to do so, it needs to use 1.5kg of water. Switching to a program of high-intensity exercise and low-carb dieting results in all this water and glycogen being used up quickly, usually in the first 2 weeks, which is why people typically see amazing results when they start. Sorry, but those 2kg you lost were literally just burnt energy, and it’ll come straight back as soon as you eat carbs again. If you’re at the end of one of these programs looking to start again, you don’t have those carbs to lose, so you’re already 2kg behind the 8-ball.
Now factor in hydration. If you’ve been doing 5 high-intensity routines per week, odds are you’re dehydrated unless you’ve been drinking 3-4 litres of water every day and keeping your electrolytes up. Add another 1-2kg of weight (not fat) that you’ve lost and can’t lose again. Rapid weight loss usually also causes catabolism, or muscle wasting, which again is more weight (not fat) lost that’s doing you more harm than good. Add all these factors together and you’re still burning less than 1kg of FAT per week, but in such an aggressive way that you’re harming your body in the process.
Given everything I’ve said here you might start to wonder how these programs manage to survive, and like any bad, successful product, it all comes down to marketing. By using carefully selected before-and-after pictures and client testimonials in their advertising, they project an image of helping people look and feel great in a very short amount of time. What you don’t see is the people who dropped out because the routine was too brutal, or because they got injured, or the people who rebounded back to their original weight in 6 months. It’s important that you don’t get sucked in by these fake “results”, for the good of your health and your self-esteem.
So in closing, how long should a weight loss journey take? Let’s do the maths.
For an 80kg, 160cm female who wants to lose 15kg:
- BMI is 31, so for the first 4 weeks she can aim for 1%, which will bring her weight to 76.8kg (BMI 30)
- After that she should aim for 0.5kg per week, 11.8kg remaining means 24 weeks.
- Total transformation time will be about 28 weeks, or just over 6 months. BMI will be about 25, the top of the healthy range.
For a 100kg, 180cm male who wants to lose 20kg:
- BMI is 31, so for the first 3 weeks he can aim for 1%, which will bring his weight down to 97kg (BMI 30)
- After that he should aim for 0.5kg per week, 17kg remaining means 34 weeks.
- Total transformation time will be about 37 weeks, or just under 9 months. BMI will be about 25, the top of the healthy range.
Now keep in mind that this is just a guide, and a conservative one at that. Faster weight loss can be achieved by experienced, knowledgeable people, but it’s much safer to stick to these guidelines and spend a few extra weeks on your transformation to get lasting results. There’s also no accounting for muscle GAINED by performing resistance training, which can distort your numbers and make it appear that you’re making very little progress despite losing fat and building a more athletic physique.
When it comes to reshaping your body, slow and steady wins the race.
Stay tuned for more articles.
Got a burning question you want answered? Email Jeremy@betterlivingfitness.com.au or find us on Facebook.