Women's health and fitness tips & motivation

[Andrew]

Ryan, losing weight that fast isn't the wisest, best or most permanent way to lose weight. You want to lose weight at a rate that does not trigger your body to start hoarding calories later on. IIRC, that's about 1-2 pounds per week. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

As for motivation, Fae, I suggest spending some time enjoying a nice visualization of yourself enjoying the end result each day. Not only does it help you achieve the goal, but it's nice to effectively enjoy the end results before it's actually happened!

Id just like to add to the conversation a bit as this is an area of expertise for me as well. There is one exception to the losing weight fast rule - if you have a high amount of muscle mass as well as fat - hence my personal results for example losing 15lb in 3 weeks with only losing a very slight amount of muscle mass. If this is not the case, permanent loss as Shannon said is a long term change. Every pound of lean muscle (minus supporting structures, connecting tissue etc) burns 50 to 100 calories a day with no to moderate activity, this adds into your basal metabolic rate (calories burned per day or per hour just being alive). The more muscle you have, the easier it becomes to lose fat. This is why you see people on the treadmill losing lots of weight fast, but their muscle mass stays the same, adapts to the exercise and it becomes more and more difficult to lose weight, esoecially the last 15-25 pounds. Losing weight fast through fasting or massive endurance cardio is mostly a loss of water from expelling electrolytes (like biggest loser contestants losing up to 30 pounds their first week, you can bet a lot of money their salt intake was through the roof with their old diet).

Long story short those who do not have a large amount of muscle who lose weight fast, set themselves up for a harder time reaching their goal and often failure, not only from the wrong kind of exercise but unsustainable unrealistic diets that put their body into a panic starvation mode. The best key to long term succes, is to start slow, start with your realistic END diet (do not have a "getting there diet", start putting yourself in the habit of something that can be sustained) and start putting on muscle through resistance exercise. The start will be slow, but instead od slowing down you will gain speed and once you get there you will have the muscle mass to sustain your perfect body composition without having to resourt to multiple hours of cardio every day once you arrive at your target weight. Have patience now, ride the wave later.