How many pounds should I am to lose a week

[madscientist]

I was wondering how many pounds I should be aiming to lose in a week. To reach a healthy weight, I calculated that I need to lose about 50 pounds. I'm not going to do any extreme dieting, I'm just gonna lower my calorie intake a bit and exercise, but what goal should I work toward realistically? I'm not looking to overdo it.

[speeddemon]

Aim to lose 2 pounds a week. If you try for any higher than that you might finding your dieting a little to hard. It's surprising how hard it is to just lose two pounds. If you feel like you can try for more after a couple of week maintaining 2 pounds of weight loss per week, then up it to 3 but I wouldn't recommend going beyond that cause you'll likely burn out and give up. Plus, the more weight you lose, the harder it is to lose more as you get closer to your target weight.

[Kyra]

I agree with speeddemon. I wouldn't recommend losing more than 2 or 3 pounds. It is hard enough losing a couple of pounds. If you aim for more than that, you'll need to make drastic changes to your lifestyle that you may find hard to keep up with. On the other hand, if you find that you can comfortably lose more than 2 pounds, go for it, just don't push yourself too hard or you are likely to give up.

[Paplo]

Two pounds a week. It's achievable and if you're aiming to lose 50 pounds, it means you'll reach your goal in 25 weeks, so about 6 months. That's not a long time to drop that much weight and its entirely possible without you having to do anything extreme. That's definitely what I would recommend.

[Beth]

I also think that two pounds is best. Aim for a goal you can achieve and that is good for your body.

[CuJo1992]

Start with one pound. If you can do that consecutively for two weeks, up your goal to two pounds. Remember, the goal is to keep the weight that you lose off. It's not so hard to lose a lot of weight to start. The hard part is managing your weight once it is gone.

[madscientist]

Thanks for your advice everyone. I started off by losing two pounds a week and now I'm doing to losing about a pound a week. It's slow going but the important thing is that I've been keeping the weight I've been losing off. It's not all water weight. I've lost about 10 pounds so far. I'm feeling really good about myself :)