Weight loss: A marathon, not a sprint

In college, I had a roommate who was a wrestler. He was always shifting weight classes, and typically, he was told his weight class just a few days before an event.

What that meant was that he might have to gain or lose ten pounds in less than a week. And strangely enough, he almost always hit his weight target.

He did not do it in a healthy way though. One week, he was eating three Big Macs for breakfast to jump to the next weight class, and the next week, he was starving himself to drop to another weight class.

Obviously, this kind of extreme weight management is unhealthy. Binging on fast food is obviously unhealthy. But starving yourself is unhealthy too and counterproductive because it results in a loss of muscle mass and energy.

Remember: if your weight loss regimen is causing you to lose muscle mass, you are doing it wrong. If you don’t have enough energy, you are doing it wrong.

This is why you want to pace yourself so that you are losing 1-2 pounds/week. If you try to be more extreme than that, you might see great short-term results, but you are setting yourself up to fail long-term.

Here is why that is true. Muscles burn calories, even when at rest. So, if you lose muscle mass, you are actually losing the ability to burn calories down the road. When you stop dieting, you will find that you will gain the weight back even faster.

The same is true for your metabolism. If you give your body fewer calories to work with, your metabolism will slow down as your body adjusts. People with slower metabolisms are going to burn fewer calories. You want to be careful not to retrain your body’s metabolism because again, after you quit dieting, you may end up gaining weight even faster.

When you create a calorie deficiency, you need to be looking for about 500-600 calories/day. In other words, if you calculate that you burn about 2,000 calories a day, you should be trying to consume around 1,500. This will keep you on a healthy weight loss pace where you are losing a pound or two a week.

The moral of the story? Take it easy and take your time. Don’t go too crazy. This is a marathon and not a sprint.

Just to remind you what a healthy weight loss pattern looks like, here again is mine from last year.