Goal weight and slowing your loss

firstly are there any guidelines on what your weight loss should be as you near your goal.

Seems generally accepted that as you reach your goal weight you should slow down your weightloss for several reasons.

But at what point should you slow down. 5kg away, 15kg?

What if your goal weight isn't a low healthy weight. Say based on your height your healthy weight range is around 75 but your goal is 85, do you still need to slow down, is it still recommended to cut back to half a kilo lose?

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Replies

unknown

I plan to keep going full-steam ahead, like I have been, right up to the moment I reach my goal.

unknown

If you keep your calorie goal constant, you will slow some as you near your goal. But I see no point in trying to slow down your weight loss until you reach your goal. You might go a little past your goal while you're trying to find your maintenance calories, but once you find it, you'll slide back up to your goal anyway.

unknown

I had to change mine to .5#/week when I hit 30# left. I couldn't live on 1600 cals without sneaking food/overeating.

unknown

People close to goal often do not have as much fat available to lose, so a rate of 0.5% per week often makes sense for them.

Reverse dieting into maintenance is also a common practice. If you increase calories at a rate of, say, 200Cal per day on a once a week, or once every two weeks basis, it may take you a few weeks/months to find maintenance. During that time you would continue to lose weight while you're seeking maintenance...

unknown

zyxst wrote: »

I had to change mine to .5#/week when I hit 30# left. I couldn't live on 1600 cals without sneaking food/overeating.

I find that I have an easier time with 1600 calories now that I'm about 10 lbs from my goal than I did before. But I'm kind of not liking the weather we've been having, because I can't get as much exercise in, and that means fewer calories.

unknown

Machka9 wrote: »

I plan to keep going full-steam ahead, like I have been, right up to the moment I reach my goal.

Yeah that's my current plan. Choo Choo get out my way!

But my goal weight I think is at the high end of a healthy Bmi, so if I over shoot I'm not getting to an unhealthy weight.

unknown

Even if you overshoot, it isn't like you're going to overshoot by more than a few pounds. Once you get into maintenance, you'll be looking at more of a range instead of one number. As long as you don't overshoot the bottom end of your range, it doesn't really matter anyway.

unknown

If you're not having trouble eating at your deficit, then no need to slow your weight loss. Do what is sustainable for you.

unknown

I started out with a lot to lose and while I began by losing 2 lbs a week, now I'm down to < 1/2 lb a week and I feel pretty good about it. So far I've lost >170 lbs, and feel like I've got another 10 to go. Obviously with that much to lose in total it takes a couple of years. There was no point in being impatient really on that kind of time horizon, and in fact fixating on getting to the "finish line" can be counterproductive in that kind of situation. And after a year or so, you've put in a lot of hard work you don't want to see undone, and you do start to think about stuff like what your maintenance plan might look and feel like. So I started thinking about slowing my weight loss as a way of "training" for maintenance. Also, there comes a point where you want to wear your clothes a little while before throwing them out all the time. So slowing weight loss was part of the plan as an important mental health thing for me.

The slowdown mostly happened naturally as I got smaller. I actually increased my calories a few times, but mostly to compensate for my exercise becoming more intense as I got fitter and smaller and feeling like I needed to fuel better for that. There was one point about 6 months ago I increased my calories a tad because I deliberately wanted to slow weight loss.

One great rule of thumb is to simply keep your rolling average weekly weight loss to between 0.5% and 1.0% of total body weight (or less). So as you get smaller, your weekly loss gets smaller too. If you weigh 200 lbs, losing between 1 and 2 lbs a week is great. If you weigh 250 lbs, losing between 1.25 and 2.5 lbs a week. I personally found that was a good scale once I got out of the morbidly obese categories.