How much weight can you lose in a month (without the yo-yo effect)? |

The yo-yo effect is a real nightmare for people who want to lose weight. Despite his notoriety and tenacity, it is relatively easy to avoid. It is enough to demonstrate a trait that cannot be considered the root cause of the yo-yo effect: patience.

The yo-yo effect, i.e. the wrong cycle of diets and the rapid “recovery” of lost kilograms, is largely the effect of losing weight too quickly. If you adopt the right pace of weight loss, you will definitely increase the chances that your transformation will continue.

So how fast should you lose weight to avoid the yo-yo effect? We can answer this question right away: from 0,5 to 1 kg per week, i.e. up to about 5 kg per month.

And at this point we could end this article, if it were not for the fact that the question of how quickly should we lose weight so as not to jeopardize our health is much more important. health. Actually, not only “how fast”, because the answer to the question “how much can I lose weight in a month” is not enough. The correct question is: “How should we lose weight so that it serves health, and not on the contrary?”

Before we get into health, let’s take a look at the causes of the yo-yo effect.

Where does the yo-yo effect come from?

As you know perfectly well, we lose weight when we burn more calories than we supply ourselves with food. Then we professionally say oua pleasant energy balance or energy deficit.

When this deficit is small, the caloric deficiency is mainly compensated by releasing “stores” from adipose tissue into the blood (that’s how you lose weight!). However, when it is large – such as in radical, restrictive diets – the body reacts more decisively. In particular, it slows down the metabolism in order to use as little energy as possible. After all, her deliveries are more modest than usual.

When you achieve the weight you want, you will probably reach for your normal meals with a sigh of relief – the first after days or weeks of sacrifice. Here, however, comes the problem: Your metabolism is slower and it takes me a while for it to return to normal. Portions that previously met your energy needs exactly now turn out to be too caloric.

Of course, excess calories are “stored” – in adipose tissue. Which is where you just got rid of them from.

How to lose weight without the yo-yo effect?

How to solve this problem? Be patient and instead of expecting spectacular effects and rapid weight loss, try to lose weight slowly. The negative energy balance, which translates into a weight loss of half to one kilogram per week, is so small that it does not slow down the metabolic rate.

However, this is not the end of its advantages. If you’ve read our article on the types of weight loss diets, you may remember – or know from elsewhere – that in order to “burn” 0,5 kg of fat per week, you need an energy deficit of about -500 kcal.

In other words, to lose half a kilo in a week, you need to cut about 500 calories from your daily diet – or increase your physical activity. The faster the pace you want to impose on yourself, the greater the importance of physical effort. Preferably regular, because systematic exercise increases metabolism (i.e. you burn calories faster, even while resting).

Exercise and exercise are important because in practice it will usually be difficult to reduce the daily caloric content of meals by 500 kilocalories (or more!) While maintaining balanced nature of the diet. Of course, you can only lose weight by dieting, but then even a pace of 0,5 kg per week may turn out to be … unhealthy.

How to lose weight with health benefits?

Balancing the diet is one of the conditions of good health for many years, but it can be said that it is especially important during weight loss. In the end, you put your body to the test: you mobilize it to get rid of a part of itself, with which it has been inseparable until now ;-). It is not a difficult test (which is its advantage), but it is nevertheless important to provide yourself with a complete set of nutrients.

This is the exact opposite of restrictive diets, which not only burden the body with a radical reduction in the number of calories, but also often cut it off from a whole range of important nutrients: vitamins, fat, carbohydrates, and so on.

The use of a balanced diet while losing weight has one more, extremely important advantage: teaches proper eating habits. Thanks to this, you reduce the risk that in the future you will be forced to lose weight again. Eating a balanced diet helps to maintain a healthy body weight. In addition, maintaining a healthy diet means a significantly reduced risk of a whole range of civilization diseases, from diabetes, through cardiovascular diseases, to many cancers and even mental diseases (e.g. depression).

How to find the right pace and method of losing weight for yourself?

The “fork” of healthy weight loss are, contrary to the first impression, quite wide. While the difference between 0,5 kg and 1 kg seems small (only 0,5 kg), an average weight loss of 1 kg per week is twice as fast to reach the target value as 0,5 kg per week. . So, for example, 2 months instead of 4 months – and that’s a lot! So how do you decide which value you should stick to?

First of all, remember that the question of how quickly you lose weight can be very individual.

Adjust the pace of weight loss to the degree of overweight

Basically, you can take as a golden rule that the lower you are overweight, the slower the weight loss rate should be. It is both a question of needs and opportunities. In people who are overweight or obese, the body easily compensates for the energy deficit by burning the reserves accumulated in adipose tissue. However, the less excess fat, the more it burns muscle protein – which you should avoid. Therefore, assuming a healthy weight loss rate is between 0,5 and 1,0 kg per week, then if you are slightly overweight, you should stick to the lower limit of this range.

Don’t be put off by the pace of weight loss

About: the rate of weight loss is usually highest at the very beginning of weight loss – it includes because the “fat reserves” are then greatest. So don’t be discouraged if the following weeks show less progress (and sometimes even occasional weight gain). It’s perfectly natural. Also, slight increases in weight are perfectly normal: your weight is not perfectly constant and fluctuates around a certain level rather than sticking to it. The fact that today you weigh 0,5 kg more than yesterday does not necessarily mean that you have gained 0,5 kg of body fat within XNUMX hours.

Include your lifestyle and diet

The current one also has a big impact lifestyle and diet. If you lead a sedentary lifestyle and do not pay attention to the quality of your diet, achieving 1 kg of weight loss can be quite easy, because you probably have the so-called simple reserves: Your meals are easy to “lose weight” without compromising (or even beneficial!) their nutritional value, and even a small amount of regular exercise will stimulate your metabolism. 

However, if you are already training and eating healthy, finding a place where you can drastically reduce the number of calories or burn them additionally can be confusing. On the other hand, by leading a healthy lifestyle, your possible overweight problem is probably minimal, so you don’t need to rush 🙂

Increase your physical activity gradually

By losing weight, do not increase your physical activity sharply. This will make it difficult for you to maintain a proper energy deficit. In addition, it is not so obvious that throwing yourself into the whirlpool of training will increase the pace of losing unnecessary kilograms. Along with increased effort, there will also be increased hunger, which you will have to deal with. With strong changes, it can be difficult for you to estimate how many extra calories you have burnt and how many extra calories you have eaten.

It is true that hundreds of smartphone applications help here, but do not count on their accuracy: they present some average values ​​that can be quite different from reality. Therefore, if you can, increase your activity – but do it gradually.

Take into account your time possibilities

The faster the pace you set yourself, the more effort you will have to put in to achieve it. An energy deficit of 1000 kcal a day is a really big challenge. Assuming you can achieve less than half of it by changing your diet, you’ll need to exercise more than half of it.

Will you really find enough time every day (or most of the week) to “make up” that average? Especially since if you haven’t had the best nutrition so far, at least initially you will have to invest a lot of time in the kitchen to develop a healthy menu and prepare healthy meals. (Fortunately, practice makes perfect! :-)). Therefore, plan ambitiously, but realistically, so that the weaker than intended effects do not deprive you of motivation.

Optimal weight loss rate thanks to free diagnosis

As you can see, the issue of weight loss is very individual. In addition, in our hectic lives, we may simply not have time to sit down, reliably assess our abilities and plan for the optimal pace. Fortunately, we can help, and right away 🙂 All you need to do is make our free dietary diagnosis and you will learn, among other things:

• are you overweight;
• how much time will you need to achieve your dream body weight;
• will it be possible, taking into account your current eating habits …
• … And if not, what should you change about them.

Best – do it now. The first step on the way to a slim figure is already behind you: you have learned the general rules of slimming so as not to harm your health and reduce the risk of the yo-yo effect. Now it only takes a few minutes to get individual tips tailored to your situation 🙂