[Meta] Can we talk about 1% bodyweight per week vs 2 lbs per week? : r/loseit

In response to a lot of posts, people say that you can safely lose 1% of body weight in fat per week or 2 lbs of bodyfat per week. Why is 2 lbs per week always okay, and in some cases people are saying that 1% of bodyweight is not okay? For a lot of people, 2 lbs per week is more than 1% of bodyweight, and for a lot of people above 200 they are directed not to lose more than 2 lbs per week. I guess what I’m looking for is some research articles on where those numbers come from, and why they don’t always apply? Or if there isn’t a cultural or scientific reason for them to not always apply, to talk about better ways to approach the conversation to be more helpful.

This recent thread by u/funchords may help you better understand the 1% rule and minimum calorie thing we preach in the sub reddit.

Overall though, you have to keep in mind. We’re all strangers on the internet. Most rules of thumb we have in place are in place because the last thing we want people to do is hurt themselves. A black and white outlook is rarely ever appropriate for anything, but sometimes you need to lay down some ground work to (hopefully) prevent people from going to the extremes.

I do know that we’re all internet strangers, but we are also all representing ourselves as knowing what we’re talking about when we reply to someone who comes asking for information. We also come across as being more reliable than google or the wiki because a poster’s assumption is that their post was read and that the advice was tailored to what was in it. I did not say (as best I could tell) that we should stop using these rules of thumb, I just wanted to draw the regulars’ attention to the fact that this particular rule of thumb is not consistent with itself, let alone with how its recommended, and possibly learn more about where it comes from so that I can give better advice when I can login.

There are similar (maybe even worse) issues with the daily calorie minimums. Some small sedentary women have a TDEE below 1500, which makes the 1200 minimum rather absurd for weight loss. The thing is that these default recommendations have to be “safe for everyone” and that means that they can end up being too conservative for people who are statistical outliers in various ways. So, people have to educate themselves about the facts behind the standard recommendations, and use their own judgment.

My issue is that those targets seem too ambitious for a lot of people. I was ravenous and sluggish on a 500 calorie deficit of mostly healthy food, and felt awful about losing so slowly, mostly from comparing myself to stuff on here, and then I grew out of the comparison mindset. I thought I was the only one who ever felt like that, and then I’ve seen multiple posts from short ladies having the same problem in the past couple of months.

With regards to educating themselves on the facts behind the standard recommendations, I haven’t been able to find anything rigorous on the subject. The advice given here tends to be “try something moderately aggressive for your size, if it makes you feel bad, be less aggressive”, not “here is a research study relating both absolute caloric deficit and percentage of body weight lost to gallstone risk in people at variable starting weights”. Can you link me to some of the facts on the standard recommendations? Or give me better ideas for google scholar terms?

That’s because the finer details of this you would learn studying a degree in nutrition. I took a couple nutrition courses (by no means the equivalent of a degree), but it’s really you’re at the danger of depleting yourself too rapidly of nutrients and your brain/heart/intestines and other vital organs needs X amount of various nutrients to function on a daily basis. It’s less of a big deal for a larger person to lose weight faster because fat also store nutrients, but say the Keto diet for example puts you at a risk of not being able to start up the digestive process for a lack of minimum carbs (hence, there being a recommended minimum per day). CICO is separate from what is healthy for your biochemistry, and food is nutrients.