Seeing two main schools of thoughts. Either go slow and steady or go balls to the wall and get it over and done with. I need to lose at least 50lbs. Just started lifting following a minimalist 5 day split to get used to it. Doing 10,000 steps most days. Not sure whether to just focus on fat loss for a few months or stretch it out over a year but keep calories moderate?
New so not sure what strategy is going to be sustainable. 2lbs a week seems like it would make me get bored and not stick to it long term. Any thoughts from those who have experience?
2lbs per week isn’t exactly slow… you need to generate a 7k cal weekly deficit (or 1k cal deficit daily). Of course, the more weight you need to lose, the faster it comes off (in the beginning).
Either method, fast or slow, can work. It depends on the person.
I have lost about 28lbs in 5 months by sticking to 2500 calories a day, walking 10,000 steps a day and have recently added in working out with weights for the last few weeks. Coming off disc issues, torn rotar cuff and several other injuries sustained in my early 20s doing sports and whatnot.
Started to get a bit more interested so I’ve bought a bunch of home gym stuff and looking to take a more aggressive approach. 25lbs over 6 months is really slow and I am starting to feel a mental strain of prolonging the process. But I am wary of crash dieting. I can finally do more stuff after rehabbing my lower back so I am rearing to go.
28 lbs in 6 months may feel slow, but it really isn’t. Give yourself some credit.
I’d limit your variables. Pick a program that has you lift 3-4x a week while maintaining calories and other activity and see what happens for a few weeks. If your weight isn’t moving down then, then drop a couple hundred calories. You’ll likely see weight bump up a little when you first start lifting, but don’t panic - it will normalize; that’s why we need to wait a couple weeks to assess.
I know Dan John talks a lot about doing a focused reduction for 6 weeks where you really attack it, and doesn’t like the long slow reduction as being in a deficit for a long long time can effect your motivation to train. Have you considered a cyclical approach where you focus on intense fat loss for a period lets say 6 weeks, then you move to a maintenance phase where you focus on some other goals, maybe gaining some strength. This gives your body a break from the deficit and allows you a mental break from dieting. You can then repeat this and cycle back to an intense fat loss phase.
28 lbs in 6 months is awesome! I subscribe to the slow and steady approach. I dropped a little over 40 pounds over the course of a couple of years. That’s a lot slower than you need to go, however, building the habits that let me lose that weight over that period of time have made it easier (at least for me) to sustain my new body weight. I’d focus on the habits you need to achieve the outcome you want and less on the outcome. For me just lifting 3 days per week, doing 2 days of cardio and focusing on eating 90% nutritious whole foods with a focus on lean protein were magic.