Fitness Results: Timeline and Factors That Impact Progress
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- 24 Feb 2023
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Whether it’s losing weight so you can fit into your wedding gown or tux or trying to firm up to get in shape for summer beach season, you want to see quick fitness results.
But how quickly can you expect to see your dieting and exercising pay off? More importantly, how quick is actually healthy? What is the most sustainable way to drop unwanted pounds?
The Downside of Fast Results
People who are trying to lose weight would love to drop pounds quickly and easily. Of course, that's not how weight loss typically works. An array of factors affect how quickly you can lose weight even when you adopt a new diet and exercise routine, says Dr. Namratha Kandula, a primary care physician and professor of medicine and preventive medicine at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago.
Factors that can affect an individual's weight loss include their age, biological sex, genetic background and hormones. It's typically harder to lose weight as you get older, and it's even harder for women, Kandula says. Many women put on weight, particularly around their midsection, as they go through menopause. Also, certain hormonal conditions – like hypothyroidism – can cause weight gain.
In an effort to lose weight quickly, some people adopt highly restrictive diets that call for cutting calories drastically. Low-calorie diets call for the consumption of as few as 800 to 1,500 calories a day.
To put those calorie levels in context, the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans states that women need 1,800 to 2,400 calories each day to maintain their weight, and men need between 2,200 and 3,200 calories daily. For both genders, caloric needs are expected to decrease with age.
But adopting drastic measures to drop weight quickly may be counter-productive to your fitness and weight loss goals.
Crash diets may lead to short-term weight loss but are difficult to maintain in the long run.
"When you stop a crash diet, you tend to regain weight because you go back to your old eating habits," Kandula says.
While your body is consuming dramatically fewer calories, it feels like it's being starved and starts to burn protein – that is, muscle – for energy. The body also starts to produce hormones that promote weight gain. When you're on a significant calorie reduction regimen, your body produces the hormone ghrelin, which increases your appetite and promotes fat storage in the body.
This reduction in basal metabolic rate – the number of calories you burn just to function at rest – means that fast weight loss generally isn’t maintained for long and, instead, leads to rebound weight gain, explains Marie Spano, an Atlanta-based board-certified sports dietitian and registered dietitian.
In one University of California–Los Angeles review, about two-thirds of dieters who successfully lost weight ended up gaining back their weight – and then some – within four to five years.
In addition, diets that are too low in calories decrease your body's ability to synthesize new, metabolically active muscles, largely nullifying your workout efforts, Spano says. They also reduce your overall energy levels to make your workouts feel harder. Read More…
