Is 3 pounds a week possible in a healthy way?

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Egirl01

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Alright so I'm a 14 year old girl who is 178 and 5'5. I am overweight but I'm not inactive. I've been doing sports since 6th grade but I had a year long hiatus last year. I did volleyball this year but that is the only sport I did for this year.

I am usually the 2nd-to-last or last girl standing when it comes to endurance tests and I can compete with the boys when it comes to sit ups and push ups. So I'm not dying whenever I exercise.

However, I want to lose weight and be healthy & fit. My original goal was to lose around 40 pounds by September. That's reasonable, right? But I became curious and tried to find out if it is possible to lose 3 pounds a week? If that's the case I'd be around 120 by September that'd be GREAT!

Is it possible? And if so, what ROUTINES can I do? Like I said, I'm not a beginner so I don't want to do stuff that a person who struggles at sports would do. I doubt I'd lose weight.

I like to run. I want to build up my endurance over the summer so I can join the Cross Country team next year. Would doing 3 miles(25 minutes) Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays while doing strength training on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays let me lose 3 pounds?

What strength training ROUTINE can I do AT HOME(without expensive equipment) that would be rigorous enough to lose that much weight? (please notice I emphasized 'routine' and 'at home'. I want a guide on what to do, please.)

Also, I already know I have to watch what I eat. I've started to monitor and slowly change the way I eat. I remember back in 7th grade I would eat like 5 slices of pizza on Fridays(that is our family Pizza Night) and now I can eat 2 and I'm satisfied. Friday night is going to be my Cheat Meal.

Another thing: My mom plans to sign me up for a swim team and my dad plans on getting me a V-ball tutor for next season.
Please reply quickly, Thank You :)
 
I have lost 9kg in 5 weeks (19.8 pounds) ....

I am not on a diet, but eat sensibly and never feel hungry ... and I combine that with gym 5 times a week (rowing machine, treadmill, elliptical cross trainer, cycle, plus light weights)

have read that 2 ponds per week is healthy
 
Is it possible to lose 3lb/week? Yes. Will it be good for you? It's theoretically possible, but I wouldn't put my money on it.

Let's do some math, shall we (because I know high schoolers just LOVE maths)? To lose 1lb of fat per week, you need to be in a calorie deficit of 500kcal/day. So to lose 3lb/week, you need to triple that amount. 1500kcal/day deficit. That's equivalent to about 3 hours of training, or a reduction of 3 average sized meals (obviously, depending on the meal in question), or a combination of both. DAILY. If you have a cheat day on Friday and take Sunday off, that probably means you'll have to up it to 4hrs/meals the other days. Furthermore, after the first lb of weight loss each week, even with good training and the right nutrition, the amound of lean body mass (LBM) lost (ie NOT FAT) will increase, so of the 3lb weight lost, it might only be 2lb fat and 1lb LBM. This will make your sporting endeavours suffer, decrease general function, decrease metabolic rate, and result in you not looking as good once the excess fat does come off.

In general, weight loss that rapid is not sustainable, and it's usually a low quality of weight lost, anyway as you lose the stuff you want to keep and keep the stuff you want to lose. Add into all that the fact that you're a growing child and issues relative to malnourishment become compounded. Basically, I wouldn't recommend it.

It'd be better to target 1lb/week, or less. I know it's a small amount of weight to be losing, but you don't want to lose weight too quickly, in case it hinders your natural development. I know that's not what you want to hear, but puberty is what it is, and as tough as that makes things, you don't want to mess with that.

Anyway, exercise-wise, strength training is more important than cardio for body composition, but you seem keen to do both, and that's quite alright. General movements you should do in strength training include deep-knee bends (squats), pushing weights away from you (chest and overhead presses), picking weights up off the ground (deadlifts, rows, Olympic lifts) and moving your bodyweight (push ups, dips, pull ups, inverted rows). A power rack, Olympic barbell and weights would make life a lot easier...but they're not cheap, so if you don't have that availability, you'll have to suffice with what you do have.

You can do squats, lunges and push ups without any equipment, but that'll only work your body in pushing movements - you need to pull stuff, too. If there's a sturdy railing around your house or ina park somewhere, you can do inverted rows with it (these are kinda like pull ups, except your feet are on the ground the whole time, making the movement similar to a push up in reverse). Then you just need to find stuff to pick up and put down again. In my garden we have some big, heavy, ceramic potplant pots that probably weigh 20kg each, plus whatever's in them. Not a bad starting point. Sandbags could make a good, cheap external weight, too - just keep adding more sand into them over time as you get stronger.

So, a simple routine to start with might be 3x10 squats, push ups, lunges, inverted rows, sandbag pulls. In time, you might start holding the sandbag across your shoulders or overhead as you do squats, and pressing it overhead as an additional upper body push movement.

A 3mile run 3x/week should be good for your heart and help you burn calories. I wouldn't run much further than that - you don't want to end up with the marathon runner look. Just acknowledge that other than improving time, there's not much progression to be had there, which may result in you getting bored of it. If you do get bored of all that running, don't quit cardio altogether, just find other methods of it. HIIT (high intensity interval training) is a good way to do some serious cardio and burn a lot of calories, and can be done just by sprinting, resting briefly, and sprinting again. And by the time you get bored of 3mile runs, you should be fairly well conditioned to be able to handle HIIT. Circuit training is another option, which you can do using your strength exercises.
 
Realistically, no. But theoretically, yes.

If you were to, id imagine you get a trainer who would plan all your nutrition and workout which you would have to follow exactly. But for the average person, i personally dont think its possibly to lose three pounds a week and be able to stay nutritionally healthy.
 
Bubs58 said:
Realistically, no. But theoretically, yes.

If you were to, id imagine you get a trainer who would plan all your nutrition and workout which you would have to follow exactly. But for the average person, i personally dont think its possibly to lose three pounds a week and be able to stay nutritionally healthy.
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it all depends how overweight you are when you start off

my experience has shown me that with a decent diet (eating good healthy food 3 times per day with drinking lots of water) and doing lots of cardio excercises (cycling/running/rowing/elliptical cross trainer), you loose approx 2kg per week for the 1st few weeks (4.4 pounds per week) and that is excercising 5 days per week on the 4 cardio machines for 10 minutes per machine and doing the weight circuits with light weights

after a few weeks, weight loss tapers down and you loose approx 1kg per week (2.2 pounds/week) ... after a few more weeks, it becomes harder to loose weight unless you cut down on your food intake
 
I searched up "marathon runner look" and I have to say I definitely don't want to look like some of the people in the pictures.

So I have one more question, you say IF I ended up losing 3 lbs, I'd end up losing 1 lb on LBM. So, if that is the case, if I do end up losing only 1lb a week, will I gain LBM? If I lose 1lb I'd be around 150 by September so would I look fitter and healthier by then?
 
I think it's possible to loose that much way but you have to be careful of keeping a balanced diet so there are no consequences for your health. It would require a lot of constant hard work, though.

Regards
Henry.
 
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80 minutes on 4 cardio machines .. i.e. 20 min per machine (treadmill/cycle/rowing and ellyptical trainer) plus approx 35 minutes on some weight machines ... so in total, nearly 2 hrs per day, 5 consecutive days of the week
 
Egirl01 said:
I searched up "marathon runner look" and I have to say I definitely don't want to look like some of the people in the pictures.

So I have one more question, you say IF I ended up losing 3 lbs, I'd end up losing 1 lb on LBM. So, if that is the case, if I do end up losing only 1lb a week, will I gain LBM? If I lose 1lb I'd be around 150 by September so would I look fitter and healthier by then?
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Hey Egirl, I think it's great that you're trying to take care of yourself now and not waiting until later, when it might be much harder. That being said, be careful not to overdo it with either too much training or too much calorie-restriction. As others have already said, you are still growing, so your body needs enough calories and nutrients in order to function properly. If you don't get adequate nutrition now, you could end up with some undesirable issues later on in life. The important thing now is to choose the healthier options as often as possible, without becoming obsessed. You are young and you should be able to eat 'junk' sometimes :)... just don't make it a daily habit.

As for exercise, again, don't get too obsessive about it. Try to do something active almost everyday (preferably around 60 - 90 mins) and do all kinds of different activities, both high and low intensity. This doesn't mean that you have to do 90 mins at a time, but over the course of a day, try to fit it about 90 mins. This could be a combination of maybe 30 mins of running, 30 mins of tennis/basketball/volleyball and 30 mins of chores, walking to and from school, etc. If there are certain things that you enjoy (cross-country running, for example), then by all means, you can focus on that, but make sure you also do some activities to build strength. If you're unsure what you should be doing in terms of distances, contact the cross-country coach and talk to him/her about what training you should be doing in order to make the team.

To answer your question above, if you eat a proper diet with adequate calories and protein (not just animal protein), you get adequate exercise (strength-building exercise), and you lose an AVERAGE of 1 lb per week, you should be able to retain or possibly gain some LBM.
 
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