It’s easy to believe that your fat loss timeline will represent a steady amount of lost weight each week, provided you stick to your strategy. After all, how often do we hear that a healthy diet means losing 1 to 2 pounds per week? The trouble with that estimate is that a healthy weight loss strategy causes the body to go through a number of phases along the way. While you might lose that number of pounds on average, it may not look nearly as consistent as you’ve come to assume.
Every person’s body is different, so there is no specific fat loss timeline that will tell you precisely how many pounds you’ll lose each week from now until you reach your goal. This is the case no matter how rigidly you stick to your weight loss strategy, even with the guidance of professionals like a doctor or physical trainer.
That said, while specific dates of a fat loss timeline may not be possible to create for all dieters, it is much easier to identify the phases that most people will experience along the way. Typically speaking, there are two major phases that people go through while they lose weight. The first is a phase in which weight is lost relatively quickly. This is followed by a second phase in which weight is still lost, but more slowly and steadily over time.
Most people find that pounds seem to come off fastest right at the start. For the first few weeks, you’ll see the biggest noticeable stage of your fat loss timeline. Over about 4 to 6 weeks, you’ll see clothes hanging differently on your body and you’ll notice changes in the way you look. That said, its not all body fat being lost during this phase. It’s also carb stores, protein, and even water weight. This helps to explain why low-carb and keto diets tend to show fast results in the beginning. They force the body to blast through their carbohydrate and water storage.
It may be hard to believe, but even though you’ll see less of a difference on the scale each week during this phase, this is the part of your fat loss timeline that really gets the job done. You may even see a plateau on the bathroom scale for a while. Still, that doesn’t mean that nothing is happening.
During this phase, the body goes through many metabolic changes and adaptations. This means that your body composition is shifting in response to your new eating, exercising and other lifestyle habits. You may start building lean muscle mass from your workouts while you gradually burn away stored fats. This can make it look as though nothing is happening while you’re on the scale, but in truth, there’s a lot going on that simply cannot be measured by looking at your total body mass.
The key to getting the most out of your fat loss timeline is to stay the course, keep up your healthy lifestyle changes, and focus on maintaining high levels of motivation. That way, you’ll start to see the differences over time – and keep the weight off – no matter what your bathroom scale happens to read at any given moment.