Slow Grind, Real Gains: Why Sustainable Weight Loss Beats the Quick Fix
I dropped almost 40 pounds this past year.
On paper, that looks impressive. It feels impressive.
But it also sent me down a rabbit hole.
We’re all told the same thing: dial in your nutrition, train consistently, get your sleep, and you can lose two pounds a week. Easy math, right? Except when I looked at my own graph, the thought hit me like a brick: if that were true, I should’ve lost 104 pounds. Which is absurd. I didn’t even have 104 pounds to lose. I needed to lose maybe 50, maybe 60 at the absolute outside. And I’m almost there.
But the old mindset still lingered, whispering that I should’ve done it faster.
So I dug in to the research.
Turns out that “two pounds a week” is not a target; it’s a ceiling.
Push past it and your body starts throwing biological flare guns into the sky. Rapid weight loss is a stress signal, not a badge of honor.
Looking back at the year, I hit two pounds a week here and there. Once I somehow dropped three. But the real, unsexy truth is that I averaged 0.76 pounds a week. Some weeks I lost nothing. Some weeks I gained. I hit plateaus.
I’m in one right now, hovering between 169 and 171 for five straight weeks.
And yet … this is exactly what sustainable progress looks like. Keep that two pounds as your maximum, not your expectation. Aim instead for the slow, steady grind, half a pound to a pound a week.
Do that for a year and you’re down 50 pounds.
Do it for two and you’ve changed your life.
This whole thing, fitness, health, aging well … it’s a marathon.
A long, slow, stubborn march.
Not a sprint with a finish line taped to some arbitrary date on the calendar.
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