How Much Weight Can You Lose in 2 Months?
Weight loss is an industry, so there’s plenty of misinformation out there telling you to buy supplements, sign up for paid-for weight loss apps, order special food, and a ton of other monetarily incentivized methods to lose weight.
This isn’t another pop piece on losing weight—this is how to effectively lose weight in two months, and to what extent you can see the results.
We’ll tell you what works, what you need to get (it’s not much), and how you can push through to see those results.
Whether you want to shed pounds, gain muscle, or you’re getting ready for a wedding and want that dress to fit just right, there’s a way to lose weight safely and efficiently.
We’ll also discuss unhealthy rates of weight loss and how to avoid them.
What is a Healthy Rate of Weight Loss?
Your weight loss rate is personal to you and your dietary changes. It depends on the user, but in short, the average you should aim for is 1-2 pounds per week, and that’s for multiple reasons.
- Your Skin Bounces Back: Collagen in your skin helps it retain its elasticity and shape, and if you lose weight too fast, it can stretch out and leave (potentially painful) loose skin. Loose skin is a pretty upsetting door prize for doing the hard work and losing weight. Steady weight loss helps give your skin enough time to adjust.
- You Avoid Digestive and Sleep Issues: We talk more in-depth about this later, but suffice to say you can develop digestive issues if you’re losing weight too fast and not taking in the proper nutrition to supplement your body.
- Energy Levels Don’t Suffer: Losing weight too fast can result in your energy levels being out of whack, whether it’s glycogen-related or hormone levels being a bit crazy for a while.
1-2 lbs a week isn’t a small feat, either. While it will be easier towards the beginning of your weight loss journey, keep in mind that one pound of body fat is equivalent to 3,500 calories.
That means that a 500 calorie deficit every day for a solid week will cause you to lose a single pound strictly from dieting alone.
Of course, exercise helps you burn more fat, so a mixture of a caloric deficit and exercise is where we get that 1-2 lb weekly goal.
If you’ve ever read weight loss stories and they mention that it took four months to lose 40 lbs, that’s accurate and done safely.
Ultimately, your rate of loss depends on how your diet, your starting weight, age, gender, and how much exercise is being introduced. 1-2 lbs is a healthy rate of loss, but that’s an average, and your health is subjective to your specific conditions.
If you’re losing 3-5 lbs a week and not enduring the issues we outline later on in this article, you should be fine. Just monitor your body and understand when it’s telling you something.
How to Boost Weight Loss
There are various ways that you can expedite the effects of weight loss. These are just a few:
- Increase Cardio: Cardio burns calories and helps you with daily deficits, while improving your heart rate and helping you build some muscle.
- Whole Grain Diet: Avoid white bread and refined carbs and opt for whole-grain bread and pasta instead. It goes a long way and helps prevent snacking.
- Journal Everything You eat: This can get exhausting and nobody wants to do it, but it’s eye-opening and forces you to be accountable at every single turn. You’ll change your habits rather quickly once you become consistently and constantly aware of them.
- Stop Snacking: Six small meals a day is the optimal way to diet, avoid all snacking. Small snacks add up to big calories, and if you track everything you eat, you’ll quickly realize that hundreds of calories aren’t worth the snacks they come from.
- Water Over Basically Anything Else: You never want to drink calories if you can avoid it. Opt for water over every other potential beverage. Exclusions to this rule include green tea, black coffee, and other low-calorie or zero-calorie beverages (you should also try to avoid artificial sweeteners as well because of their linked cancer risks).
- Fiber-Heavy From Now On: Fiber helps you stay full, just like protein. Fiber also keeps your digestion regular, which can positively impact your gut bacteria. While it takes a while to change your gut bacteria, starting those healthy changes now will be critical in reducing bloat and improving your health down the line.
How Much Weight Loss is Too Much?
There are so many different opinions and sources about this, whether you look online or offline.
Some sources say that if you lose 5% of your total body mass (starting at 200 lbs and losing 10, for instance) in a six-month period, you need to be medically evaluated.
Others say that you can lose two pounds per week (so 5 weeks to lose 5% body mass at that 200 lb starting weight) and that’s a healthy rate of loss. So, how do you gauge it?
Online articles want to give quick information so that you opt to read them over the other guys, but health can be subjective, and fitness can be different for everyone. It’s important to take that into account.
Losing 1-2 lbs per week is not only doable for many people, but appears to be a healthy rate of loss. This is true for anyone in relatively good health and below the age of 40-45.
Beyond this point, it can be difficult to assess what a healthy rate of loss is, but you can follow your body’s markers to tell you.
- Exercise is Literally Taking Your Breath Away: Your fitness should get easier, not harder. If doing the same workout this week is harder than when you did it last week, you could be losing weight too quickly by not intaking the proper nutrition or calories to safely drop your weight. Your body will take nutrients from other sources, like your muscles, bones, and teeth if you aren’t providing enough nutrition. Thankfully, this can be fixed and you can continue to lose weight once this is corrected.
- You’re Light-Headed (But Taking In Enough Calories): Let’s say you’re taking in enough calories in your caloric deficit while working out, but you still feel lightheaded or dizzy at times. Maybe your energy levels are down. That means your body isn’t properly turning nutrition into glycogen in your muscles, the energy that’s used when you work out. You’re losing weight too fast for your current nutritional habits to keep up with.
- Headaches All the Time: Your body uses pain to tell you that something is wrong. Headaches can tell us about a myriad of things, but if you’re rapidly losing weight and Advil isn’t taking your headaches away, it could be telling you something. Now, the weight itself isn’t the problem, but it comes down to rest, nutrition, and hydration. Take one or two days off, drink a ton of water, and pump yourself full of healthy meals. Avoid the caloric deficit for two days and see if it helps. You might be overdoing it.
- You’re Nauseous: Constipation, stomach pain, digestive issues, and feeling queasy or just generally nauseous isn’t good. Your body shouldn’t be feeling these things unless there’s a problem, and there likely is. This could come down to a lack of nutrition as well, although it might be worth going to the doctor’s at this point if a few healthy meals don’t settle this problem. You’re likely not taking in enough calories.
In short, it usually comes down to not resting enough, not having enough water, not having enough nutrition, and overdoing it. Fitness isn’t a marathon, not a sprint—overdoing it can hurt your body.
But how fast can you reasonably lose weight? As fast as your body decides to shed it while taking the necessary precautions in your diet and exercise routine.
It should be noted that sleep is actually your biggest friend here, because it helps you restore hormone levels while also assisting your metabolism, and letting your muscles rest and repair themselves properly.
There are some people who lost insane amounts of weight in relatively short amounts of time, and they were okay through it.
If you’re starting at a high weight and your doctor is concerned about your health, you should consult them before beginning any drastic weight loss changes to prevent damage to your body.
What is a Record for 2 Months of Weight Loss?
The record is held by Mr. Paul Kimelman, who lost 400 pounds in just 7 months, equating his average loss to just over 114 lbs in the span of two months.
On record that we could find, there are no faster instances of losing that much weight in such a short span of time.
While many individuals try to lose as much weight as possible, the deadlines are typically around the six-month to the one-year mark, so people aren’t commonly tracking two months of change.
If so, there’s a certain lack of fitness capability in those first two months (depending on their starting weight), so the numbers wouldn’t likely be very high.
This level of weight loss isn’t healthy and should only be attempted with heavy medical intervention. If you’re going to opt for a high level of weight loss, it should be done with beyond adequate nutrition (supplements), a healthy diet of solid vegetables, fruits, lean meats, and fish, and again, with plenty of doctor supervision.
Losing weight this quickly will also result in quite a bit of loose skin, so be weary of that.
Losing at a Healthy Rate
There is a healthy pace to lose weight, and depending on the extremes you go to, an unhealthy rate to lose weight at.
Try to find somewhere in the middle so you can avoid sagging or loose skin, and so that you can enjoy your life in the meantime without having to completely focus on fitness/dieting and nothing else.
It’s important as can be, but you have to incorporate these habits into your life organically so they fit with the other ways that you want to live your life, otherwise, they’re not going to stick.
Go for consistency over fast weight loss, and you’ll be better for it.
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