What’s the MOST Amount of Fat You Can Lose in a Week? (And How To Do It)

The faster we burn off fat, the better, right? Wrong. In this video, you'll learn the truth about losing fat in the most effective way. What most people don’t realize is there’s actually an upper limit as to how much fat you can lose every week. And if you try to push past this weekly limit by doing more cardio or eating even less for example, then you’ll now start to lose substantially more muscle instead of fat. Do this for months on end which many people unfortunately do, and you’ll eventually end up with a “skinny fat physique” – with too little muscle and still too much fat.

So now the real question becomes what’s the MOST amount of fat you can lose per week while minimizing muscle loss in the process? As this is going to better enable you to attain the lean, muscular physique you’re after instead of just winding up skinny fat. And to answer this question, we’ll use the findings of a 2005 paper by researcher Dr. Alpert, who used various fat loss studies in an attempt to quantify the maximum amount of fat one can lose per day without excessive muscle loss. What he found is that the body is capable of burning body fat to use for energy at a maximum rate of 31 calories per lb of body fat per day. Once you exceed this rate, the body then has to tap into your muscle mass in order to make up for its energy needs.

Well, if you’re truly seeking to lose fat as fast as humanly possible, then here’s what you’d do. First, find out what the maximum daily calorie deficit and weekly fat loss number would be for you using the process I outlined earlier. Then, to achieve this daily deficit, you would use a combination of eating below your TDEE or maintenance calories, performing regular resistance training, and throwing in additional cardio. Then, you simply monitor your body weight throughout the weeks and try to hit your target maximum weekly fat loss number.

Then as you progress and your body fat continues to decrease, you’d want to slow down your rate of fat loss to minimize muscle loss by again re-calculating what your maximum weekly fat loss number would be at your new weight and body fat percentage. So over time, the rate at which you lose weight should slow down.
And that’s basically all there is to it. But, with all that being said, I do want to provide some pre-cautions.

First of all, keep in mind that this protocol is a very aggressive approach that employs a fairly large calorie deficit, high activity, and a fast rate of weight loss. For some who are more experienced this may be completely doable, but for most people especially those just starting out with their fat loss journey, it’s just unrealistic and very difficult to adhere to, and you’d be much better off taking a longer, less aggressive approach that you’d be more likely to stick with. Second of all, as researcher Dr. Albert points out, even if you’re under this 31 calorie/lb limit I outlined it doesn’t mean that you won’t lose muscle mass.
It simply represents a threshold value past which the rate of muscle loss starts to become exponentially large.

So if you’re truly seeking to maintain as much muscle mass as possible or even build muscle while losing fat, then again a less aggressive deficit would be best.
But all in all, if you get motivated by seeing results fast and can adhere to a tough protocol, then, by all means, go for it. Otherwise, taking a slow and steady approach and making positive long-lasting changes to your lifestyle is what I’d personally recommend, as that’s more often than not what delivers the best results.

hope you were able to see that sometimes burning fat faster isn’t always better. Within my Built With Science programs, we not only put careful thought and research into helping you lose fat efficiently, but we’ve also created in-depth tutorials for tracking your calories and macros so that you can execute a cut perfectly.

To join today, simply head on over to and take the starting point analysis quiz to discover the best program for you.

MUSIC: soundcloud.com/lakeyinspired

GRAPHICS: Vector art from Vecteezy.com

STUDIES:

ENERGY DEFICIT WEIGHT LOSS


WEIGHT LOSS RATE RECOMMENDATIONS


METABOLIC RATE WEIGHT LOSS


HUMAN FAT STORAGE

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