How fast should you actually lose weight?

“How fast can I lose weight?” is the most common question I get — and the honest answer is the one that keeps people from quitting.

The honest number

Aim for 0.5–1% of your body weight per week. At 80 kg that’s roughly 0.4–0.8 kg a week, or about 2–3 kg a month. It sounds slow next to the “−10 kg in 2 weeks” you see in ads — but that’s exactly the point. The weight you lose slowly is the weight you keep.

Why faster backfires

Pushing the deficit harder doesn’t just speed up fat loss — it costs you:

• Muscle, not just fat. Very aggressive cuts burn through lean tissue, which lowers your metabolism and leaves you “skinny-soft” instead of leaner.
• Hunger and rebound. The harder you restrict, the stronger the biological push to eat more later. That’s the binge-and-regain cycle — physiology, not weakness.
• It’s not sustainable. A plan you can only follow while miserable is a plan you’ll abandon, landing you right back where you started.

Judge the trend, not the daily scale

Your weight bounces 1–2 kg day to day from water, salt, carbs, and sleep — none of it fat. If you weigh in daily and react to every wobble, you’ll drive yourself crazy. Look at the weekly or monthly average instead. A line that drifts down over a month is real progress, even when individual mornings go up.

The takeaway

Slower isn’t a compromise — it’s the strategy. A modest, steady deficit built around the food you already eat protects your muscle, keeps hunger manageable, and gives you a result that lasts past the first month.

That’s the whole idea behind Lean Logic: lose fat at a pace you can keep.

Want a realistic plan? Tell me what you eat and I’ll build one paced for results you’ll actually keep.