Diets can be frustrating and uncomfortable, which is one of the reasons so many people consider living on a diet a bad thing. What can be even more frustrating is not knowing when you'll start to see the results of their efforts. Different people begin seeing the fruits of their diet labors at different speeds, depending on a wide variety of factors.
Calories
Losing weight is in essence a matter of applied physics, says fitness coach Ben Cohn. Your body takes in calories whenever you eat food. It burns calories through activity. Low-energy activities like sleeping and watching television burn few calories, while high-energy activities like exercise burn many. If you take in more calories than you burn, your body stores those calories in the form of fat. If you burn more than you take in, your body gets rid of the excess by burning off the fat. You start losing weight as soon as you do this, but at 3,500 calories per pound of fat, it may be a while before you lose enough weight to see on the scale.
Metabolism
Metabolism describes how efficiently your body burns energy. People with a high metabolism burn more energy at any given activity than a similar person with a low metabolism. According to Harvard-based health author Walter Willett, one major factor in metabolism is your body fat percentage. Fat requires much less energy than muscle. This means that overweight people will see results from their diet slower than lean people. However, it also means that you will see more and better results as your diet begins to work and a larger proportion of your body weight is composed of lean mass.
Fat Loss
Ben Cohn also notes that you may not see the results of your weight loss at first. You can't target specific body areas for weight loss. In fact, people tend to first lose the fat that's between their organs and invisible from the outside. Other common first areas for fat loss include the face and arms. Although you may start losing weight quickly while on a diet, you might not see results in your belly and thighs until after you've lost several pounds.
Fluctuations
Celebrity personal trainer Bill Phillips says that your body weight can fluctuate by several pounds over the course of a day, owing to water retention, weight of food in your stomach and other factors. This means that if you weigh yourself every day, you might find that you're heavier on the second weighing than you were on the first. That's why Phillips recommends weighing yourself only once per week, and weighing on the same day of the week and at the same time.
Safety
In many respects, how fast you start to lose weight is a factor of how strictly you diet. Health counselor Maya Paul reminds us that slow, steady weight loss is safer and more sustainable than fast weight loss. Paul recommends setting your diet plan to lose no more than 2 lbs. in the first week.
References
- HelpGuide.org: Healthy Weight Loss and Dieting
- Ben Cohn; Fitness Coach; Hillsboro, OR
- "Eat, Drink and Be Healthy"; Walter Willett, MD; 2007
- "Body For Life"; Bill Phillips; 2006
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