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Transcript
The first point here to make is I strongly encourage you, no matter what your goal is, to break it up into small more achievable short term goals. This is called ‘chunking’ and is a known way to keep you motivated. For example, if your long term goal is to lose 30kg, then it may take a number of months or maybe years to achieve that and it is very likely you will lose motivation over that time. Instead, know your long goal is 30kg but that your goal for this month is 3kg and once you achieve that make your next goal for the next month. This will give you a continued sense of reward and motivation.
Now let’s look at what the longer term studies tell us about what are some realistic long term expectations. There is both bad news and good news here, so let’s start with the bad, which may not be what you were hoping but it is important we set realistic goals and still aim to live in a more healthy manner as I said in principle 1 – it is more than just appearances.
Lots of studies show that losing around 5-10% of your BW, on average about 8kg, in 6 months is a very achievable goal. But I am warning you right up front, so you know to expect it, many studies show that at around the 6-12 months people start putting the weight back on for a variety of reasons, which includes biological reasons which I will explain in another video, slipping back into old habits and pushing too unsustainably in the beginning and burning out. Which means lots of long term studies in weight loss only show an average weight loss of 4-5kg or 11 pounds at 12 months. For those that lose 10% of their body weight about ⅕ or 20% of individuals maintain that loss for one year.
Having said that, now the good news – with the right information and inspiration I have seen many people do better than this in the long term.
In fact, the largest ongoing review of weight loss, the National Weight Control Registry research study of 10,000 ppl ongoing which is the largest study of weight loss ever conducted showed that you can lose significant amounts of weight and keep it off in the long term. Those who have lost at least ~13 kg or 28 lbs of weight and kept it off for at least one year have continued to lose weight with an average loss of ~30kg or 66 lbs and kept it off for five and a half years when joining the registry. It gets easier over time, the longer you keep it off, the easier it is to keep off. I will come back to this in a later video, but the point to make is = it is possible, so please – you’re doing well, stay on the path.
References:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2676575/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15687411
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11375440