If you ever wonder how much weight you can expect to lose realistically without having to starve yourself or doing extreme forms of cardio. Then this is for you. We will be discussing how much weight loss can you expect realistically and how to deal with a binge that you might not be able to control.

Expected weight loss from a caloric deficit

Depending on what your weight is, your weight-loss will completely differ from someone else’s. However, your approach should remain the same. Realistically, if you can cut off up to 500 calories, which is 14,000 calories per month. To burn one kg of fat, you need a deficit of 7,700 calories. So, in one month, you will lose 2 kg’s (4.4 pounds) of fat. Sure, if 500 seems too much for you. Start with a 250 to 300 calorie deficit and build up to 500 or keep it at 300. It is your choice. There shouldn’t be a time limit when doing a sustainable diet.

Expected weight loss from cardio and resistance training

If you add resistance training and cardio to this , you will be burning additional calories. You can easily burn 2.5 (5.1 pounds) to 3 kg’s (6.6 pounds) of fat per month. Walking for an hour a day allows you to burn  120-200 calories, depending on your weight. That is almost 3,600-6,000 calories a month, which is up to 1 and a half pounds of fat burned just from walking for an hour itself.

Resistance training is primarily for building muscles and you do not burn many calories during your workout, regardless of how hard your workout was. However, in the long-term, the muscles built from it can lead to less fat storage, increased strength, faster metabolism, all of which contribute to weight loss and keep you from gaining it back.

Do not overdo your cardio or calorie restriction  

Anything more than this will just make your hunger hormone (ghrelin) make you want to binge eat. Overdoing your cardio can lead to you getting more hungry and if you add a starvation diet model like a diet of smoothies or just eggs to it. This can easily lead to a binge eating disorder.

Sure, that is not the case for everyone, especially people who might be skinny and can go without each too much. But if you are someone who is overweight, likes to eat, and ends up binging. Then the starvation diet model is the most dangerous for you. Being skinny doesn’t exclude you from this as well. Seeing your weight go down can turn into an addiction. The more you see your weight go down on the scale, the more calories you will restrict to keep it that way once it stops, which leads to either a binge eating disorder or anorexia.

Why you should not lose muscle 

What you need to understand is your diet is not the only thing you should limit and starve yourself. You will lose muscle and fat together if that turns out to be the case. However, if your not interested in maintaining your current muscle mass and think you don’t want muscles and that you can do it. You should not, when you lose muscle mass. Your body becomes weaker. Your metabolism gets slower, which makes you burn fewer calories.

So, for example, if you were burning, let’s say 400 calories from a walk. Loss of muscle mass can lead to you burning less than 200. Why? because your metabolism has slowed down. Conversely, if you have more muscle on your frame instead of burning 400 calories, you might burn up to 500 calories due to your metabolism being faster .You don’t need to have budging muscles  on your frame. Just enough so that your body can benefit from the added weight-loss that comes with it. It’s harder to put on fat when you have muscle on your frame.

How muscles prevent fat storage

Once you consume anything, your body will utilize the energy for itself and the leftover calories that your body does not need now. It will store it as fat. The most common place is the lower belly for men and the entire lower body for women.

Having some muscle on your frame makes your body supply those calories (energy) to the muscles because it thinks you need them to survive. That’s how working out helps, as your body thinks the muscles you have are needed and, in order to repair the muscle damage that occurs from working out, it supplies the energy (calories) to your muscles. Further, decreasing the level of fat you can store.

What to do when about to binge?

Where food is concerned, eating protein helps as your body cannot digest protein without burning additional calories. This serves as another contributor to weight loss . Now adding fibrous food, mainly insoluble fiber like kidney beans, apples etc to your diet helps your stomach stay full as they also stay in your stomach longer. Not only that, eating too many of them is not possible as well. Which can help save you from going overboard if you cannot control the binge you are about to go on.

Eat an apple, 200-300 grams of watermelon, which is about 1-2 cups,  or  100-200 grams of strawberries when you feel like your about to binge, and then see how less you can eat of what your going to binge on. This should serve as an example and an immediate way to reduce how much you eat when you do end up binging.

Although it’s not recommended, you should not starve yourself or eat the wrong foods on your diet that make you want to binge due to it not getting enough nutrients from the calories (energy) you consumed to maintain itself. These 90 to 100 calories worth of fruit can save you from consuming over 1000’s of calories that you might consume in the form of fast food or other junk.

Conclusion

• Slow and steady wins the marathon. Losing weight is a marathon, not a race. The faster you try to do it. The harder it gets and the more your chances of gaining weight back.
• The 250-500 calorie ball park is a tried and tested method that can be applied by everyone to lose or gain weight at a steady pace.
• Cardio is an excellent tool for aiding in weight loss, but too much of anything can be a bad thing. Overdoing it can result in a binge.
• Resistance training is an excellent way to speed up your metabolism and maintain weight loss.
• Lost muscle converts into fat. A severely restricted diet is going to make your body burn more muscle and replace it with fat.
• You can limit how much you binge by eating low-calorie fruits before you end up binging, but it’s just a band-aid. The real reason still needs to be addressed.
• to know more about if your losing fat or water weight. Read what-is-the-difference-between-losing-weight-vs-losing-fat/
• Here are the top 10 foods that you can eat for weight loss as well as controlling a binge.top-10-best-foods-to-lose-weight/