How Long Will It Take To Lose A Stone With Diet and Exercise?
In this article, I will tell you exactly how long it will take you to lose a stone with diet and exercise. It's a complex issue and I will hopefully take you through it in a very easy to follow and concise manner.
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Table of Contents for: “How Long Will It Take To Lose A Stone With Diet and Exercise?”
But first, I want to tell you a story.
Personal Trainers don’t know it all — and that’s ok
This question takes me back years. To a very dear friend of mine who I worked with on the Gym Floor in person.
I am actually Godson to her Nephew, and crucially she is the reason that I am about to marry the most wonderful person on the planet.
This is one of the greatest gifts of being a Coach, that no school or certification can ever tell you. The personal relationships that you build and the way these relationships can transform your life is incredible.
Back to Jess, one of the first friends I ever trained. She turned and looked at me when we were chatting, stressed as anything, and asked:
“How quickly will I lose this weight?”
Now, back then, I didn’t have the knowledge, the expertise, or crucially the confidence to stand back and say to her:
“As long as it takes. It will depend on far more factors than you can even fathom”
So I made the terrible mistake of running to the toilet, checking Google, and coming back saying:
“About 2lbs a week”
If I could have my time again.
It will come as no surprise to you that both Jess and I learned a lot over the course of working together.
And luckily we managed to get her losing weight and she achieved incredible things:
From left to right: Jess’ “Work in Progress Picture 2015–2017, Jess with my Godson on his Christening Day, and Jess on her Wedding Day to Matt (who is another dear friend of mine).
What I adore about all of these photos is Jess’s smile. She was also so full of life, and everything she does she puts her all into. Whether that is being a Teacher for little children, training with me, or now being a mother to her new family that she and Matt have. She is one of the most exuberant and fun people to be around, and looking at these photos makes me well up because being able to experience all of these memories with her as well means so much to me.
What I truly see in these photos is a woman full of confidence and life. And she deserves everything she worked so incredibly hard for, and for her to entrust me with getting her and her husband ready for their wedding was a true honor.
But I did let her down. If I knew then what I know now about how long it will take her to lose a stone my answer would be very different.
It would be what I am about to tell you right now.
So in a vow to never make that mistake again, I am writing this for you.
How to lose a stone with diet and exercise?
I am wholly encouraged that there is a new hashtag emerging on Instagram, and it is the following #caloriedeficitdiet
How To Lose A Stone With Diet
Whether you want Fat Loss or Weight Loss there is only one answer to the question of how you lose weight, and that is a “Calorie Deficit”.
This is the principle that energy in as calories must be lower than energy out, and this will create weight loss for you. You can create a Calorie Deficit in two ways:
Eat fewer Calories
Burn Calories through Exercise
In order to know how many calories is less than your body needs, therefore creating weight loss then use this equation for your “Upper-Calorie Window”
Goal Bodyweight in LBS x 12
For your “Lower-Calorie Window” you need to find out your Basal Metabolic Rate or BMR.
To do this you can download any number of Calorie Calculators from the Internet, but the one I think is the best one to use is available right here.
A couple of really quick strategies to help you manage a Calorie Deficit in terms of your Diet would be to do the following:
Eat Protein and Vegetables at every meal
Drink 3 liters of water a day
Snack on Fruit
Track your calories using MyFitness Pal or another tracking app
Avoid excess liquid calories from drinks like soda, alcohol, and very high-calorie smoothies.
Try to limit the number of times you eat out in a week, as when in restaurants you have very little control over the preparation and calorie content of your food.
These are quite general guidelines but they will stand you in good stead as you get started on how to lose a stone with your diet.
I’m not going into to it much more here as I have nearly 10 articles on it on my website, that explain a Calorie Deficit in great detail, what your expectations with it should be, and how to implement my system of a Calorie Window.
If you do need some extra help on it right now then watch this:
How To Lose A Stone With Exercise
Strictly speaking…you can’t. Calories In are what matter when it comes to adhering to your plan to lose weight.
Although, exercise does burn calories, but not as much as you think. In fact, a study [1] took 60 healthy adults and made them wear laboratory devices as well as activity trackers to see how accurate they were. The Fitbit Surge was the most accurate at calculating calories burned at an error rate of 25%.
Yup. It can be up to 25% inaccurate.
This is why you are driving yourself mad by checking your calories burned from exercise on your watch…and you aren’t seeing results.
This doesn’t mean that Exercise is a defunct part of the Energy Balance Equation. There will be some calories burned from exercise…so that’s good, and you are building some muscle on top of that…but again…not as much as you would think.
But exercising gives you so much more than a method with which to burn calories, and this is one of the reasons that weight loss takes so much time.
Lifting Weights, being in the Gym, doing something difficult is a very human thing to do because it keeps you being a productive person.
And a productive person is a person that burns calories. When you exercise regularly this gives you a feeling of wellbeing. It creates momentum for you, and that momentum will lead you to making better choices about yourself outside and inside the Gym.
You might walk more, you might be able to get an extra training session each week, you might just choose to stand on your commute as opposed to sit on the train, or take the stairs as opposed to the escalator.
When you start adding layers of exercise into your life, you will learn the positive effects that will have on your wellbeing…and that is very addictive my friends.
Added to the above, it will help your Calorie Deficit not just by calories burned from exercise, but by exercising more it will guide you into making nutritional choices more aligned with your goals each and every day.
The most important thing to remember when it comes to how to lose a stone with exercise is this one word: enjoyment.
Essentially it doesn’t matter what “mode” of exercise you do, if you aren’t enjoying it you will not stick to it. If you have loved running in the past…then go running. If you enjoy the Gym…then lift weights.
If you want to try something new and think that will be tons of fun…then go do that.
You don’t need permission from me to do any type of exercise, you only need to give yourself permission to focus on exercise that you enjoy.
My preference is weight training in the Gym for those I work with Online as it is more efficient but it is also more accessible. No matter what your ailments you will be able to lift weights to some degree or level. Every exercise can be adapted for your goals and your physiology.
Whereas running is just running. Cycling is just cycling. If you can’t do it…you can’t do it, and that is that.
Here are some Workouts you can do in the Gym which I took from the following article of mine: 4 Gym Based Workouts For Beginners both Male and Female
They are designed to help you burn fat and build muscle at the same time in order to facilitate the Weight Loss you are after.
They focus on what we call Compound Movements. Moving like this will be your best way to get the most out of your training as it will activate the most amount of muscle which will help your Calorie Deficit the most.
What if you are “Skinny Fat”?
Everyone I have worked with when we first started working together wanted to lose weight, and I think in truth this is because that is what you know.
Or rather, you didn’t know that losing weight and losing Body Fat were two different things.
Or, you didn’t think the difference mattered.
I do believe it is important to know the difference between these two things as many people who need to lose body fat, think they need to lose weight.
There are huge swathes of females out there who dislike the way look and feel. The best word I can think of to describe this feeling to you is “loose”. You just feel loose, and you want to feel tight and “toned”. And you believe the answer lies in losing weight.
If you feel like this, you need to decrease your Body Fat, not necessarily lose weight.
You are what we would call “Skinny Fat”.
Which is a term I really dislike, but it is the industry standard. So for you, today, reading this, as it does explain my point I will just go with it.
When you work on losing body fat, you might not necessarily lose weight.
Let me say that again: When you focus on losing body fat, you might not lose weight.
Weight Loss directly relates to the reduction of everything in your body:
Body Fat
Muscle Mass
Water
This is why you lose scale weight when you cut out carbohydrates because, for every gram of carbohydrate you eat, your body will hold 2–3 grams of water.
It’s doesn’t necessarily mean you are losing body fat.
If you aren’t activating and exercising your muscles you will lose muscle density and therefore you might lose scale weight.
When you focus solely on just a Caloric Deficit, without musclar activation then you will lose weight, but you will also lose strength and metabolic performance.
Which can lead you into a very trapped place in terms of your futurre caloric restriction and being able to sustain your Weight.
There is no easy way to directly know whether you are losing body fat or just weight overall. What I would say is this:
If you are feeling a lot better in your skin,
If you feel stronger,
If you feel more confident,
If you feel your clothes are fitting better,
If you feel like you have more energy
If you are finding your Calorie Deficit manageable and sustainable
Then what you are doing is working, don’t oveththink whats happening in terms of the scale and keep going.
If you think you are “Skinny Fat” then you need to focus on getting in the gym and building your body up, in terms of its muscular density is going to have the “weight loss” effect you desire, except the scale might not go down.
To conquer the “Skinny Fat” equation follow these steps:
Increase Calories to 110% of TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure)
Strength Train 3–4x a week following a Training Plan
Focus on Performance Goals not Scale Goals
Reduce Cardiovascular output
Look for these markers of progress in your journey:
Are clothes fitting better?
Is the scale not moving down or up too much?
Are you lifting more weight each session?
Are you seeing muscle?
Are you eating enough protein?
Are you having increased energy?
Has your posture improved?
Are you less tired?
Are you more confident?
Do you feel more powerful?
But I Don’t Want To Look Bulky!
You can feel strong and empowered….without looking bulky.
Women have about 15–20 times [2] less Testosterone in their bodies compared to men, but they do make up for this difference in other hormonal aspects of their physiology.
Other hormones that help with muscle building for women is Estrogen [3]. This is a growth hormone that is particularly dominant in the first two weeks of a female’s cycle.
Find out more by reading this: How Does Your Menstrual Cycle Affect Your Fitness And Weight Loss?
Estrogen is great at:
Stimulating Growth Hormone Production
Preventing Muscle Breakdown
Increases Metabolism
This will more or less balance out your inability to build muscle because of a lack of testosterone. The reason you don’t see women with the same muscle density in the Gym as men is because they begin with a much lower (nearly half as much) amount of muscle as men, and can’t gain as much.
The more muscle you build, the less bulky you will look. Muscle on the female body provides definition, shape, and tonality. Therefore the more of it you build, and the less body fat you have (about 20%) you will have that shape and tonality that you desire.
But the path to what you desire isn’t dieting. It is muscle building.
How Long Will It Take?
I have literally just received a DM on Instagram of someone losing 13lbs in 30 days.
This is not what you should expect.
Some of the friends I work with online have taken 2 months to lose 6lbs.
So where does the answer lie?
Whenever someone new applies to work with me via Online Coaching I always ask them this question:
Would you rather:
a) Make very fast progress that you know is not sustainable?
b) Make slower progress that you know is sustainable?
This gives me a guide on where to set their Calories, Training, and how they will need coaching into the future.
I know that most people will want fast progress that will be sustainable, but it doesn’t exist. There comes a point where taking the fast track will always come to a crashing halt, and this could create a very testing path into the future.
Firstly, when you get seduced by fast weight loss, despite knowing that it can’t continue at the Cerebral Level, your imagination will keep saying to you:
“I am different. Look at my results. I am different. I can keep this up”
Your imagination can be your best friend or your worst enemy.
And oftentimes, with people, I have worked with over the years and those who are low on self-confidence, their imagination can be their own worst enemy.
When it comes to losing weight, these two words are without a doubt the most important:
Reality and Perspective
You must always root yourself in the reality of what weight loss is, and the best way to do that is to make sure you have a very realistic perspective.
The reality of weight loss is something you aren’t going to hear, but you really seriously need to listen to this point.
0.5lbs a week is fast weight loss. 1lb a week is terribly fast weight loss.
2lbs a week is beyond epic.
But these numbers can only be seen in this context with hindsight. When you look back over a year you will see an average weight loss of between 0.5lbs and 1lbs a week.
When you are in the thick of it, there is no way that it will be that linear. You will have weeks, sometimes months, when your weight goes up and stays up for whatever reason. You will have moments when it just drops out of control and you will think you are walking on the stars.
Scale Weight by its very nature is erratic.
And with all things erratic we must always give it space and time with which to actually process the results and effect it has had.
1lb of fat is equal to 3500kcal
“A total of 3500 calories equals 1 pound of body weight. This means if you decrease (or increase) your intake by 500 calories daily, you will lose (or gain) 1 pound per week. (500 calories per day × 7 days = 3500 calories.)” [4]
Do this for 14 weeks…magically that is how you lose a stone. Cue eye roll.
This is a conventional stance by many people who are just poorly educated in the field of weight loss. Although I am not denying the science about how many Calories makeup 1lb of weight, what I am calling into question is the lack of understanding this principle has for the human condition and crucially metabolic adaptation [5].
Metabolic Adaptation is the method upon which as you reduce the size of your body, you will need fewer calories to maintain it.
As you lose mass, you don’t just lose Body Fat. You will lose muscle, which will affect your Basal Metabolic Rate, you will also burn fewer calories as you move each day, because you are moving something with less Mass which means you are using less energy with which to do that.
Added to that, sticking to a Caloric Restriction of 500kcals each day for 14 weeks, without any variation on that number is very hard.
Let's look at this in more real terms.
A 40-year-old female who:
Weighs: 182lbs (12st/82kgs)
Height: 176cm (5ft 8in)
Leads a Sedentary Lifestyle
Has a Caloric Need of 1871kcal to maintain her weight.
If you then restrict her to 1371kcal a day (1871–500) in order to achieve this weight loss of one stone you are restricting her to below her Basal Metabolic Rate of 1559kcal a day.
This can then become dangerous and more unsustainable as time goes on due to the fact that you are not eating enough to fuel the basic needs of your body. Your Organs for example.
Five Ways in which restricting your calories to below your BMR level could be harmful are [6]:
It can lower your Metabolism
It will cause Fatigue and Nutrient Deficiencies
It may reduce fertility
It can weaken your bones
It may lower your immunity
And one I will add:
6. It might trigger Disordered Eating habits and behaviors
I’m not in the business of scaremongering, therefore looking at that list, I personally think the most crucial point in terms of your ability to adhere to the Caloric Restriction is number 2.
Fatigue will create havoc in your ability to lose weight. When you are tired you become stressed, leading to a desire for higher-calorie foods [7]. Then you will notice that you aren’t losing weight…and then you will feel like a failure…and then you will be inclined to quit.
Number 6 is also extremely important, as the restrict/binge continuum is something that is more common than you might imagine, combined with the possible effects of this on your Mental Wellbeing also.
If you do experience any behaviors of Disordered Eating please seek specialist help. BEAT is a fantastic charity available here: https://www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk/
If only you actually implemented a sustainable Deficit in the first place and realized my next point…
Worrying About Time Is Your Enemy
When you focus too much on “how long will it take to lose a stone” you will end up putting yourself in a prison.
What happens is that you focus so much on the weight coming off within this particular, made up out of thin air, time frame…when the scale doesn’t comply because of factors effecting you that you didn’t even dream of when you came up with this made-up time frame, you start to feel like you are failing.
And when you start feeling like you are failing, you will start to give up.
And when you give up…you will never achieve what you want.
When you are truly trying to calculate by what point you need to lose this weight. Ask yourself “why”.
If your answer to why is any of the following:
Because I want to look better
Because I need it now
Because it will make me happy
Because it will make me more attractive
Because Karen at work managed it so I should too
Then you need to understand that the answer to these points lies in taking a lot more slowly than it does achieving it quickly.
Without a shadow of a doubt, if you want to make your Weight Loss successful and sustainable then you need to take it a lot slower than you imagined.
Slower than a 500kcal a day deficit. Slower than 1lb a week. Slower than you might really want it.
Because the chasm between wanting it and achieving it is layered with far more traps and potholes than you ever thought when you first typed into Google: “How Long Will It Take To Lose A Stone With Diet and Exercise?”
I believe the truth lies here:
You don’t actually need to lose a stone or any amount of weight by any particular date in the future.
The stress that a time frame will cause, will undermine your ability to actually lose weight. It also won’t take into account the craziness of this world.
Even if you try to lose weight by 1lb a week…that is still 3.5 months.
A lot of things can happen in 3.5 months, a lot of things that are out of your control, and will wildly affect how quickly you are able to lose weight.
So please, give yourself more time to achieve the weight loss you desire…and ironically it will happen more quickly because you won’t go through cycles of restriction/binge or success/failure/quit.
You will just keep plugging away.
You will learn how to balance your fitness goals with your very busy life.
and
You will find it empowering because you will see progress over a longer period of time which means you will keep going for a lot longer, and get results upon which you never thought possible.
Did You Find This Useful?
I have plenty more articles about weight loss throughout this website.
Here is a selection I think would make great further reading for you:
Added to that it would be AMAZING if you wanted more help from me.
Just can send me that friend request we spoke about earlier…and I will send you lots of help straight away.
References:
Shcherbina, A. et al., 2017. Accuracy in Wrist-Worn, Sensor-Based Measurements of Heart Rate and Energy Expenditure in a Diverse Cohort. Journal of Personalized Medicine, 7(2), p.3. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/jpm7020003.
Encyclopedia, M., 2020. Testosterone: Medlineplus Medical Encyclopedia. [online] Medlineplus.gov. Available at: <https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/003707.htm> [Accessed 25 September 2020].
Legion Athletics. 2020. The Ultimate Guide To Female Muscle Growth — Legion Athletics. [online] Available at: <https://legionathletics.com/female-muscle-growth/> [Accessed 25 September 2020].
Guth, E., 2020. Healthy Weight Loss. [online] Jama Network. Available at: <https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/1900513> [Accessed 26 September 2020].
Darcy L. Johannsen, Nicolas D. Knuth, Robert Huizenga, Jennifer C. Rood, Eric Ravussin, Kevin D. Hall, Metabolic Slowing with Massive Weight Loss despite Preservation of Fat-Free Mass, The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, Volume 97, Issue 7, 1 July 2012, Pages 2489–2496, https://doi.org/10.1210/jc.2012-1444
Healthline. 2020. 5 Ways Restricting Calories Can Be Harmful. [online] Available at: <https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/calorie-restriction-risks#:~:text=1.,8%20%2C%209%20%2C%2010%20).> [Accessed 26 September 2020].
Verywell Mind. 2020. How Stress Can Cause Weight Gain. [online] Available at: <https://www.verywellmind.com/how-stress-can-cause-weight-gain-3145088> [Accessed 26 September 2020].