Be Patient About Fat Loss
Achieving a lasting, leaner you is well worth the wait. The goal of Dr. Sears L.E.A.N. is to change fat into muscle, so we prefer the term weight change to weight loss. As a general guide, it is impossible to lose more than three pounds a week without seriously endangering your health, and even this requires you to burn 1,500 calories more a day than you eat. Cases where teenage wrestlers have gone on crash diets so they can compete in a lower weight class has resulted in death.
How Fast and Safe is Fat Loss?
Begin with a fat loss of 1/2 pound a week for several weeks. This is a comfortable loss that won’t force your fat point to compensate by slowing your metabolism. Then, progress to a fat loss of one pound a week, which can be accomplished with an average daily calorie deficit of 500 calories. This means you eat 300-500 calories less than usual and exercise 30 minutes a day. For most healthy individuals, the maximum fat loss we would recommend would be two pounds per week. Your personal comfort level for fat loss will probably fall somewhere between one and two pounds a week.
Dr. Sears, or Dr. Bill as his “little patients” call him, has been advising busy parents on how to raise healthier families for over 40 years. He received his medical training at Harvard Medical School’s Children’s Hospital in Boston and The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, the world’s largest children’s hospital, where he was associate ward chief of the newborn intensive care unit before serving as the chief of pediatrics at Toronto Western Hospital, a teaching hospital of the University of Toronto. He has served as a professor of pediatrics at the University of Toronto, University of South Carolina, University of Southern California School of Medicine, and University of California: Irvine. As a father of 8 children, he coached Little League sports for 20 years, and together with his wife Martha has written more than 40 best-selling books and countless articles on nutrition, parenting, and healthy aging. He serves as a health consultant for magazines, TV, radio and other media, and his AskDrSears.com website is one of the most popular health and parenting sites. Dr. Sears has appeared on over 100 television programs, including 20/20, Good Morning America, Oprah, Today, The View, and Dr. Phil, and was featured on the cover of TIME Magazine in May 2012. He is noted for his science-made-simple-and-fun approach to family health.