Losing one pound of fat in one week sounds pretty simple when you break it down by the numbers. But is it really that simple when you try to do it?

A pound of fat has approximately 3500 calories of energy stored in it. Now let’s assume that your weight is stable (This means you are not currently gaining or losing weight)

In order to lose 1 pound of fat per week you would need to find a way to cut out 3500 calories per week either through your diet, or exercise, or a combination of both. This would break down to a reduction of 500 calories per day.

A combination of exercise and diet is probably the most realistic as most people fail when trying to do this with diet or exercise alone.

Ok let’s say you workout hard 4 times per week, and that your workouts burn off 200-300 calories (and this is a good tough workout) you still have to reduce your calories by 200 more through your diet on these days. 200 calories per day isn’t much, and it’s pretty hard to measure. This is really just the difference between a few bites of food each meal, maybe an extra glass of juice or cream and sugar in a couple coffees. The point is that it’s a small change and very difficult to keep track of.

On your non workout days you have to cut out 500 calories through your diet alone. Assuming you eat 3 meals per day you would need to cut out 165 calories per meal. This still isn’t very much, but it’s very restrictive and takes almost all the fun out of each meal as you always need to be on top of it constantly.

Now let’s assume you slip up and have a cheat day or indulge in a few extra helpings of mashed potatoes or pasta, or an extra snack you shouldn’t have had. Let’s say this little moment of weakness only added up to 500 extra calories that day. This one day of eating 500 calories too much will set you back two days towards your goal of losing your one pound of fat in one week (one day to get your back to baseline for over eating the 500 calories, the second day to reduce your calories by 500 again to get back on track). So for every day you cheat or indulge it will most likely set you back about two.

The bottom line is that a weight loss goal of one pound per week is very ambitious and takes a considerable amount of effort.

A more realistic goal is probably more like one pound of weight loss every 2-3 weeks. This type of weight loss goal is more sensible, doesn’t require militant strictness, and will still allow you to really enjoy eating foods that you like. This will also give you some room to see progress with less chance of being disappointed in yourself for not reaching an unrealistic goal.