There is a thread in GQ about weight maintenance, and I’m curious as to the regular rate of weight regain after a weight loss, assuming the person does nothing to maintain it.
Granted most people make some effort to maintain the loss, but I do not know how fast a person would regain it if they just ate what they want when they want and let their body add as much fat as their body feels like.
I assume a pound a week is feasible. That works out to 500 calories a day stored as bodyfat. Considering that your metabolism and endocrine systems would change, that would only require eating 300 more calories a day and burning 200 less than you did at baseline. But that figure of 500 calories stored as fat a day also works out to 50 pounds a year, 100 pounds in 2 years. Do most people after they lose weight regain it at that rate? That sounds really fast. I though by year 2-3 people had gained back most of the weight they lost, but most people when they lose weight lose 50 pounds or less. That would work out to less than half a pound a week if a person started at 200 pounds and lost 10% of bodyweight.
Looking at studies on weight maintenance people may lose 10-30% of bodyweight and take 2-4 years to gain it back. I assume they are making an effort to not gain it back, and I’m assuming a lot of that regain is in the first year. But even if 60% is in the first year that works out to 6% of bodyweight of a 10% loss, or only 18 pounds for a 300 pound person and most people aren’t 300 pounds. That is about 180 calories a day being stored as fat. Even in an extreme case, someone starts at 300 and drops 30% of bodyweight, gaining back 60% of that in the first year (54 pounds) works out to a pound a week.
Is there a realistic upper limit on how fast you can (re)gain fat mass after weight loss? With muscle even if you are taking muscle building drugs and relying on muscle memory, most people can’t gain more than 2-4 pounds of muscle a week. Most gain far less than that. And muscle has half or less the calories per pound as fat.