Is losing a pound a day unhealthy?

I'm 5"1 and around 58kg, partly because I used to lift a lot but partly just because I've gotten really out of shape recently. Anyway I'm looking to lose weight as I have free gym access over the Easter holidays at home, but I only have about a month to use this in and I can only spare about half an hour a day to exercise while at uni as I do medicine.

Provided I eat healthily (loads of protein, fruit and vegetables, no carbs),is exercising a ton (I've calculated what I need to do to create enough of a calorie deficit) so as to lose a pound a day unhealthily? I've done it for about half a week before and was OK but never this long.

I'm 5"1 and around 58kg, partly because I used to lift a lot but partly just because I've gotten really out of shape recently. Anyway I'm looking to lose weight as I have free gym access over the Easter holidays at home, but I only have about a month to use this in and I can only spare about half an hour a day to exercise while at uni as I do medicine.

Provided I eat healthily (loads of protein, fruit and vegetables, no carbs),is exercising a ton (I've calculated what I need to do to create enough of a calorie deficit) so as to lose a pound a day unhealthily? I've done it for about half a week before and was OK but never this long.

Yeah it is unhealthy. Even if you managed to drum up the willpower to starve yourself and burn enough energy each day consistently to sustain such a weight loss without getting ill, quite frankly, someone who as a student has the attitude to say that they only have 30 mins to spare each day for physical activity would never be able to maintain much of the loss.

Maintaining weight isn't a problem for me, I find it hard to eat 1200 calories (my BMR) when I'm eating normally.

Regarding the half-hour thing, I'm a medic and also work part-time as my student loan doesn't even cover my accommodation - not all of us are lucky enough to have 5 spare hours a day and parents who can pay for everything.

So how did you get overweight if even maintaining your weight is such a struggle?
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Big deal, I do a full time PhD and also have a job that for several months of last year and part of this year was pretty much full time hours yet I still managed to get to the gym for an hour and a half several times a week and go for runs etc. It is about prioritising your time and in any case, the point was really about the excuse making attitude.

I love the way anyone doing a medical degree thinks they have so much responsibility and work so hard based primarily on the fact that the only thing they compare themselves to is other students. Not all of us are lucky enough to only compare our workload to people who don't really do that much. Get over yourself. Most people work whilst doing their degrees.

Anyway, in answer to your original question, of course it is unhealthy to lose weight at that rate for any significant amount of time since you will most like suffer from a combination of dehydration, malnutrition and muscular atrophy.

Shows how much you know about fitness. According to the stats I posted, I'm currently not overweight according to the standard medical definition (BMI).

I didn't say maintaining weight was a "struggle"

- regarding how I gained weight, I made it pretty clear in both my original post and the following one that it's largely due to lifting (hence why I asked if I should cut back on that and mentioned how it made me "bulk up"). Furthermore - as I just said - even with all the extra muscle I'm still not overweight.

With all due respect, I don't think I'm the one who needs to get over themself. I get under a hundred pounds a term in my student loan and absolutely no other support from either my parents or my university. In order to fund a reasonable lifestyle, I have no option but to work the hours I do (generally a shift in the morning and one in the evening after my lectures) and I'd have thought it's pretty obvious I can't afford a gym. Aside for going for a run alone at five in the morning or eleven at night (and that's not even taking into account all the studying I have to do outside of contact hours), I have no option but to exercise during lunch. Some people's main "priority" outside of their studies is to pay for rent and travel and put food on the table.

The very fact I was asking if losing a pound a day was possible makes it obvious I don't piss around when it comes to putting some effort into exercise.

You are over the weight you wish to be or are at least desirous of losing weight. Therefore you are overweight in the sense of carrying more weight than you want.

You said that you found it hard to eat 1200 calories, a figure which I am almost positive will be lower than amount needed to sustain your weight for any period of time. If you don't like me replacing "find it hard" with "struggle" then I suggest you take it up with your dictionary.

So now you are saying that you aren't overweight yet want to lose all this extra muscle you have put on () at the rate of a stone every two weeks 'healthily'

Gosh, I really hope you clear this one up before you become a doctor and actually advise people on this stuff.

You don't seem to get it. Your exact circumstances (which really are very standard) aren't important. I was just making the judgement, from my own experience that anyone who says things like:

"I want to hemorrhage a massive amount of weight very quickly. I can't do it in the normal slow manner because I am too busy too..."

etc. might have the necessary attitude to 'rip off the plaster' as it were and deprive themselves of food and beat themselves up through excessive exercise in the short term of a week or two but generally in the long term, such people are going to fall back on excuses and pile the weight straight back on in short order.

So I am not saying you are lazy and I am not saying that you don't have a lot on but what I am saying that the attitude of immediately making out that a short term drastic measure is the only way you can lose weight speaks volumes regardless of your actual circumstances. So I am saying you are impatient and also that you are obviously naive if you really think that you can sustain a rate of weight loss that you suggest for any period of time and consider it 'healthy'.

This is where you miss my point. That fact makes it clear that you can put in a short burst of effort but suggests that you most likely lack the patience and discipline for a sustained moderate effort.

In terms of weight loss, the first might be deemed admirable in some puritanical way but is ultimately doomed to failure either through exhaustion, illness or rebound weight gain. It is the second longer term type of thinking that leads to real change whilst allowing you to stay healthy.

I said: "maintaining weight isn't a problem for me, I find it hard to eat 1200 calories even when I'm eating normally." Talking of dictionaries, "maintaining" generally means "keeping something the same" - though I could have phrased "find it hard" better, how on earth does this equate to "maintaining my weight is such a struggle?"

Whether you're "almost positive" or not, 1200 is about the right BMR for a girl of my height (give or take a few hundred calories). Look it up if you don't believe me.

I'll ignore the sarcasm as you clearly seem to have a problem with the fact I'm doing a medical degree in particular, as evidenced by your previous post - "I love the way anyone doing a medical degree thinks they have so much responsibility and work so hard" - seriously?!

Not wanting to assume I know everything about weight loss () despite apparently being an evil medic, I wrote this thread very clearly ASKING if it was healthy, not SAYING that it was. I have seen cases where obese people lost comparable amount of weight. I have also asked friends and they weren't sure of the topic.

So, no, I still don't get your knee-jerk reaction.

I said I can only spare half an hour a day to exercise during term time. I didn't say I wasn't going to continue exercising or anything of the kind. Your original post talked of "someone who as a student has the attitude to say they only have 30 mins to spare" - that isn't "falling back on excuses," that's cold hard reality. If someone works on average 7 hours a day at university (which is not "really very standard") then, yeah, their "exact circumstances" are important. Saying that they aren't and suggesting it's all down to their attitude is quite frankly ridiculous.

I'm getting tired of this. Like I said above - I'd be really, really interested to see where I made out either in my original post or any of the other ones that this was the "only way" I could lose weight. Stop trying to paste your own assumptions onto what I actually said.

You really do love your assumptions. How on earth is asking if it's possible to lose weight at that rate healthily indicative that I "lack patience and discipline?" Is asking if you can finish a work project in a month and still do it properly indication that you lack the patience and discipline to do it in three, or is it merely a question as to whether it can be done faster but still correctly because maybe you'll be a lot busier in a month's time? As I've said about a hundred times already, I am currently *considering* it.

You're reading a hell of a lot into a short post. Quite frankly it's pretty obvious you were just trying to be patronising and sarcastic (as you still are) and made a failed attempt to pick on the wrong TSR user without actually bothering to read my thread properly.