How Long for Weight to Come Off After Exercising for Five Days?

If you're expecting to see big changes after just five days of exercise, you're likely to be disappointed. While it may seem like a lot of work to you, especially if you've been sedentary or haven't exercised in years, it can take as much as seven days to lose just 1 pound -- hardly a noticeable improvement. And that will depend on what type of exercise you do, how hard you work and how much you consume. Setting more realistic goals will help you stick with your program, both for initial weight loss and to keep it off long term.

  1. Losing 1 to 2 Pounds

    • How long it takes to see results depends on how much you need to lose.

      The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sets a safe and reasonable weight loss goal as 1 to 2 pounds per week. This is because the reduction in caloric intake to lose at a faster rate could compromise nutrition. One pound of weight loss translates to burning 3,500 calories more than you take in. That means you'd have to create a deficit of 500 to 1,000 calories over seven days, or 700 to 2,000 calories each day, if you are only exercising five days per week. That's assuming you only consume the minimum number of calories needed to sustain your health on the other two days.

    Calorie Burning Exercises

    • How long it takes to lose weight -- if you lose any weight at all -- is going to also depend on the type of exercise you do. While resistance training, such as working with weights or doing pushups and situps, is important for maintaining and growing muscle, the calories burned are not going to get you where you need to be for weight loss. You'll need to walk briskly, run or use cardio machines at your gym. Based on ExRx.net, a 125-pound individual doing normal weight training will burn about 125 calories in 30 minutes, or 250 in an hour. The same person walking at 4 mph -- a fast pace -- would burn 167 and 334 calories, respectively, and using a stair-step machine at a moderate pace would burn 232 calories in 30 minutes or 464 in an hour.

    Consumption

    • Those numbers make it pretty clear that significant weight loss will also require you to modify your consumption. Sites like the U.S. Department of Agriculture's MyPlate.gov can help you determine how many calories you need for basic maintenance based on your gender, age, target weight and activity level. You can also see how to spread those calories over the major food groups for healthy weight loss and what foods contain empty calories that provide no nutritional value. Some smartphone applications also allow you to track calories consumed and burned throughout the day.

    Long-Term Goals

    • When you see weight loss results partially depends on how much you have to lose. If you're only 10 pounds overweight, losing just 5 pounds, which should take about two to four weeks at a safe rate, may be noticeable. If you're 100 pounds overweight, you may have to lose 20 pounds before it shows, meaning you'd have to exercise for between 10 and 20 weeks. For the average person, it takes between six and eight weeks of exercise to start feeling and looking different. This would include at least two days per week of resistance training all your major muscles, which could lead to a slimmer-appearing physique even with less weight loss.