UK weight-loss calculator
Weight-loss guides
A small number of guides, each answering one question properly and each linked to a calculator that does the arithmetic for you.
Updated
How long does it take to lose a stone?
The short answer is somewhere between about seven and fourteen weeks. The more useful answer depends on where you are starting from.
Uses the weight loss calculator
How many calories should I eat to lose weight?
There is no single number that applies to everyone. Here is how to work out yours, and why the numbers you see quoted are usually too low.
Uses the calorie deficit calculator
How much weight can I lose in a month?
For most people, four to nine pounds, with the first month usually looking better than the ones that follow.
Uses the weight loss calculator
Why am I not losing weight?
Usually one of a small number of things, and almost all of them are measurable rather than mysterious.
Uses the plateau calculator
What these are for
A calculator answers the question you asked. A guide is for the question underneath it, the one that decides whether the answer is any use: whether a number is realistic, why the first fortnight disagrees with the model, what a figure quietly assumes about you.
Each of these is anchored to a working calculator, so nothing here asks you to do arithmetic in your head or trust a worked example built around somebody else. Read the piece, then put your own figures in.
How these are written
- Every number is either produced by the same engine the calculators use or carries a source you can open and read.
- Ranges stay ranges. Where the method does not support a single figure, none is given, however much more satisfying one would be.
- Nothing here recommends a diet, sells a product, or tells you what to eat.
- Where a figure is disputed or has not been confirmed at its own source, the guide says so in the place it matters rather than in a disclaimer at the bottom.
They are updated when the calculators or the sources behind them change, and each carries the date it was last looked at rather than a date that moves on its own.
We would rather publish three guides worth reading than thirty that are not. More will follow as there is something genuinely useful to say.