Only Three Seconds Faster

Eliud Kipchoge shattered the world record for the marathon by one minute, eighteen seconds. But breaking it down, that was about three seconds per mile faster. Sustaining that faster pace for the entire duration was an amazing physical feat but in its essence, it was three seconds per mile.

Let’s carry the logic to weight loss. If you want to lose 52 pounds in a year, that works out to one pound per week. One pound per week is 2.3 ounces per day. While the typical 3,500 calories in a pound of fat isn’t as precise as we’d like it to be, it’s close enough. That works out to be 503 calories per day. We either have to eat 500 fewer calories, burn 500 more calories, or some combination of both. That’s doable.

The key would be to be sustain that for 365 days in a year. Based on the best available research, we seem to do well until about week 10 of any type of diet you might try. That’s when we begin to return to former eating patterns—very slowly, but that’s when the plateaus and weight regain begin.

We could pick any health goal from lowering HbA1c to getting more flexible to reducing blood pressure and use the same approach. We need to know the variable that should be adjusted, from exercise and diet to taking supplements or medications regularly. We can break them all down to this: what do we need to do today?

What can help us sustain the effort once we know what we need to do? More lessons from the world record holder on Saturday.

What are you prepared to do today?

Dr. Chet