how to Plan to lose 10% of your body weight in one year
Here’s what we recommend 👉
How to lose 10% of your Bodyweight in one year
How much body weight do I need to lose to make a significant visual difference in my body composition?
That number for most? 10% of bodyweight.
Does that mean your long-term goal physique is an only a 10% difference? Not necessarily, but when we break down goals into manageable chunks, 10% is a solid target to aim for.
Why 10%? Why not X lbs or X% of body fat? Because it scales to your situation and body composition far better than an absolute number.
Let’s dig into it 👉
PLan the # of Weeks
The first step is to plan how many weeks you’ll need to be in a fat-loss phase.
For most women? This will take ~20 weeks of very detailed dieting. The majority of our clients manage a calorie deficit well when targeting 0.5% rate of loss per week.
For most men? Plan for ~12 to 20 weeks, depending on where maintenance calories start and personal stress tolerance for a higher deficit.
That leaves 30+ weeks in the remainder of the year for maintenance, performance maintenance, and muscle-building goals.
Visually, it looks like I overshot every target but protein, and causes mental friction. Today that changes.
plan The phasing
There are two main ways to split up your fat loss goals:
Option 1: One continuous phase (~20 weeks), ideal for:
Higher starting body fat or a larger weight-loss goal
Lower daily stress and strong routine stability
High psychological tolerance for long deficits
Less adaptive metabolism
Option 2: 2 shorter phases (8–12 weeks each), ideal for:
Leaner starting point or more adaptive metabolism
Those with Hashimoto’s / thyroid conditions
High-stress life or variable training schedules
Those who have compliance issues with longer deficits
The Prep Matters
The success of a deficit depends on the foundations you have before starting one. These skills are essential for entering a fat loss phase easily and are incredibly difficult to learn on the fly in a restricted-calorie environment.
Before entering fat loss, you should be able to:
Hit calories within ±100 daily range
Consume 80% whole foods
Hit protein target minimum from whole foods sources (not from bars or shakes)
Regularly hit fiber targets
Meet hydration minimums
Have a routine to regularly hit movement goals
If these habits aren’t automated, the deficit will feel impossible.
Now, to plan when to start a fat loss phase, you’ll want to evaluate where you have been.
If you’ve spent years yo-yo dieting or recently ended a fat loss attempt, your metabolism has adapted down, and jumping into a fat loss phase may require digging deeper than you want to go, and make adherence more difficult.
Before starting a fat loss phase:
Spend 12 weeks finding and sitting at your top-end maintenance calories
Solidify dietary and lifestyle habits from previous page
Dial in your meal blueprint that will allow you to easily scale your meals down for fat loss targets
Pulling it all together - Option 1: long deficit
Maintenance Phase: November - January
~3 months, find and sit at top end of maintenance
Fat Loss: February - June
~20 weeks, efficient fat-loss phase, losing ~0.5%/week
Maintenance: July
4 weeks
This post-diet maintenance phase is imperative for retaining your fat loss. Jumping straight into a calorie surplus is likely going to result in poor partitioning (more calories stored as body fat than muscle).
After this, continue maintenance or move to a surplus or performance maintenance phase! Perfect for a fall race!
Pulling it all together - Option 2: two deficits
Maintenance Phase: November - January
~3 months, find and sit at top end of maintenance
Fat Loss: February - Mid-April
~10 weeks, efficient fat-loss phase, losing ~0.5%/week
Maintenance: Mid-April - Mid-July
This allows for some time at maintenance during the summer months, and a psychological rest between fat loss phases.
Fat Loss: Mid-July - September
~10 weeks, efficient fat-loss phase, losing ~0.5%/week
Maintenance: October
After this, plan for muscle building or performance.
Why not go for more?
If somehow you looked at both those slides and thought you could diet longer than that, sure, you might be able to, but chances are, you’re here because you’ve tried that before … and it didn’t stick.
We’re not saying it can’t be done.
We’re simply saying that we’ve coached hundreds of clients and helped them strike a balance between when to push and when to back off to maintenance, allowing them to sustain fat loss results for the bigger picture.
And what helps that bigger picture the most? Planning a muscle-building phase between fat loss sprints.
The takeaway
Losing 10% of your body weight in a year is ambitious and realistic if you approach it as a long-term strategy and are intentional about how you navigate the entire year, not just the time you’re in a fat-loss phase.
If you’re not zooming out and planning your entire year, shifting to match your seasons, stress, and priorities,
you’re probably optimizing for “starting soon” instead of “keeping it off long term.”
It’s time to reframe from: “how can I get this off as quickly as possible?” To: “How can I set myself up to actually be successful during and after?”
