Weight Loss Doc reviews Mike Pompeo’s weight loss

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Mike Pompeo said he lost 90 pounds in 6 months. That’s 15 pounds a month, or about 3-4 pounds a week.

Now 3-4 pounds in one week is not too much to write about, however, he managed to sustain this rate of weight loss for 6 months.

Now that’s impressive. Perhaps a little too impressive?

Let’s review Mike Pompeo’s weight loss.

Who is Mike Pompeo again?

For those who don’t know, Mike Pompeo is the former U.S. Secretary of State.

Prior to his weight loss, his diet apparently consisted of cheeseburgers, carbs and sugary treats.

He says he almost hit 300 pounds, and given that his height is about 6 feet tall, that would put his pre-weight loss BMI at around 40, which is classified as morbidly obese.

At that BMI, he would be a strong candidate for a gastric bypass, or most other types of weight loss surgery.

After his claimed weight loss, his BMI would be around 29, which would still put him into the overweight category, but he would have dropped 2 BMI categories to get there, which is very impressive.

How did he gain so much weight?

Apparently, he blames a foot injury that slowed him down.

However, the more likely contributor to his weight gain was probably his hectic work schedule and the lack of focus on his diet and lifestyle.

The man was the Director of the CIA and served as U.S. Secretary of State, I couldn’t even imagine how stressful that job would be.

When you’re too busy to even think about your diet and lifestyle, eating late at night because you have to work long hours, and stress eating all the time, I’d be surprised if you didn’t gain weight.

How did he lose so much weight?

According to him, he focused on exercise and made some dietary changes.

For exercise, he claims to have done some basic weight training 5-6 times a week for 30 mins or so.

His routine involved using dumbbells and an elliptical machine.

So it’s probably a number of free weight workouts like curls or dumbbell presses, and some cardio on the elliptical.

For diet, he claims to have made some basic changes, like eating more protein, reducing carbohydrate, and making healthier substitutions like more egg whites and turkey bacon, over pancakes and cheeseburgers.

He also said that he didn’t get help from any personal trainers or nutritionists, and did it all himself.

Now, 90 pounds in 6 months is pretty significant, and there are people who get gastric bypass surgery and work with an entire weight loss healthcare team who don’t lose that much weight that fast.

Typically, a 300 pound patient with a gastric bypass will lose 90 pounds in 1-2 years.

Losing 3-4 pounds in one week is not uncommon. Some patients who get gastric bypass surgery can lose sometimes 5-10 pounds in their first week.

However, losing 3-4 pounds a week for 6 straight months is rare. Weight loss is not a linear event, and people losing weight should expect their rate of weight loss to slow down, especially if they start to drop beyond a 10% weight loss. It’s just how our body naturally changes as we lose weight.

So is he telling the truth?

Let’s calculate his estimated daily calorie intake during that 6 month period.

90 pounds over 6 months is about 3.5 pounds per week. On average, to lose 1 pound a week, you would need a deficit of 500 cal per day.

So to lose 3.5 pounds per week you need a deficit of 1750 cal per day.

Now let’s add up his workouts. We don’t know his exact routine but a 15 minute elliptical and 15 minute weightlifting session would add up to around 250 cal burned, and doing it 5-6 times per week averages out to around 200 cal burned per day.

The average man roughly requires anywhere from 2000-3000 cal per day to maintain their weight. As we get older, that amount moves towards the lower end of the spectrum.

Mike Pompeo is almost 60 years old, but he’s a big guy so I’ll estimate his maintenance as 2500 cal per day.

That means he had to consume roughly 950 cal per day, for 6 months.

This would put his diet into the very low calorie diet range. These diets often make use of total meal replacements consisting of liquid meals and smoothies.

Losing weight too quickly can also cause medical issues, so very low calorie diets are usually medically supervised, and are usually done for no more than 4 months.

There is likely something Mike Pompeo has not mentioned in his interviews about his weight that resulted in so much weight loss, assuming he actually did lose 90 pounds over 6 months in the first place.

Regardless of what he did, highly restrictive diets are rarely sustainable for long periods of time, and people who undertake these diets frequently rebound in weight once they stop. So it’ll be interesting to see if he’s able to keep the weight off.

This style of dieting is just not practical for most people, but who knows, maybe the man is actually one of the most disciplined people on Earth.

So while losing 90 pounds in 6 months is within the realm of possibility, it’s probably not realistic for the average person trying to lose weight by themselves.

But I get it. From a political perspective, his drastic yet seemingly simple weight loss helps showcase an inspirational example someone can look up to and work towards, you know, something great the average American can hope to achieve with good old hard work and discipline like ol’ Mike did.

But looking at it as a clinician, his weight loss progress, if true, is not typical, and trying to lose weight that fast is not a good idea from a health perspective.

Maybe that’s why he’s a politician and not a doctor.

Learn more about

• What Could Happen If You Lose Weight Too Fast

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