Cannot Break through Plateau!

Ellaskat

i'm on team food scale too - at least for a few weeks. You might be surprised to see how different your calories are than what you think - by trying it out for a few weeks, you'll be able to see how good your 'eye' is, and whether you're really eating what you think you are.

What is more striking in what you wrote IMHO, is that you say you're not that great at logging, because you keep changing what you do. I would suggest, without tracking each and every thing you're eating, it may be adding up in unexpected ways, in a much more problematic way. Doesn't matter what diet you're doing - you can still log all of it - homecooked foods, frozen diet foods, protein powders, paleo - whatever you are doing LOG IT. As an example for myself, I have been really consistent and on top of my calorie count, but hadn't lost any weight for a while. When I went back to look at my totals week over week, I discovered that somewhere along the way I had gotten my macros screwed up. I was eating too little protein, and typically too much fat. Technically, all that should matter is my calories - I know that, but for me it seems that the composition of those calories matters too. When I corrected this imbalance, I started losing weight again within 1 week.

mburgess458

jemhh wrote: »

Your metabolism isn't set in stone. It changes as your diet changes. Read up on metabolism. Here is a primer.

That is a wonderful primer. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

Liftng4Lis

Can you open your diary?

eldamiano

No such thing as a weight loss plateau. This is a make-believe term used for people who think they should be losing weight when they are actually not eating at a calorie deficit.

toasterburn

On the advice given, I will get a scale and start measuring using that.

I still don't understand this though: I started at around 215-218, and my diet was terrible (multiple sodas a day, fast food, weekly doughnuts, daily ice cream, ect.) and zero exercising of any kind. Then I made drastic lifestyle changes, replaced all the junk with smaller portions of healthy foods, and exercised intensely. I quickly lost over 10 pounds, and then the weight-loss just stopped. Why? Did my metabolism change as I lost weight?

diannethegeek

toasterburn wrote: »

On the advice given, I will get a scale and start measuring using that.

I still don't understand this though: I started at around 215-218, and my diet was terrible (multiple sodas a day, fast food, weekly doughnuts, daily ice cream, ect.) and zero exercising of any kind. Then I made drastic lifestyle changes, replaced all the junk with smaller portions of healthy foods, and exercised intensely. I quickly lost over 10 pounds, and then the weight-loss just stopped. Why? Did my metabolism change as I lost weight?

It's likely that a large part of your initial loss was a drop in water weight. It's very common to lose water weight when you cut out fast and processed foods because they have a lot more sodium. Once your body dumped that extra water that it was holding your weight loss stabilized

toasterburn

Ah, that makes sense.

dorkyfaery

toasterburn wrote: »

On the advice given, I will get a scale and start measuring using that.

I still don't understand this though: I started at around 215-218, and my diet was terrible (multiple sodas a day, fast food, weekly doughnuts, daily ice cream, ect.) and zero exercising of any kind. Then I made drastic lifestyle changes, replaced all the junk with smaller portions of healthy foods, and exercised intensely. I quickly lost over 10 pounds, and then the weight-loss just stopped. Why? Did my metabolism change as I lost weight?

As you lose weight, your body requires less energy to run. In order to continue to lose, you have to continue to reduce your calories. Also, sometimes, when people cut out too many things that they enjoyed, they inadvertently replace those calories with others. I'm guilty of this. When I get bored with eating things I tend to not be satisfied and want to eat more. It's one of the reasons I like to keep a lot of variety in my diet.

I also whole-heartedly recommend a food scale. Especially for calorie dense foods like nuts, nut butters, cheese, I find volume measurements are insufficient. A tablespoon of Jif peanut butter, or 16 grams, is 95 calories. That is, of course, if it's a level tablespoon, which it rarely is. If you accidently serve yourself 1.5 tbsp, you've eaten almost 50 calories extra. Do that a few times per day with various foods and you will quickly lose your deficit. I find it's easy to "squeeze" extra cheese into a measuring cup, where the cup is only holding 1/4 cup, but the scale is over 28 grams. Food scales are a great addition to the kitchen.

silentKayak

Are you sure your weight loss has stopped? It sounds to me like you're hitting a normal plateau in weight loss, then giving up and trying something different before the losses have a chance to start again. IF you're on a plan that caused you to lose, and IF you are still doing the same thing but your losses appear to stall, then you should keep doing the same thing for 6 to 8 weeks and keep measuring. If you were losing fat before, you're probably still losing fat.

Keep in mind that our measured weight on a given day is a single data point. If you weigh perfectly (always naked, before breakfast/water/coffee, first thing in the morning), you can still see a 2-3 lb variance day to day which is 100% meaningless. If you weigh at different times of day, you can see variance of more like 5-7 lbs.

The way we usually think about our weight is that we celebrate local minima.

Day 1: 210 ("that's my starting weight")
Day 2: 209 ("yay, I'm losing!")
Day 3: 208 ("wow, this diet is fantastic!")
Day 4: 210 ("OMG, I WAS 208 BEFORE! WHY DID I GAIN 2 POUNDS? DIETS DON'T WORK!") And then you go eat a cookie.

The reality is that if you had a caloric deficit of 500 calories, and your "true" weight was 210.0 on Day 1, it's actually about 209.5 on Day 4. Not enough of a difference to measure, but over time, it adds up.

Use an app like HappyScale. Track your weight daily, but only pay attention to the "predicted weight", which is a moving average of your recent weights - it smooths out the variance.

If you're sure that your net intake is around 1500, you should be losing. It might be slow. That's my net, I weigh about the same as you, and I lose 1 lb per week. The math says it should be more like 2, but oh well. Maybe I have a slow metabolism, or maybe my logging is wrong. Whatever. I've found what works FOR ME, which is eating about 2000 calories a day, and burning about 500 a day through deliberate exercise. It's a formula that works for my lifestyle, my preferences, and my levels of hunger. More importantly, it's something I can stick with.

Some weeks I lose nothing. Some weeks I lose 3 lbs. Some weeks (rarely), I gain. But I know the losses are real, and I can measure the rate of loss, because I've lost 32 lbs in the 32 weeks I've been logging. The knowledge that it is working even on the weeks I don't see the measurements change is what keeps me away from the cookies I didn't lose a single pound in January. But I kept at it, and now I'm losing again. It really does work.

Gska17

kitlynnJ wrote: »

SingRunTing wrote: »

This may help:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjKPIcI51lU

When people say "you were eating more than you think", they're not insulting you. It's really easy to underestimate calories. This is why people recommend using a food scale.

This video was great. Thank you for posting it.

Ditto, thank you so much. I've been using my scale but not for everything. I've now been scared straight.

jnv7594

I agree with those that say weigh everything. You do need to weigh everything, and I do mean everything, that goes into your mouth. Even prepackaged foods. Just like for me this morning. I had sausage and eggs on a ciabatta roll. The serving size for the roll...56g. I weighed the roll and it was 63g. Serving size for sausage was two pieces at 54g. My two pieces weighed in at 58g. And eggs, yes weigh those too. I had two eggs that should have been 50g each or 100g total, but together they weighed in at 105g. Now that all may not seem like much, but it quickly adds up throughout the day. Had I not weighed everything, I would have taken in about 35 more calories for that one meal than I thought I did. And really, nothing that I had was much of a calorie dense food. This is especially true if you are eating calorie dense foods like peanut butter. A little inaccuracy in measuring something like that can make a big difference.

cdcllcga01

kitlynnJ wrote: »

SingRunTing wrote: »

This may help:

When people say "you were eating more than you think", they're not insulting you. It's really easy to underestimate calories. This is why people recommend using a food scale.

This video was great. Thank you for posting it.

Agree! Thx for posting the video - very eye opening and shows absolutely why my first troubleshooting action needs to be weigh everything!!