The dreaded plateau....grrr!

Bshmerlie

I've lost 37 pounds so far and I can honestly say I've never hit a plateau...but I think I was at the easiest phaze of my journey. Going from 250-200 pounds is the easy part. When I get below 200 it will increasingly more difficult and the journey from 150-130 I believe is going to test everything I believe about my weight loss strategy. I can imagine at some point I will have a period where I stall. BTW I don't consider two weeks a plateau. My stategy will be to eliminate as many variables as possible for 30 days when it comes to my food intake and the calories I burn. The first thing I would do would be to not eat back any exercise calories. So that would take miscalculations of calorie burn out of the equation. Next I would cut back as much as possible on sodium or anything that could cause me to retain water. Then if it continued I would only eat those items that are in a prepackaged preset amount of calories. Example.... eating a preset amount Lean Cusine meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner for 30 days. Eat at the lowest calorie goal (ie 1200) that I could comfortably eat at. Have my 4 bottles of water with me everywhere and make sure I brought them home empty everyday. And I simply would not cheat for 30 days. If I was so frustrated on a plateau I would try these things and there would be no way my weighing could be off and no way I could be miscalcuting or picking the wrong entry in MFP. If I did those things and I still didn't lose weight then I might write a thread on asking for help about a plateau. Eliminate the variables....there's only so many of them.

ninerbuff

DemoraFairy wrote: »

ninerbuff wrote: »

A plateau in weight loss in 6 weeks or more of no weight movement if one has been CONSISTENT with diet and exercise. Any break in consistency stops it from being a plateau. That includes not exercising or even just having a small piece of candy.
Everything else is a stall and is usual when one tries to lose weight. If you've been at it awhile and haven't changed your exercise routine, that would be the first thing I would adjust. Increase the intensity or duration is the usual.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

Well... you can not exercise or have chocolate if it's in your calories. You don't need to exercise or cut out sweets to lose weight.

Missed the point. If exercising is in the program and one day is skipped, so was consistency. This breaks the condition of it being a plateau. Same with if they had no candy at all, but then just had one piece. Consistency was disrupted. That's why plateau are really rare.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

ninerbuff

franceslinton wrote: »

IILikeToMoveItMoveIt wrote: »

shell1005 wrote: »

It's the calories. It's totally freeing once you understand that.

so much yes.

Well, then explain how 1300 with candy I lose nothing, but 1300 without I lose.

Glycogen reduction in the cells. When that happens, fluid retention is also reduced. So there is a weight shift, but it's not FAT weight. It's water weight.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

CSARdiver

Bear in mind whenever you reach a stalling point in your progress, there's a 20% degree of error in nutritional labeling, so much that many scientists frown on calorie counting as it is simply too inaccurate. Try something new with your exercise routine and really push yourself.

Also note that your daily water weight will fluctuate, so your timing on weighing yourself may be the cause.

franceslinton

Hey guys! Thanks for all the input! The most helpful comments were about weighing my food. I started weighing anything that had a weight listed along side Cup/Tbsp amount as the serving size. There were some shocking discoveries, particularly with cereal! Amazing. Anyway, I've achieved my first of 2 major goals, with only 8lbs to my overall goal! And yes, I eat chips almost everyday (side note: weighing chips makes me cry.... Lol!)