Plateau Advice

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  • BWBTrish
    BWBTrish Posts: 2,817 Member
    edited July 2015
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    misterwendy wrote: »
    i'm curious about something, because I seem to see this a lot...when someone complains of hitting a plateau or a bump in the road, folks immediately ask about their logging accuracy. i'm not saying that logging isn't important, or that failure to be accurate wouldn't contribute to the issue, but i can't help but wonder - if whatever means they're using to log their intake up to that point hasn't affected their ability to shed pounds, why would it become a speedbump later on in the process?

    is that because there's a degree of wiggle room early in the process that doesn't exist after you've lost the initial water weight/first excess pounds? it seems somewhat logical that the earlier pounds will be easier to shed than the last few pounds before your goal, but i'm curious - should the process come under more scrutiny as you shed more weight and get closer to your goal? do things that worked early on either stop working or become less effective later on in the journey?

    I started at the end of May at 279 pounds and and down to 241-243 or so right now...i've hit something of a wall myself within the past week or so, and I've been wondering if it's because I dropped 35 pounds of low hanging fruit and I'm going to have to up my game now. :)

    Most of the time when you start your weight loss journey or diet... you have a bigger deficit. you body uses more calories, your bigger.
    along the way you lose weight and your deficit is getting smaller ( so you body uses less calories )
    At at one point you reach the level you have no longer a deficit. You eat at maintenance or even surplus.

    Now when people start and they are not that accurate it doesnt matter that much that they eat more than they think/log. But when they lose and their deficit gets smaller..the accuracy starts to matter. After all you think you eat 1400 ( for example) but you really eat over 1600.
    And you are thinking i have a deficit of 250...but in the meantime you dont know you eat about 200 more than you log...so you dont have a deficit of 250 but only 50 which means months to take a pound off ( 3500)

    So correct logging by weighing all your food in grams becomes more important when you start losing weight and the closer to your healthy weight range the smaller your deficit is.
  • mccindy72
    mccindy72 Posts: 7,001 Member
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    misterwendy wrote: »
    i'm curious about something, because I seem to see this a lot...when someone complains of hitting a plateau or a bump in the road, folks immediately ask about their logging accuracy. i'm not saying that logging isn't important, or that failure to be accurate wouldn't contribute to the issue, but i can't help but wonder - if whatever means they're using to log their intake up to that point hasn't affected their ability to shed pounds, why would it become a speedbump later on in the process?

    is that because there's a degree of wiggle room early in the process that doesn't exist after you've lost the initial water weight/first excess pounds? it seems somewhat logical that the earlier pounds will be easier to shed than the last few pounds before your goal, but i'm curious - should the process come under more scrutiny as you shed more weight and get closer to your goal? do things that worked early on either stop working or become less effective later on in the journey?

    I started at the end of May at 279 pounds and and down to 241-243 or so right now...i've hit something of a wall myself within the past week or so, and I've been wondering if it's because I dropped 35 pounds of low hanging fruit and I'm going to have to up my game now. :)

    Basically, people forget to enter into the MFP database their decreased weight as they lose, and new body measurements. They don't receive a new calorie deficit, which would be lower, given that a smaller person (which they now are, having lost weight) needs fewer calories. So rather than eating at a deficit, they are now eating at a maintenance level.


    All of this has been said, just in different ways.
  • Christine_72
    Christine_72 Posts: 16,049 Member
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    I've hit a wall a couple of times, and both times I've traced it back to incomplete logging /eating too much.
  • xomorganjc
    xomorganjc Posts: 106 Member
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    Whenever I entered my new weight and activity level, MFP gave me a higher calorie goal. I'm not sure if I should stick with this or if I should go back to 1200... this is my issue.
  • mccindy72
    mccindy72 Posts: 7,001 Member
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    xomorganjc wrote: »
    Whenever I entered my new weight and activity level, MFP gave me a higher calorie goal. I'm not sure if I should stick with this or if I should go back to 1200... this is my issue.

    Why would you be at 1200 to begin with, if that's not the goal MFP gave you? 1200 is a pretty low calorie deficit, usually very short/small women have that as a goal. With activity it goes up even for them.
  • BWBTrish
    BWBTrish Posts: 2,817 Member
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    mccindy72 wrote: »
    xomorganjc wrote: »
    Whenever I entered my new weight and activity level, MFP gave me a higher calorie goal. I'm not sure if I should stick with this or if I should go back to 1200... this is my issue.

    Why would you be at 1200 to begin with, if that's not the goal MFP gave you? 1200 is a pretty low calorie deficit, usually very short/small women have that as a goal. With activity it goes up even for them.

    Saw her diary before she has some logging issues :)

  • mccindy72
    mccindy72 Posts: 7,001 Member
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    TheOwlhouseDesigns wrote: »
    mccindy72 wrote: »
    xomorganjc wrote: »
    Whenever I entered my new weight and activity level, MFP gave me a higher calorie goal. I'm not sure if I should stick with this or if I should go back to 1200... this is my issue.

    Why would you be at 1200 to begin with, if that's not the goal MFP gave you? 1200 is a pretty low calorie deficit, usually very short/small women have that as a goal. With activity it goes up even for them.

    Saw her diary before she has some logging issues :)

    That explains a lot!
  • PeachyCarol
    PeachyCarol Posts: 8,029 Member
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    If you're not logging accurately, you don't know how much you're eating. Calorie counting isn't a good fit for everyone, and if it's not for you, that's fine.

    However, you'll have to be more patient with the process. A real plateau, as has been stated, is 8-10 weeks. If you've been losing fine up until just this week? Meh. It happens. Weight loss isn't linear and shifts in loss patterns happen.

    It's your choice how you want to monitor your intake, but as I said... if you don't want the insurance of knowing that you're being accurate, you're going to have to be patient. Wait out the scale, and make adjustments as needed.

    It's normal for weight loss to hit stalls, sometimes for 3-4 weeks, even if you're doing everything right.

    Me? I like knowing I'm being as accurate as I can instead of worrying when the scale doesn't move.

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