When did you hit your first plateau?
AngelaAlario
Posts: 46 Member
I'm curious when others have hit their first plateau while trying to lose weight. Was it at a certain point in time or a certain weight? What did you do to get over it and continue losing? Momentum is key in order to keep myself motivated so I'm hoping to keep the steady loss going as long as possible.
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I didn't hit a plateau.
I lost 15 kg in 16 weeks ... and hit my goal.
Then I took a holiday break and maintained for a few weeks. Deliberately stopped logging and tracking etc. while I travelled.
And now I'm down another 1 kg.0 -
I didn't plateau either. I lost 42 pounds in 5.5 months at a pretty constant rate.0
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I'm in a plateau now and I know exactly what I need to do: tighten up my logging and get back to exercising0
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AngelaAlario wrote: »I'm curious when others have hit their first plateau while trying to lose weight. Was it at a certain point in time or a certain weight? What did you do to get over it and continue losing? Momentum is key in order to keep myself motivated so I'm hoping to keep the steady loss going as long as possible.
Weight loss is rarely a straight and steady line. Some weeks are better than others and if you weigh in daily, you will see a lot more up/down fluctuations due to variables such as water retention, time of day, scale precision, etc, etc. Further, it is not at all unusual to have rapid loss the first few weeks (more water than andipose) and then have it slow down to a more sustainable rate. Further, it is possible to gain some muscle mass if you are a beginner at strength training (and by beginner, I mean your body hasn't lifted in a while even if you have much experience at it in life). Muscle is denser than adipose, so you could still be hitting goals you want with little change or even a minor uptick on the scale. Beware, that effect is for beginners only and does not last.
If momentum is a key for you, then I suggest a weigh in once per week at the most. I also suggest you take some body measurements as there are times you may not be happy with the progress on the scale, but you will see progress on the tape measure. Last, make sure you look in the right places when you see yourself. By that I mean you are most likely to see progress in places that started with less adipose such as your calves and forearms rather than problem areas like buttocks and belly. Weight loss isn't targeted - it is body wide so if you lose 2% of your body fat then 2% out of the 1/2 pound in your arms is more visible than 2% of the 20 pounds in belly or buttocks. (obviously those numbers are made up; I have no idea of your individual numbers). I see people get frustrated when they don't see progress in a specific area but results are happening and more visible in other areas.
Last, try not to let fluctuations bother you - focus on the successes rather than speed of progress. If you are patient and consistent in your lifestyle change, it will work.0 -
Steve_ApexNC wrote: »AngelaAlario wrote: »I'm curious when others have hit their first plateau while trying to lose weight. Was it at a certain point in time or a certain weight? What did you do to get over it and continue losing? Momentum is key in order to keep myself motivated so I'm hoping to keep the steady loss going as long as possible.
Weight loss is rarely a straight and steady line. Some weeks are better than others and if you weigh in daily, you will see a lot more up/down fluctuations due to variables such as water retention, time of day, scale precision, etc, etc. Further, it is not at all unusual to have rapid loss the first few weeks (more water than andipose) and then have it slow down to a more sustainable rate. Further, it is possible to gain some muscle mass if you are a beginner at strength training (and by beginner, I mean your body hasn't lifted in a while even if you have much experience at it in life). Muscle is denser than adipose, so you could still be hitting goals you want with little change or even a minor uptick on the scale. Beware, that effect is for beginners only and does not last.
If momentum is a key for you, then I suggest a weigh in once per week at the most. I also suggest you take some body measurements as there are times you may not be happy with the progress on the scale, but you will see progress on the tape measure. Last, make sure you look in the right places when you see yourself. By that I mean you are most likely to see progress in places that started with less adipose such as your calves and forearms rather than problem areas like buttocks and belly. Weight loss isn't targeted - it is body wide so if you lose 2% of your body fat then 2% out of the 1/2 pound in your arms is more visible than 2% of the 20 pounds in belly or buttocks. (obviously those numbers are made up; I have no idea of your individual numbers). I see people get frustrated when they don't see progress in a specific area but results are happening and more visible in other areas.
Last, try not to let fluctuations bother you - focus on the successes rather than speed of progress. If you are patient and consistent in your lifestyle change, it will work.
LOL
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I hit a plateau after about twenty pounds,which took me six months. I call it a plateau but I really need to drop my calories further to see more progress and I'm having a hard time with that. I've been maintaining for a couple of months while lifting heavy but I think I'm ready to push myself out of this "plateau" and lose the last 510 pounds.0
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AngelaAlario wrote: »I'm curious when others have hit their first plateau while trying to lose weight. Was it at a certain point in time or a certain weight? What did you do to get over it and continue losing? Momentum is key in order to keep myself motivated so I'm hoping to keep the steady loss going as long as possible.
Curious about what some other people to get through their plateau. I'm currently in mine at 15lbs on the dot. Makes sense because I have about 20lbs to go so I'm right at that halfway point. I'm just keeping up hope that as long as I create that calorie deficit, the weight will come off. But in the meantime, I'm trying to incorporate more HIIT cardio, cut carbs a little, up the protein and pray
lol
Some people say throw a cheat meal in there (just something with a few extra calories but still within the limits of healthy carbs, proteins and fats) to throw you metabolism off in a good way. Not sure if I'm quite responsible enough yet for that!
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madhatter2013 wrote: »
LOL
not sure I understand your response. Adipose is a correct biological term is it not?0 -
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i hit my first plateau when I stopped eating at a deficit.0
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Oh oops. Yeah 5 - 10 pounds. Lol0
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I had plateau for a period of four months but I wasn't exercising. I was down 20 kgs and wanted 6 more to go and it didn't happen with my 1200 calorie diet. I started eating a little more and enjoyed life for some time then I just added exercise. With exercising, I reached my goal quickly. I'm down 26 kilograms and it took me 9 months.0
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Started @ 257, had a stall @ 216 for a few months. A project at work boosted my activity dramatically and it picked back up. Realized it was lazy logging.0
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I lost 44 pounds at a consistent rate. Now I've been on a year and seven month plateau (on purpose).
I say this because plateau is just another word for eating too much (eating at maintenance).
Do you weigh your food?
Do you log everything you eat?
Do you do you own research to ensure you are using accurate entries?
Do you log your exercise? If so, where do you get those calories burns from?0 -
I have been in a plateau since starting... hanging in a ~4lb limbo since about a year ago.0
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Started running again in March 2014 after a nine month layoff while remodeling our home. Began to rapidly lose weight until the beginning of November 2014. At that point I was running about 40 miles a week and eating anything I pretty much anything I wanted. For the next six months I stayed at that plateau until I realized that I may not be able to lose those last 10 lbs. I wanted to be at around 145 before I started incorporating speed work into my marathon training for the December 2015 marathon. Beginning in May 2015 I pretty much stopped eating fast food during some of my lunches and stopped the post run apple fritter routine after my longish runs. Also phased in no extra sugar in moderation. The weight has really come off and with the addition of MFP I've been able to get down to 145.5 as of yesterday. Currently running about 47 miles a week. See the below graph.
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I started losing weight on 1/2/14 and plateaued in late April of that year after losing somewhere between 30 and 35 pounds. Up until that point I had been logging my food but not counting calories. After that I started counting calories, measuring, etc. and that helped me start losing weight again.0
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Steve_ApexNC wrote: »
not sure I understand your response. Adipose is a correct biological term is it not?
I am confused too.
I hit my first one at 40 days. Lasted almost three weeks. I kept logging and exercising. Then all of a sudden my body got the memo and I lost 2 lbs in a week by doing exactly the same thing I was doing when I was losing .5lbs a week.
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Adipose refers to fat tissue0
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I got the Doctor Who reference...
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I lost 44 pounds at a consistent rate. Now I've been on a year and seven month plateau (on purpose).
I say this because plateau is just another word for eating too much (eating at maintenance).
Do you weigh your food?
Do you log everything you eat?
Do you do you own research to ensure you are using accurate entries?
Do you log your exercise? If so, where do you get those calories burns from?
Unfortunately, for some of us, even though we're not eating at maintenance, we still plateau. In my case, I'm actually eating between my 1200-1400 range, when my BMR is 1525, and I work out 6 days per week (moderate to intense, TurboFire with weights etc) with no cheat meals. However, I've had a string of metabolism issues in the past and had a few days where I, for whatever reason, just not hungry went under 1200 calories. Sometimes your body just holds on to what it can for a little bit until you increase intensity and change around some calories.0 -
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i didnt
lost 101 pounds over 9 months till now0 -
I'm -66, four pounds from goal, no plateau.
However, I stalled for a couple of weeks when I started running (this is common when a person begins a new exercise program, although it didn't happen with lifting or any videos I've done). The weight wooshed off eventually.
I recently stalled for a couple of weeks when I developed a nightly ice cream habit. If you stay on top of your diet, you won't plateau.0 -
tbbhealthanista wrote: »I lost 44 pounds at a consistent rate. Now I've been on a year and seven month plateau (on purpose).
I say this because plateau is just another word for eating too much (eating at maintenance).
Do you weigh your food?
Do you log everything you eat?
Do you do you own research to ensure you are using accurate entries?
Do you log your exercise? If so, where do you get those calories burns from?
Unfortunately, for some of us, even though we're not eating at maintenance, we still plateau. In my case, I'm actually eating between my 1200-1400 range, when my BMR is 1525, and I work out 6 days per week (moderate to intense, TurboFire with weights etc) with no cheat meals. However, I've had a string of metabolism issues in the past and had a few days where I, for whatever reason, just not hungry went under 1200 calories. Sometimes your body just holds on to what it can for a little bit until you increase intensity and change around some calories.
Science demonstrates eating at a calorie surplus causes weight gain, eating at a calorie deficit causes weight loss, and eating the same amount your burn causes maintenance, also commonly called a plateau. Unfortunately, none of us get to defy science.
If you are maintaining then you either have an underlying medical issue messing with your metabolism (pretty rare) or you are eating more calories than you realize through the unintentional underestimating of calories in and/or the unintentional overestimating calories burned (exceedingly common).
If you are plateauing/maintaining, I suggest you weigh food, log everything you eat, and ensure that you are using correct entries. If you eat your exercise calories back, then eat only about 75%. Accuracy really helps in this scientific game of weight management, and doing the things I mention is really the only way to know how much you are really eating.
Finally, as to the bold part: your body does not randomly hold onto anything. Weight management is all about the balance of calories in/calories out. Also, I don't understand what you mean about "change around calories". A calorie is a calorie not matter where it comes from, but certain foods provide different nutrients. So, calories and nutrition are not one in the same.
I am a big believer in exercise, so if you increase the intensity of your exercise you are increasing your calorie deficit, or creating a deficit where there was none.
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First, it is important to note that during plateaus, weight fluctuates. It just goes up and down centered around the same weight for weeks or months.
My first plateau was about 9 months in... I was getting impatient and cut calories to a very low level to get a bigger deficit (no changes in logging method, weighed food before, during, and after... only change was quantity of food). That resulted in a quick gain over the following 3 weeks. After a few weeks without loss, I increased calories to a smaller deficit and had a "whoosh" of everything I had gained. Probably water retention.
Less than a month later, I started a real plateau (not a gain this time), which lasted nearly 6 months. Close to 2 months into this plateau, I tried a version of IF for 6 weeks. During IF, I had rather large weight fluctuations (there was a point when I gained 9 lbs. in a few hours before losing most of it by the next day). The way the IF diet was structured gave me a large calorie surplus every other day and a huge deficit on alternating days. In total, it ended up being a large surplus, though. Despite the fluctuations up and down, I really didn't gain or lose... I just stayed within a larger range centered around the same weight. After 6 weeks of IF, I returned to a small daily deficit. Two months later, I had a big whoosh and entered into a new "range." I have no idea what triggered the whoosh.
After that plateau/whoosh, I began another plateau immediately and was stuck in the same weight range for nearly 4 months. I began eating nothing caloric except protein powder and glucose tablets (for low blood sugars). On day 2 of that, I was in a low level of ketosis (blood ketones of 0.6 mmol/L), but soon dropped out of ketosis (0.3 mmol/L by day 3). This also kept me at a very low calorie level (about 1,000 calorie deficit per day). By day 6, I had lost almost 6 lbs... much more than I should have even for that low of a calorie level. I figure the odd diet triggered a whoosh. But I started gaining at that point and quit that as a result. I returned to a small daily deficit again.
Some people see my experience and call me a liar, which annoys me a lot. I frankly don't care if you believe me or not... I'm just sharing my experience for the benefit of others who are in a plateau and are frustrated. Just know that, despite what some users will tell you, plateaus are real.0 -
A plateau is when you're doing it wrong
A stall on the other hand (eg fewer than 6 weeks, generally 2-3) is a very standard part of my weight loss, weight loss is not linear
That's why patience and apps / sites that track trend lines and extrapolate the path of weight loss are so useful. When you look back with months of data it all looks quite even, it's only when you're in it that you think you're stalling. I just wish I'd done trendweight right from the start and had a full 14-15 months and 56lbs of data to look back on
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