The Dreaded Plateaus

Dana_Chami

So i have lost about 42 kgs in the past 2 years and now i am on my final journey . With 4-6 Kgs left it has become such a burden , weight loss has been stalling and it gets on my nerves. I had a plateau on 60kg lasted for 3 weeks and then on 58 lasted about a month and a half and now im on 57 kg. My question is did this happen to anyone ? Is this normal to get a plateau at each kilogram ?

DemoraFairy

A couple of things:

1. When you've only got a small amount left to lose you'll lose weight quite slowly, you shouldn't really be aiming for much more than 0.5lbs/week (0.2kg). It's easy for losses to get covered by fluctuations when your rate of loss is that low, especially if you're weighing weekly. I often had times when I felt like I hadn't lost weight in ages, then I'd check my weigh ins (I weighed everyday and logged it in a spreadsheet) and would realise that I'd actually been losing, on average, at the same rate for ages. So that's something to bear in mind.

2. Do you log accurately? That is, do you weigh everything you eat? You'll have less of a deficit now than when you started (250 calories a day if you're on 0.5lbs/week) so you'll need to be really accurate with your logging, as it can be easy to accidentally eat 250 extra calories and remove your deficit for the day.

Domicinator

I was just in a plateau for about 2 weeks. No matter what I did, I could not get down below 209 lbs., which was right at the half way point of my goal (40 lbs. lost). One time I even weighed myself right before doing some cardio and then right after, because I sweat like crazy when I work out and it always makes my weight drop. Even then, my weight didn't budge.

I started looking back through my logs and I had severely slacked off on water intake. I also decided to change up my cardio a bit and stop eating back all of my exercise calories. So either more water, less eating, or different exercise helped me--the plateau came to an end and I have been steadily losing again for the last couple of days.

Sued0nim

It's not a plateau ..it's a stall which is quite normal part of weight loss that's why you can only judge over 6-8 weeks if (big if) you have logged properly

leggup

You should really only be aiming for .5 lbs/week, which means that you're more than on track if you're still losing 2 lbs per month.

Dana_Chami

DemoraFairy wrote: »

A couple of things:

1. When you've only got a small amount left to lose you'll lose weight quite slowly, you shouldn't really be aiming for much more than 0.5lbs/week (0.2kg). It's easy for losses to get covered by fluctuations when your rate of loss is that low, especially if you're weighing weekly. I often had times when I felt like I hadn't lost weight in ages, then I'd check my weigh ins (I weighed everyday and logged it in a spreadsheet) and would realise that I'd actually been losing, on average, at the same rate for ages. So that's something to bear in mind.

2. Do you log accurately? That is, do you weigh everything you eat? You'll have less of a deficit now than when you started (250 calories a day if you're on 0.5lbs/week) so you'll need to be really accurate with your logging, as it can be easy to accidentally eat 250 extra calories and remove your deficit for the day.

Thank you for replying back . It really helped and yea i have been tracking everything accurately.. And i think should lower my weight rate and stop expectiing high rates of weight loss and need to make sure about the accuracy of my calorie intakes and deficits .

Dana_Chami

Domicinator wrote: »

I was just in a plateau for about 2 weeks. No matter what I did, I could not get down below 209 lbs., which was right at the half way point of my goal (40 lbs. lost). One time I even weighed myself right before doing some cardio and then right after, because I sweat like crazy when I work out and it always makes my weight drop. Even then, my weight didn't budge.

I started looking back through my logs and I had severely slacked off on water intake. I also decided to change up my cardio a bit and stop eating back all of my exercise calories. So either more water, less eating, or different exercise helped me--the plateau came to an end and I have been steadily losing again for the last couple of days.

Same here the only thing helping me break those plateaus is increase in Excercise duration and more of HIIT workouts and ofcourse changing my diet from time to time

diannethegeek

This old thread might be an interesting read for you: http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/113609/relatively-light-people-trying-to-get-leaner/p1

Dana_Chami

Thank you that was so helpful

Liftng4Lis

A plateau is 8-10 weeks, you're but at a stall. Keep doing what you're doing and it will come.