How do I get over plateau?

erinraden

Hi everybody! I am a 26 year old happily married woman with two kids. I work 10 hour shifts at a daycare and walk about 8,000 steps a day. I go to the gym about twice a week where I do weightlifting and cardio. I am 5'3" and started out MFP at 155ish pounds. My goal is 125. My calorie goal is 1,200 and I RARELY to almost never go over. I've lost 10 pounds. I can't seem to lose any more! Any advice is greatly appreciated.

erinraden

Hate those gross love handles!

eldamiano

No such thing as a plateau. You just arent going under your maintenance level....

JoshLikesBeer

To add to eldamiano's comment, the amount of activity you are doing is enough to cause the 155 pound you to lose weight, but it's only maintenance level for the 145 pound you. Your body has gotten used to this level of activity, so you'll need to increase the intensity of your exercise. As you get stronger from lifting weights, increase the amount of weight, and as you get used to one level of cardio, start going faster or with more resistance. Increasing the amount of exercise should help too, more sets of weight lifting, longer duration on the cardio machines, and/or more than two days/week.

veganbaum

First, we can't say whether you're at a plateau or not without more information.

1. Generally, a plateau is defined as around 6 weeks of staying at the same weight range when you have been doing everything consistently. So, how long have you been at this weight? If it's a week or two, you don't have enough data to say whether you're in a plateau (or eating at maintenance). Also, since women in particular can have a fluctuations due to our cycle (some during ovulation, some during cycle, some during both), that could be something you're seeing.

2. How do you calculate your calories? Are you logging everything every day? Do you use a food scale?

Bottom line, need more info.

veganbaum

This might help (created by MFP user):

erinraden

Thank you all!