At what point would you see the doctor about a Plateau in weight loss?
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blues4miles wrote: »I walk on the treadmill daily for 3-4 miles. I don't always enter it daily though. Just depends on if I put my heart rate monitor on or not. Either way I do not eat those calories back.
I also do hand weights every other day (again not usually logged here since I don't eat those calories). And Yoga. Typically 20-30 minutes of yoga daily at home and I take a 1 hour class at least 3 times a month.
I've tried shaking my exercise up the last few weeks. Raising incline one day. Lower incline and faster speed the next. I've also tried adding a higher calorie day just to see what would happen.
Another thought, how long ago did you start your walking/weights/yoga? Anytime I add new exercise my body always retains water. That could mask weight you are losing. It will come off eventually but the first week or two of a new exercise all my muscles are hanging on to extra water to repair themselves. Just a thought.
Walking I started in June... Started with 1/2 a mile and kept slowly increasing speed until I was up to 3.4mph which is what I walk at currently. I've been at over 3mph since Sept though. Now I'm playing with walking 1 of the 3/4 miles faster. I have a old foot injury that likes to rare it's head if I push too hard and jog or anything.
Yoga I started in September with a 1 hour class a week and then in October started doing it at home as well.
Weights are fairly new though. Just in the last month I've been regular with doing those every other day and making sure that I do squats and other body weight lower body exercises on the opposite day from the weights. So maybe that has something to do with it.
I mean I can tell my body is changing because I measure every other month. The scale just doesn't show it.
I'm exhausted all the time, freezing cold and randomly loosing a lot of hair. That has been going on since October. Which made me wonder if it had something to do with why the scale isn't moving.
I logged one of my normal lunch salads as I weighed it today. I didn't get to my breakfast though. 2 sick kids meant I didn't get a chance to weigh everything. I generally haven't because it's just 2 eggs and one piece of toast. I'm interested to see if this makes a big difference though.
Last time I was fatigued and losing hair, it turned out the iron supplements I was getting from my doctor to treat my anemia weren't working. Do bring this up when you see your doctor next month. Maybe eat more high iron foods in the meantime.
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I'm exhausted all the time, freezing cold and randomly loosing a lot of hair. That has been going on since October. Which made me wonder if it had something to do with why the scale isn't moving.
Well that's concerning...have you had your thyroid checked recently? The cold could be from weight loss and the exhaustion could be from eating at a deficit while working out...but hair loss is not normal.
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The recipe builder is a huge life saver for me. For as long as you've been doing this, you could probably have quite a list of your own recipes built up by now and you would know for a fact the nutritional information.
We cook lots of different items, but I always use the recipe builder if doing a casserole, soup, side dish, etc. Then the next time I make it, the work is already done. The app is way handier now too because you can scan the ingredients you put in. Two years ago you had to manually add it on the desktop version. The recipes are also easy to edit if you change something up the next time you make it.
Congrats on your impressive loss so far!0 -
blues4miles wrote: »I'm exhausted all the time, freezing cold and randomly loosing a lot of hair. That has been going on since October. Which made me wonder if it had something to do with why the scale isn't moving.
Well that's concerning...have you had your thyroid checked recently? The cold could be from weight loss and the exhaustion could be from eating at a deficit while working out...but hair loss is not normal.
They checked it back in August I think. Could look up the date to be sure. I had small bald spots on my eyebrows and was loosing a lot of hair. Reminded me of what I went through after each of my 4 kids were born.
My main doctor was out on maternity leave so I had to see someone else in the practice. She sort of brushed everything off as I need to lose weight. She did run a blood test to check my thyroid level. The doctor told me it was on the lower end of fine but nothing to be worried about. Then told me I am low in B12. I've been anemic since I was a teenager and first had it checked. I'm also Vit D low. Very low at the time but that was up close to a low normal in December.
Anyway the doctor I had to see said it was all because I needed to lose more weight and eat and healthier diet. She said that cutting carbs and being low in B12, Iron and Vit D would make your hair fall out and since I did cut my carb amounts a lot to control my blood sugar I just went with that.
It goes through periods of falling out and not growing and then all of a sudden I have tons of "baby hairs" and things seem normal. 3 or 4 weeks later it's coming out in handfulls again. I was blessed to have very thick hair so it's only noticeable to me and my hairdresser. Especially since my hair dresser cut it shorter to help conceal it.
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NaturallyandProperly wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »NaturallyandProperly wrote: »I'm assuming you are not eating enough calories - is your heart rate high? Are you challenging yourself? Try to do something different? My doctor mentioned to me that I have to workout 5-6 times a week for an hour, hour and a half each time in order to loose.. so far it's working. It doesn't hurt to see the doctor though. You're doing great so far!!
If OP isn't losing weight, it's odd to assume that she isn't eating *enough*.
No, not odd. She weighs 270 and is eating 1500-1700 a day. Not enough in my opinion and my research. I didn't look at her logging to see how accurate it is, but I do still think it's too low for right now.
Starvation mode has been debunked 1000s of times here.
She has enough weight to lose to be in those more aggressive weight loss goals.
She has worked out now that she wasn't weighing her food, so she was eating too much.
OP did you eat normally over Christmas btw? I did, and my body is just about now getting over the shock, as in, it went into fat gain mode and it's taken me a month of dieting to stop it! I've plateaued the whole time!! I'll get my Woosh next week after my period.0 -
1. Scribble down every ingredient and its weight.
2. Weigh the finished product (family size). Because I often forget to weigh my pan/serving dish before I cook, I have to pour everything into a 2nd bowl (washing an extra bowl is worth it for accuracy).
3. Then I create the recipe in the recipe builder, logging each ingredient by weight (using usda entries when possible and verifyingon other websites if I need to).
4. I set # of servings as the total number of grams of the finished product. e.g. 2450g of chicken stirfry.
5. I weigh my portion and log it. E.g. 250g of chicken stirfry (which will then calculate the accurate calories of my portion)
Thanks for sharing this. So far so good here, but this should make homemade stuff more accurate for certain.
OP you are doing great. Waist measurement is highly correlated with body fat so you are doing something right still.
ETA:I'm exhausted all the time, freezing cold and randomly loosing a lot of hair. That has been going on since October. Which made me wonder if it had something to do with why the scale isn't moving.
Just saw this bit. Don't care what the substitute doctor said, if you are eating enough then this shouldn't be happening. I had those type symptoms near the end of doing a VLCD and also with anemia. IME you need iron, or you need to eat more or exercise less. Your body is stressed.
Have you calculated your calories out including exercise? Do you have more than 1,000 calorie a day deficit? It can be done (have done it), but only for so long. A 2 week diet break eating at maintenance may be a good idea, but do seek out a qualified professional...I'm just a fellow traveler.0 -
However since I do cook all our meals from scratch just to keep from having to type everything in I do tend to use things others have put in as a estimate especially for supper.
The problem with doing this is that you don't know what ingredients they used or how big their serving size was. Those two things can really throw things off. It's times like that when the recipe builder and saving things as meals comes in real handy. You only have to enter them in one time and they are saved under those tabs.
This. I enter recipes from time to time and sometimes compare them to other entries. I made a fish pie once, my serving came out to about 800 calories, a few already entered came out at about half. That's a huge difference so you just can never trust someone's home made recipes as being similar to yours.0 -
She's eating at maintenance due to estimating calories (probably consuming a good 500 cals more) which is why she's not losing. Eating more calories will cause gain, not loss. CICONaturallyandProperly wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »NaturallyandProperly wrote: »I'm assuming you are not eating enough calories - is your heart rate high? Are you challenging yourself? Try to do something different? My doctor mentioned to me that I have to workout 5-6 times a week for an hour, hour and a half each time in order to loose.. so far it's working. It doesn't hurt to see the doctor though. You're doing great so far!!
If OP isn't losing weight, it's odd to assume that she isn't eating *enough*.
No, not odd. She weighs 270 and is eating 1500-1700 a day. Not enough in my opinion and my research. I didn't look at her logging to see how accurate it is, but I do still think it's too low for right now.
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I would say with your symptoms, eating more would be a good idea. I eat more than that and have been losing and I am 100lbs lighter than op. We are also burning approx the same ammount ea h day through exersise. Also, find a better doc to test all thyroid hormones, and get blood ferritin levels checked as they contribute to hair loss. I know "starvation mode" is not a thing, but with those symptoms I would blame too little food until I had a proper blood panel done to rule out medical issues. Malnutrition is not good!!0
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Springfield1970 wrote: »NaturallyandProperly wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »NaturallyandProperly wrote: »I'm assuming you are not eating enough calories - is your heart rate high? Are you challenging yourself? Try to do something different? My doctor mentioned to me that I have to workout 5-6 times a week for an hour, hour and a half each time in order to loose.. so far it's working. It doesn't hurt to see the doctor though. You're doing great so far!!
If OP isn't losing weight, it's odd to assume that she isn't eating *enough*.
No, not odd. She weighs 270 and is eating 1500-1700 a day. Not enough in my opinion and my research. I didn't look at her logging to see how accurate it is, but I do still think it's too low for right now.
Starvation mode has been debunked 1000s of times here.
She has enough weight to lose to be in those more aggressive weight loss goals.
She has worked out now that she wasn't weighing her food, so she was eating too much.
OP did you eat normally over Christmas btw? I did, and my body is just about now getting over the shock, as in, it went into fat gain mode and it's taken me a month of dieting to stop it! I've plateaued the whole time!! I'll get my Woosh next week after my period.
Normally as in how I was eating before last March? No, I didn't alter my diet for the holidays. I just have smaller amounts and correct portions. Since I'm eating for blood sugar control more so then calorie count really I can't cheat.
I have a very tight control on my blood sugar and just don't allow myself too many carbs at one time. Since other then meat carbs are in almost everything I'm pretty particular about knowing how much I eat. I just haven't been doing a good job of putting that into my log.
But.... Just the nature of the holidays might have something to do with it. Smaller portions of foods I'm not normally eating now might have messed me up somehow. The problem started at the first of December though, of course that was right after Turkey Day.
I don't think I'm eating too little, but at the same time I don't really see how I'm eating enough to maintain this weight. MFP tells me I'd need to eat 2,730 calories plus whatever I burn with exercise which based on my heart rate monitor averages around 500 a day.
Since I weigh all of my food to watch portion control for blood sugar sake I know I'm eating correct portions. I'm just not sure now if how I log it is correct.
I don't know. That's why I'm getting frustrated. I'll do better at logging what I'm actually eating for the next few weeks and then talk to the doctor too and see what happens.
I just would love to see the scale moving again. I'd be thrilled with 1/2 a lb a week. More then that I would love to feel good. I love the way exercise makes me feel but I'm still less active then I want to be with my kids because I'm so tired all the time. I kept thinking that loosing more, or exercising more would fix it but it hasn't so far. So I keep on keeping on.
Thing is, I'm happy with myself now no matter what. So even if the scale doesn't move again I'll keep on keeping on. Yoga and walking have become my thing. Such a funny thing for me to say. lol0 -
blues4miles wrote: »I'm exhausted all the time, freezing cold and randomly loosing a lot of hair. That has been going on since October. Which made me wonder if it had something to do with why the scale isn't moving.
Well that's concerning...have you had your thyroid checked recently? The cold could be from weight loss and the exhaustion could be from eating at a deficit while working out...but hair loss is not normal.
They checked it back in August I think. Could look up the date to be sure. I had small bald spots on my eyebrows and was loosing a lot of hair. Reminded me of what I went through after each of my 4 kids were born.
My main doctor was out on maternity leave so I had to see someone else in the practice. She sort of brushed everything off as I need to lose weight. She did run a blood test to check my thyroid level. The doctor told me it was on the lower end of fine but nothing to be worried about. Then told me I am low in B12. I've been anemic since I was a teenager and first had it checked. I'm also Vit D low. Very low at the time but that was up close to a low normal in December.
Anyway the doctor I had to see said it was all because I needed to lose more weight and eat and healthier diet. She said that cutting carbs and being low in B12, Iron and Vit D would make your hair fall out and since I did cut my carb amounts a lot to control my blood sugar I just went with that.
It goes through periods of falling out and not growing and then all of a sudden I have tons of "baby hairs" and things seem normal. 3 or 4 weeks later it's coming out in handfulls again. I was blessed to have very thick hair so it's only noticeable to me and my hairdresser. Especially since my hair dresser cut it shorter to help conceal it.
What form of iron are you taking? I tried 4 or 5 different forms before I found one that successfully upped my iron and energy levels and made my hair stop falling out. I'm currently taking Iron Bisglycinate. This doesn't constipate me, or give me any of the other side effects associated with some types of iron supplements.
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Those are symptoms of thyroid disease especially with losing eyebrow hair. Low ferritin and low vitamin d go hand in hand with hypothyroidism. Make sure your doc does more than just the standard TSH test, you need free t3 and free t4 testing as well as ferritin. A good blog to read for more info is Hypothyroid Mom. I have suffered from thyroid disease for most of my life and have had a thyroidectomy so I know the struggle. Have a thorough checkup with proper thyroid testing as well as ferritin none of us can tell you what's going on medically. Congrats on the weight loss and your success so far
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OP, the hair loss is very concerning.
The weight "plateau" could be due to faulty scales (both your body scale and your food scale). Are they digital and fairly new? If not, get some new ones.0 -
If you have those symptoms, are low in B12, and the doctor didn't give you a quick neurological test, or even tell you to try high-dose B12 supplements and come back soon, then you can trust she's an idiot.blues4miles wrote: »I'm exhausted all the time, freezing cold and randomly loosing a lot of hair. That has been going on since October. Which made me wonder if it had something to do with why the scale isn't moving.
Well that's concerning...have you had your thyroid checked recently? The cold could be from weight loss and the exhaustion could be from eating at a deficit while working out...but hair loss is not normal.
They checked it back in August I think. Could look up the date to be sure. I had small bald spots on my eyebrows and was loosing a lot of hair. Reminded me of what I went through after each of my 4 kids were born.
My main doctor was out on maternity leave so I had to see someone else in the practice. She sort of brushed everything off as I need to lose weight. She did run a blood test to check my thyroid level. The doctor told me it was on the lower end of fine but nothing to be worried about. Then told me I am low in B12. I've been anemic since I was a teenager and first had it checked. I'm also Vit D low. Very low at the time but that was up close to a low normal in December.
Anyway the doctor I had to see said it was all because I needed to lose more weight and eat and healthier diet. She said that cutting carbs and being low in B12, Iron and Vit D would make your hair fall out and since I did cut my carb amounts a lot to control my blood sugar I just went with that.
It goes through periods of falling out and not growing and then all of a sudden I have tons of "baby hairs" and things seem normal. 3 or 4 weeks later it's coming out in handfulls again. I was blessed to have very thick hair so it's only noticeable to me and my hairdresser. Especially since my hair dresser cut it shorter to help conceal it.
Who can you go to who will take you seriously? If you are allowed to call a specialist and go on your insurance, just go see one for one appointment. You need to make sure you don't have Pernicious Anemia. I have it, and I got incredibly sick before it was figured out (the delay was inexcusable with my bloodwork, really). I changed doctors of course! I can't digest it anymore, so I take shots. Treatment is extremely easy for it (lots of folks don't even need shots and take sublingual B12). Hair falling out is one of the milder symptoms once it progresses, so do check on it.
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Never
I would never see a doctor about a stall in weight loss
I would tighten up logging and move more
I would see a doctor about this bit though "I'm exhausted all the time, freezing cold and randomly loosing a lot of hair. That has been going on since October"
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blues4miles wrote: »I'm exhausted all the time, freezing cold and randomly loosing a lot of hair. That has been going on since October. Which made me wonder if it had something to do with why the scale isn't moving.
Well that's concerning...have you had your thyroid checked recently? The cold could be from weight loss and the exhaustion could be from eating at a deficit while working out...but hair loss is not normal.
They checked it back in August I think. Could look up the date to be sure. I had small bald spots on my eyebrows and was loosing a lot of hair. Reminded me of what I went through after each of my 4 kids were born.
My main doctor was out on maternity leave so I had to see someone else in the practice. She sort of brushed everything off as I need to lose weight. She did run a blood test to check my thyroid level. The doctor told me it was on the lower end of fine but nothing to be worried about. Then told me I am low in B12. I've been anemic since I was a teenager and first had it checked. I'm also Vit D low. Very low at the time but that was up close to a low normal in December.
Anyway the doctor I had to see said it was all because I needed to lose more weight and eat and healthier diet. She said that cutting carbs and being low in B12, Iron and Vit D would make your hair fall out and since I did cut my carb amounts a lot to control my blood sugar I just went with that.
It goes through periods of falling out and not growing and then all of a sudden I have tons of "baby hairs" and things seem normal. 3 or 4 weeks later it's coming out in handfulls again. I was blessed to have very thick hair so it's only noticeable to me and my hairdresser. Especially since my hair dresser cut it shorter to help conceal it.
If your dr diagnosed B12 deficiency but did not investigate this further, you need a new dr. Today.
B12 deficiency is not an illness by itself, it is a symptom of something else, and you need to know of what.
Plus, there comes a point when B12 deficiency causes irreversible damage, so if you are not on the proper supplements and already have symptoms, this is an emergency.0 -
Those are symptoms of thyroid disease especially with losing eyebrow hair. Low ferritin and low vitamin d go hand in hand with hypothyroidism. Make sure your doc does more than just the standard TSH test, you need free t3 and free t4 testing as well as ferritin. A good blog to read for more info is Hypothyroid Mom. I have suffered from thyroid disease for most of my life and have had a thyroidectomy so I know the struggle. Have a thorough checkup with proper thyroid testing as well as ferritin none of us can tell you what's going on medically. Congrats on the weight loss and your success so far
This.
Not sure what your doc meant what she said it was on the low side. TSH levels are inverse to your thyroid. So high TSH means low thyroid. It's also kind of a personal thing. Some people can feel fine at 1 or 1.5. Other people will be exhausted and won't be able to lose weight if it's above 1 or above 2. Even though the 'healthy' range is .4 to 4 at my current HMO.
Go see an endocrinologist. Stat. This may have nothing to do with your weight loss or lack thereof but is very scary.0 -
janejellyroll wrote: »i would not see a doctor about weight loss, i know my body better than my doctor does. A nutritionist would probably help you more. or even a really good personal trainer, a good one not the local gym trainer.
Since "nutritionist" can mean almost anything, a registered dietitian would be a much better choice.
The woman I see is a registered dietitian. I don't know that I trust her advice too much though. She basically just gave me some hand outs and sent me on my way. I've been to see her 3 times (cause insurance covers it so why not). She gives me some "Atta Girls" and thats pretty much it.
She just happened to mention at my last visit that if my weight loss ever slowed I might want to mix things up a little and have a higher calorie day once every couple of weeks.
That would slow your fat loss further if nothing else changes.
It can be great advice if the reason your loss slows is because you're getting bogged down with dieting and you need a mental break every now and again to keep you going strong.0 -
Okay, y'all.
One week into logging more carefully. Not perfectly yet because of Valentine's Day we ate out twice and my husband brought home doughnuts. I didn't have any clue how to log those so I went with the numbers closest to the website's numbers. However I know those are probably off. Also, last Friday is empty because I had a stomach bug and didn't eat any food that day at all. I only had water and chicken broth and I just didn't bother weighing the broth to log it.
It was a lot of work at first but for the meals where I eat the same things it's easier now. I just change the amount of grams for what I ate that day (who knew store bought eggs could vary so much). Plus it's really fun to find out exactly how many calories are in the meals I prepare for my family.
I'd love to say that logging carefully has changed things and the scale is being friendly. It's not. I'm up .5 a lb from last week. I have an appointment with my doctor next week to have my yearly blood work done and I'll bring up the issues pointed out in this thread then too.
I was under my calorie goal every single day this week. I didn't put anything in my mouth that isn't listed in my logs. Not all of my exercise is shown though. I don't bother wearing the heart rate monitor for yoga most days and I never remember to manually put in exercise.
So before I get too used to logging food this way I'm asking y'all to look over my logs and see if you notice something I'm doing wrong.
I'm not on the verge of giving up or anything like that. I'm happy with the way I eat now. I crave the exercise I do and I feel so much better overall. It would just be nice if the weight would start coming off again.
Thanks again to those of you who have been so kind as to reply to me. I'm off to Pilates class. A one on one session on a machine. I'm a bit terrified. lol0
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