Stuck in plateau, help!

funplay07

So I'm counting everything and weighing everything using electric scale. I walk for 30 mins or more a day and don't eat back the calories. I've already lost almost 30 pounds since I started 5 months ago but am now stuck. Been stuck for a month or so. I've even tried the free day once a week to help trick metabolism but it doesn't work because I tend to lose control on those days so I stopped doing it. I can't go lower because already at 1200 calories a day. Someone please help. I don't think I have any issues physically, it's fairly easy for me to lose weight and I've already done a physical and I'm healthy. What am I doing wrong?

StaciMarie1974

Open your diary?

What is your age, weight, height? You indicate you lost 30 pounds in 4 months and have not lost in the past month. What did you weigh a month ago, and what do you weigh now? Is it 0 loss or just very little?

What kind of 'free' day do you mean? Were you logging on the 1 day each week that you're referring to? How many calories on those days?

Without knowing more here is a guess: you may expect the scale to drop every week, but it won't. At week 1, 2, 3, etc. of a 'stall' you may be retaining water due to high sodium intake, stress, sleep loss, TOM/hormones, muscle repair, etc. You may have panicked when you saw no change after a week or two, then took a 'free' day where you overate enough to wipe out your deficit for the week. Just a possibility.

What to do: keep going. Eat at a deficit, log accurately and honestly. And if the scale doesn't move this week, it probably will in another week or 2 or 3.

Afura

Definitely need to see that diary, for the most part it seems like you're doing things right. Don't be discouraged, that's plateau's, they're jerks.

queenliz99

Wait for the whoosh!

funplay07

@StaciMarie1974 you might be right. I'm 5'0 tall and I weigh 152 now. I'm 29 years old. I do expect to see at least one pound per week or bi-weekly. I did overeat on one of those days. Do you think I should cut out all free days? Since I tend to lose control. I don't count those free days I'm just very frustrated. I weighed the same a month ago. Because on one of those free days I gained 2 or 3 pounds and I'm back down to 152 and haven't gone down in 2 weeks. I feel like giving up or trying something different, like eating even less calories but know it's not healthy; it's tempting though. I just started putting in walking 30 mins a day this week and still not even an ounce budged.

funplay07

You can definitely look into my diary @Afura
Idk how to make it open though unless it's automatically like that

sarahrosheen

drink tons of water, kombucha, herbal tea! they are great for detoxing and shedding the water retention weight

sarahrosheen

Also switching up exercises is great. Instead of your usual walk, go for a bike ride, or a jog, or climb some stairs, try a fitness class, etc.

StaciMarie1974

That really depends on what you mean. Perhaps allow yourself 1-2 days a month to eat at maintenance, but stay in control & still log, weigh your food.

If you've recently started an exercise routine: water weight helps them muscles to repair.
If you are ovulating or on/around your period: possible water weight. (You'll get water weight, its a question of when...)

Compare your weight now to your weight 30 days ago. Look for the long term trend. Realistically you cannot gain or lose a noticeable amount of weight in a day or two. The up & down movement you're seeing on the scale is water weight. And weight from having extra food/drink product in your body if you're weighing after a big food day.

To open your diary, go to settings then diary then near the bottom left of the page, set it to public.

funplay07 wrote: »

@StaciMarie1974 you might be right. I'm 5'0 tall and I weigh 152 now. I'm 29 years old. I do expect to see at least one pound per week or bi-weekly. I did overeat on one of those days. Do you think I should cut out all free days? Since I tend to lose control. I don't count those free days I'm just very frustrated. I weighed the same a month ago. Because on one of those free days I gained 2 or 3 pounds and I'm back down to 152 and haven't gone down in 2 weeks. I feel like giving up or trying something different, like eating even less calories but know it's not healthy; it's tempting though. I just started putting in walking 30 mins a day this week and still not even an ounce budged.

juggernaut1974

funplay07 wrote: »

@StaciMarie1974 you might be right. I'm 5'0 tall and I weigh 152 now. I'm 29 years old. I do expect to see at least one pound per week or bi-weekly. I did overeat on one of those days. Do you think I should cut out all free days? Since I tend to lose control. I don't count those free days I'm just very frustrated. I weighed the same a month ago. Because on one of those free days I gained 2 or 3 pounds and I'm back down to 152 and haven't gone down in 2 weeks. I feel like giving up or trying something different, like eating even less calories but know it's not healthy; it's tempting though. I just started putting in walking 30 mins a day this week and still not even an ounce budged.

I'm going to say the bolded is your problem.

If you're really losing control on those 'free' days it's quite possible (I'd go so far as to say it's certain based on your results) that you're wiping out your entire week's worth of calorie deficit on those days.

You don't need to "trick" your metabolism...that's just silly.

Another suggestion - have you re-calculated your daily calorie goal after losing the initial 30 lbs? If not, you may want to do so, as your TDEE will be slightly lower now that your not having to carry around that extra 30 lbs. I generally recommend that you recalculate every 15-20 lbs lost.

tkahline

Yes, you need to count everything you eat, especially on "free" days, as you may be eating enough calories to counteract any weight loss for the week. If you need to treat yourself, either do it for one meal (if it fits into your macros as well) or a snack. Even cheat meals should not be too crazy. You also might be eating too few calories, so recalculate that.

If you bump up your workouts once a week to intervals or HIIT, that might be the push you need to get off the plateau. Drink more water, and make sure you get enough sleep.

funplay07

@juggernaut1974 yes it's possible that I may have ate back the calories deficit for entire week. So I plan to not do free days anymore but it's really hard. Like tomorrow I'm going hiking with a friend and she's making a healthy sandwich, with healthy kale chips for us to eat. It's going to be so hard because I can't count those but it's an 8 mile hike. Idk what to do here. And I know I'm going to need to eat back some of the calories burnt for tomorrow because I will need the energy for hiking.

Yes I've recalculated. I started at 1800 calories when I first started and am at the lowest of 1200 for awhile now?

funplay07

@tkahline getting enough sleep might be hard. I have a 5 month old who wakes me up every 3 hours more or less to eat. Free days are a pain ugh. I want it but I don't. I'm about to give up hope because I feel like I need to have one to be happy but am frustrated if I have to count that day too. I'm thinking of doing the OMAF and counting all calories for one meal. Was just reading another post about it.

janejellyroll

funplay07 wrote: »

@juggernaut1974 yes it's possible that I may have ate back the calories deficit for entire week. So I plan to not do free days anymore but it's really hard. Like tomorrow I'm going hiking with a friend and she's making a healthy sandwich, with healthy kale chips for us to eat. It's going to be so hard because I can't count those but it's an 8 mile hike. Idk what to do here. And I know I'm going to need to eat back some of the calories burnt for tomorrow because I will need the energy for hiking.

Yes I've recalculated. I started at 1800 calories when I first started and am at the lowest of 1200 for awhile now?

What do you mean you can't count them? Like, you don't know how many calories are in them?

ctraugh

Loosing weight is a simple equation. Calories in must be less than calories burned. That is all there is to it. I know its hard to do sometimes but that's the basic truth. It sounds to me that you are eating all your progress away on your cheat days. Make sure you are counting everything you are putting in your mouth accurately. I try to error on the high side when counting calories in, and error on the low side when counting calories burned. The more you loose, the more of a cut in your calories you must make. This is my 2 cents and I am no expert. Being over 340 lbs I am still learning, but this is what I have read and follow. Good luck.

funplay07

@janejellyroll yes that's what I mean. Being Asian, there's food that's really impossible to count but I need to be happy to continue going like this, and that means being able to enjoy my culture. Bad side to this, can't count those calories because not everything is on mfp or if it is, it's not accurate for most part. And when I'm having a birthday meal with my in-laws (mexican), it's nearly impossible to count. The dilemma of my diet life.

lioness803

Are you cooking your own food? You can use the recipe builder to accurately track meals you're making. On days when you're eating for a special family meal, either ask them for the recipe, or just eat a reasonably sized portion, log as close as you can, and let it go, because that shouldn't be a daily occurrence, and weight loss comes down to averages, not one meal.

janejellyroll

funplay07 wrote: »

@janejellyroll yes that's what I mean. Being Asian, there's food that's really impossible to count but I need to be happy to continue going like this, and that means being able to enjoy my culture. Bad side to this, can't count those calories because not everything is on mfp or if it is, it's not accurate for most part. And when I'm having a birthday meal with my in-laws (mexican), it's nearly impossible to count. The dilemma of my diet life.

If your friend made the chips, it should be pretty easy to get the recipe from her and then use the recipe builder to figure out how many calories you're consuming. If you don't want to ask her (or if she is unwilling to share it), you can search online for a recipe that looks like it and use that to create an estimate.

If you don't want to do that, then you can also find an entry for commercially-prepared kale chips and use that to enter an estimate for how many calories you consumed.

Either way, you shouldn't have to have a "free day" where anything goes just because you are eating food someone else has prepared. There is always a way to guess. Some of the guesses may be better than others, but you can always come up with an estimate.

How many birthday meals with your in-laws do you have a year? Everyone has special occasions. But the backbone of weight loss is the decisions you make all the other meals you eat during the year. Do your best to be consistent. When you have to estimate, do the best you can to estimate.

Afura

Definitely count your free days, and ease up on food that contain a lot of sodium which may be contributing. IE Make your own meatballs, only use half a sauce packet, etc.
If there are foods that are pre-packaged and have a nutrition label you can add them to MFP to assist with that. If there's no label, try googling for them if it's something you eat often and see if anyone has information on it.
There are going to be times, especially eating out at small restaurants, that you can't be 100% accurate, do your best in those cases as we all do.

funplay07

Thanks everyone for your honest answers. It seems I need to be real with myself and take the responsibility that I may have been careless on those free days. I think the best option for me here is to not have them as much as possible. It really comes down to what my priorities are: getting to goal wait or being able to enjoy once a week. I can't count foods like "kasoy," "Klang fun," or "kapoon" unless I do make them myself and can be challenging then looking for calories for fermented bean paste. Birthday or celebratory meals happen often in my and my spouse's huge families. I can estimate on the high end of things like someone said but with 1200 calories per day, it could leave me hungrier than what I already feel most days and that would just lead to more frustrations and more likely to give up. I have a lot to think about. Thanks for your input everyone.

janejellyroll

funplay07 wrote: »

Thanks everyone for your honest answers. It seems I need to be real with myself and take the responsibility that I may have been careless on those free days. I think the best option for me here is to not have them as much as possible. It really comes down to what my priorities are: getting to goal wait or being able to enjoy once a week. I can't count foods like "kasoy," "Klang fun," or "kapoon" unless I do make them myself and can be challenging then looking for calories for fermented bean paste. Birthday or celebratory meals happen often in my and my spouse's huge families. I can estimate on the high end of things like someone said but with 1200 calories per day, it could leave me hungrier than what I already feel most days and that would just lead to more frustrations and more likely to give up. I have a lot to think about. Thanks for your input everyone.

Some people choose to eat at their maintainance calories when they have special events. This might be an option for you to eat more on certain days but still keep it at a level that is consistent with weight loss. If you eat to maintain on those days, you will know you aren't wiping out the deficit you have created on the other days of that week.

Afura

I'd make recipes as close as you can approximate for those things with no information in the database already, and use them as a guesstimate. If you don't know and can't find a recipe, check in the Recipes community to see if anyone has an idea, or suggestion as to what entry to use (it could be someone has a recipe that they've already saved in MFP).
Make sure your calories are estimated correctly in MFP,as 1200 is usually the base minimum for females for food. Get in a little exercise when you can if you know you're likely to have big meals to help.