Stopped losing weight, need your best advice

maxpyne

Hi MFP friends l !!

I am male 35,
On ~1200calorie/day diet since Feb 2016,
gym 1hr cardio + weight training 2-3 times a week,
alcohol - 1 bottle wine / week
I have lost some weight 204lb - 198 lb,

But, over last 2 months, I have stopped losing weight at all.
Any advice to break the plateau ???

dubird

Are you weighing everything? And I mean EVERYTHING, including a couple bites of something?

How are you calculating calories burned?

1200 is normally below recommendation for males, but without knowing your stats, I have no idea if you're at the right spot.

diannethegeek

1. If you aren't already, be sure that you're logging everything. Sometimes people forget about things like veggies, drinks, cooking oils, and condiments. For some people these can add up to enough to halt your weight loss progress.

2. Consider buying a food scale if you don't already have one. They're about $10-$20 dollars in the US and easily found at places like Amazon, Target, and Walmart. Measuring cups and spoons are great, but they do come with some degree of inaccuracy. A food scale will be more accurate, and for some people it makes a big difference.

3. Logging accurately also means choosing accurate entries in the database. There are a lot of user-entered entries that are off. Double-check that you're using good entries and/or using the recipe builder instead of someone else's homemade entries.

4. Recalculate your goals if you haven't lately. As you lose weight your body requires fewer calories to run. Be sure you update your goals every ten pounds or so.

5. If you're eating back your exercise calories and you're relying on gym machine readouts or MFP's estimates, it might be best to eat back just 50-75% of those. Certain activities tend to be overestimated. If you're using an HRM or activity tracker, it might be a good idea to look into their accuracy and be sure that yours is calibrated properly.

6. If you're taking any cheat days that go over your calorie limits, it might be best to cut them out for a few weeks and see what happens. Some people go way over their calorie needs without realizing it when they don't track.

7. If you weigh yourself frequently, consider using a program like trendweight to even out the fluctuations. You could be losing weight but just don't see it because of the daily ups and downs.

8. Some people just burn fewer calories than the calculators predict. If you continue to have problems after 4-6 weeks, then it might be worth a trip to the doctor or a registered dietitian who can give you more specific advice.

maxpyne

Thank you for such prompt response.

1. I measure `almost` everything with a food scale or with measuring cup, then use MFPs database to count calorie. I set my goal to 1100 cal to account for my measurement errors.
2. I use MFPs step tracker for counting steps and calorie counter of individual machines when I do cardio.
3. I fast 1day/week for a personal reason.