I broke through a stall by reducing my workout level

lightenup2016
lightenup2016 Posts: 1,055 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hi--I just wanted to share my experience this past week with a forced time off from my workouts. I was recently in a weight loss stall for about 2 weeks. I had been exercising (running, walking, some free weights at home) more and more, such that I got an overuse injury in my foot. Now I was forced to stop my running and walking workouts! I could no longer burn my average of 330 calories per day, Needless to say I was a little panicked about gaining back weight! But with little choice, I dropped down to burning about 100 calories a day (easy going on the stationary bike), and dropped my calorie intake by 200 calories as well. It's been a week of this, and I'm down 2 lbs on the scale. Lots of exercise = water retention!

I will add that I feel a lot better, too! I was killing it with my workouts before, but I was worn out all the time. I also found it more difficult to stay under my calorie goal doing all that exercise. This past wee has been easy, though. In fact, last night I ended up with calories leftover, so I just skipped my evening 100-calorie stationary bike workout, and just relaxed.

So I gues my point is, if you're running yourself into the ground with your workouts, and not seeing a loss on the scale, you might try backing off some from exercise, lowering your calorie goal to compensate, and see what happens and how you feel. You might be surprised! Plus let's face it-in case you live a busy life and find yourself having to squeeze in those workouts, it takes a lot less time to skip a snack than it does to do a workout!

Replies

  • JeromeBarry1
    JeromeBarry1 Posts: 10,179 Member
    edited October 2016
    It doesn't even take a lot of exercise to retain some water. The only exercise I logged yesterday, for instance, was standing at my desk for 7 hours. It's the least possible MET 2 exercise. Even that causes a little bit of water retention. Good for you to get rested and recovered, but don't let transitory water tricks fool you into thinking that you're better off without exercise.
  • arditarose
    arditarose Posts: 15,573 Member
    Glad you feel better! I actually lost weight better when I reduced cardio and concentrated more on logging/calories as well.
  • tlobatomfp
    tlobatomfp Posts: 8 Member
    Thanks for sharing this. I have picked up three pounds gradually over the last month. It seems the harder I have tried to get the scale to trend down, the more it goes up. I will try this!
  • lightenup2016
    lightenup2016 Posts: 1,055 Member
    JeromeBarry1 wrote: »
    It doesn't even take a lot of exercise to retain some water. The only exercise I logged yesterday, for instance, was standing at my desk for 7 hours. It's the least possible MET 2 exercise. Even that causes a little bit of water retention. Good for you to get rested and recovered, but don't let transitory water tricks fool you into thinking that you're better off without exercise.

    I meant to go back and edit to say that I'm not trying to imply that it's better not to exercise. I will go back to running and walking once my foot is better. But I won't worry so much about missing a workout, and I won't let myself get run down by the exercise, thinking that that much is necessary. Rather, my point I guess is that 1. If you're killing yourself with exercise, it might not do your weight any harm to back off some for your own sanity (compensating by decreasing intake some, which might not be difficult without so much exercise), and 2. If you're working out a lot and still not seeing the scale go down, it might not be that you're "eating more than you think", but instead it could be sneaky water weight masking your actual fat loss. A lot of this is mental, and KNOWING that you're doing things right helps a ton with motivation.

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