Do you have a "wall"?

GottaBurnEmAll

peleroja wrote: »

GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »

peleroja wrote: »

I do, but it's going to sound super vain since I'm fairly light so I'll start by saying I am pretty small-framed and every ounce shows on me.

I like my body best about 112-115. However, my body - unless I'm running a lot, which I haven't done all winter since I had some ITBS that would not go away - really fights me tooth and nail to be more like 122-124 and every time I drop down to a point that is aesthetically pleasing to me I invariably feel like I'm so hungry all the time and eat until I'm back up a bit. I can maintain the higher weight easily, but every pound I try to drop from there is so hard and requires absolutely meticulous attention to calories.

When I'm able to consistently run moderate mileage (30-35 mpw) I do find it easier to maintain in the 118 range since my appetite won't naturally exceed my exercise expenditure, but when I'm not running those extra 5 pounds just STAY ON and you can see every ounce on my frame and it makes me crabby. I've had a tough winter dealing with it since not running makes me cranky AND chubbier and I haven't been feeling very good about myself as a result. I loooooaaatthhe strength training and only force myself to do the bare minimum and no other cardio really does it for me either, so it's been a pretty miserable few months for me of struggling to button my pants and forcing myself to lift some weights and telling myself to cool it with the snacking without much success.

Super frustrating and petty but I only have my willpower to blame

I'm the same. I think you're smaller framed than I am (if I'm remembering correctly, you wear a 28 band bra), but I like myself a lot under 120, but I got hungry there and engaged in self-sabotage.

Now I'm 118 and those three pounds show and I don't like it and want to nip it in the bud. I might be shorter than you too. I'm only 5'1".

I had lofty goals of getting under 115, but after seeing a friend's recomp success with just yoga-ish body balance classes and running, I am going to shoot again for that and stay there, hoping things stabilize.

The big monkey wrench is my arthritis. Right now it's not playing nicely with my lofty running goals. And my migraines aren't happy with lifting. I'm thinking of taking up yoga to supplement my walking. Something has to give.

Yep, I'm 5'4" but pretty narrow, especially in the shoulders and ribcage with a 28 bra band (small hands/feet too and all that) and without any desire to build more muscle than I already carry, so my maintenance weight/favourite weight are pretty low comparatively. But hey, that's why BMI is a range, to account for different body types. The bottom of healthy-per-BMI for my height is 107 lb and if I didn't carry any extra muscle from running, that would probably be where I'd want to be aesthetically, but I give myself 5-10 lb above that to account for my thunder quads etc.

The hard thing is that the lighter you are, the less food you need (all else equal) so maintaining what I think looks best means I have to maintain on less than 1500 calories a day or exercise. And I haven't been able to run this winter, so every time I eat a couple hundred extra calories my weight edges up. Waaaaaaaaah. Total crybaby.

(side note:
I see on MFP a lot that people are unhappy with their larger frames since it means they weigh more on the scale at a certain look/size, but what I think they don't realize is that the smaller your frame is, the more any extra weight/fat shows. I look distinctly overweight at the top of my "healthy" BMI (~145 lb) with a stomach roll, large soft arms, a fat fold above my knee, and 32Gs that are clearly out of proportion although I'm still only a dress size 6-8 since the underlying frame is small. Since I'm not interested in heavy lifting and bulk/cut cycles to put on muscle, I will remain one of those people who looks better and only has an athletic body fat percentage much nearer the bottom of my healthy BMI than at the top.)

I have a weird body type, so it's hard for me to know where to draw the line. I have really broad shoulders, but the rib cage is smallish (30 bra band) and no real hips to speak of (34"). My hands and feet are small, but my joints are knobby and look large.

I do know that my aesthetic preference for myself doesn't lean towards me wanting to put on muscle, I like how I look the more body fat I'm losing.

I also didn't look good at the top of my BMI range, but I sure know that I couldn't live at the bottom.

Duchy82

Thinking about it critically, I think I do have a wall.
I'm trying to break through it at the moment, I have been stuck at around 78kg or so for a full year. The last time I was this weight was when I was 14 so it is hard to think about being a lower weight than that but would love to get to 73kg or below. Currently at 76.4kg I just need to persevere now, last year I stopped at 75.8kg and regained to around 78kg again so the motivation and self control is seriously being tested at the moment. So determined to get to goal once and for all!

Rogstar

Like it seems for a few of you, I have a hard time getting to the 190s. I was at my known heaviest at 237 almost 4 years ago, and dropped to 193 within 6months. Awesome!

Then, I seemed to forget how to watch what I was eating. I was pretty comfortable and feeling good about myself and I just stopped counting. I never really stopped exercising and have always strived for at least a couple good walks each week, but my logging dropped off. I missed a MFP login and my streak went away, and I was weirdly discouraged and didn't want to even log in anymore. Over the next year, my weight went back up to 220.

I've been banging my head against my personal wall that is Onederland for about two years. I'll come back to MFP for 2-3 months, drop about 15lbs with excellent logging, and come down to about 205. Then something will happen (usually illness or vacation) and I'll stop logging for a couple days and it seems like all my good habits go out the window! 3-4 months later, I'm back up to 220. It's always in my mind that I can come back and do this any time I want to...so why start now?

This cycle feels different. It's been more than two months (my streak is over 300 days, but I've only been logging well since New Years), I've dropped the 15 lbs and then some, and I'm currently sitting at 202.6. So, Onederland, you are MINE this time. Possibly even as soon as next week! I have a few runs and other active gatherings planned throughout the summer, my current planned vacation is in Colorado in April (and I know we'll be very active on the hiking trails almost every day) so I can't see accidentally stopping what I'm doing anytime soon. So, I'm going to copy this post onto something I see all the time to prevent running into that wall again!

tomteboda

peleroja wrote: »

(side note:
I see on MFP a lot that people are unhappy with their larger frames since it means they weigh more on the scale at a certain look/size, but what I think they don't realize is that the smaller your frame is, the more any extra weight/fat shows. I look distinctly overweight at the top of my "healthy" BMI (~145 lb) with a stomach roll, large soft arms, a fat fold above my knee, and 32Gs that are clearly out of proportion although I'm still only a dress size 6-8 since the underlying frame is small. Since I'm not interested in heavy lifting and bulk/cut cycles to put on muscle, I will remain one of those people who looks better and only has an athletic body fat percentage much nearer the bottom of my healthy BMI than at the top.)

What's frustrating about the larger frames:
1. The 30% premium health insurance penalty comes into play at a lower body fat % than for small-framed individuals.
2. You are labeled as "overweight" at a lower body fat % than small-framed individuals. You are labeled as "obese" at a lower body fat % than small-framed individuals.
3. For women, a large part of the cultural ideal of femininity revolves around sexual dimorphism, that is, that women are smaller than men (in general). This can lead to some significant emotional/identity issues for some people.

Incidentally, this is me at the very TOP of the "healthy BMI"
I strongly suspect "lower end of the BMI" is most distinctly NOT in the cards for my frame.

victoria_1024

lemurcat12 wrote: »

125. I've been below it, spent months at 120 even, but I always seem to bump back up to 125+. I know it's mental and habit, not my body having a problem with it. Part of it is that I'd like to be thinner but find it hard to care that much when I'm 125-130.

This is 100% me!!! I half-heartedly make plans of getting below 120, but once I get down to the 122-123 range I'm just like uhhhh good enough, lol. And then I maintain around 125. I am confident that I could lose another 10 lbs if I really wanted to, but I just don't want it enough.

Christine_72

I can get down to my goal weight of 145-147lbs (5"8) but i have to fight tooth and nail to get there and STAY there!(staying that weight completely takes over my life).
150lbs is my happy place, but i wouldn't call it a wall or set point, it's just the weight that's compatible with my appetite and exercise/activity level without me having to try too hard to maintain it.

Alatariel75

I am currently smack bang stuck face first to my wall. Have been for... jaysus, 18 months? It's right on the cusp of overweight/obese and I just... linger.

ronjsteele1

So I'm a solutions person. Once I discover there is a problem, I want to set about fixing it. I hate wasting time on something that surely must have a solution. Since it's obvious there is such a thing as a "wall" that so many hit when losing weight, how does one go about "fixing" this? I have self analyzed my "wall" and part of it is fear but I do not know what the rest of it is.

Does anyone have any thoughts/suggestions/ideas for what someone can do to get past this point? Or is it like the time when someone finally says, "this time I will lose" and they go on to do it after a lot of previous attempts to lose? Like a switch flips?

CattOfTheGarage

ronjsteele1 wrote: »

So I'm a solutions person. Once I discover there is a problem, I want to set about fixing it. I hate wasting time on something that surely must have a solution. Since it's obvious there is such a thing as a "wall" that so many hit when losing weight, how does one go about "fixing" this? I have self analyzed my "wall" and part of it is fear but I do not know what the rest of it is.

Does anyone have any thoughts/suggestions/ideas for what someone can do to get past this point? Or is it like the time when someone finally says, "this time I will lose" and they go on to do it after a lot of previous attempts to lose? Like a switch flips?

I wonder if perhaps regularly visualising yourself at the lower weight would help. I feel like there's an identity thing going on - a few people have said things like "I don't feel like me" and I know that I am a bit weirded out because I have an image of myself as being short and wide, when in fact, at a healthy weight, my proportions would make me look a lot taller and more slender and I can't get my head around that being "me". So perhaps a daily round of visualising might get us used to the idea of the changed body image?

Machka9

I don't think I've got a wall because I've been every weight between 118 lbs and about 180 lbs ... so I can envision myself at each of those weights and I know it is possible to be any of those weights.

However I tend to sort of settle in somewhere between 125 and 135 lbs.

middlehaitch

I don't have a weight wall, 5'1 100-105 maintenance.
I have a body composition wall.

I started lifting. As soon as I see some improvements in my body composition I take a break, regress, and have to start back at lower weights. It is a two steps forward one step back pattern that I am having a hard time pushing through.

Cheers, h.

Aetheldreda

My 'wall' is my BMI
Every time I get close to my overweight/normal BMI number something crops up (like working away) and I just can't seem to break through it far enough to stay in the 'normal' numbers.
I am talking about tiny differences in the number here...but heck it is frustrating.

amusedmonkey

I do have a wall. I get very lax and procrastinate when I reach a certain weight then start taking prolonged maintenance breaks. I thought it was just me, because weirdly enough I like being obese. Apparently it's not as isolated of an issue as I previously thought. Just curious, how did the podcaster break her wall?

DanSanthomes

Me too - 12b Stone. For me I think it was because I mistakenly thought that was my ideal weight. I could get to it, maintain it for a while but then it crept back up.

I've recently smashed through 'the wall' using calorie deficit, logging and a target weight/photo/date combo and I'm now 11stone 5lbs.

12 stone no longer features as my ideal weight in my mind so I'm hoping it's no longer an issue.

Good luck

CattOfTheGarage

I'm going to go and listen to the podcast again and write down what she said. Problem is I don't know if I can remember which episode it was!