The Last Five Pounds

leopardessa

My original goal weight was to lose 30 pounds. When I lost 20, I decided to add five more pounds to the goal weight. A few months ago I hit the 30 pound mark, but since then I cannot lose these last five pounds in spite of maintaining the same exercise regime and diet. There have been times where I actually lose two out of those five pounds for the scale to only to go back up days later and stay that way.

I have read and been told a couple of conflicting things:

1. I will never lose the last five because my body has a threshold.. This article claims we are only meant to lose so much and that I should just be happy with my weight. Believe me I am and it certainly would not be the end of the world, but I am very goal oriented and want to finish what I started.

2. Change regime.. I have been told and have read that although what I have been doing has produced a lot of results that I have to change my diet even more and change up my workout or work longer. When I first started to workout it was getting my nowhere but the moment I took up running it not only got the scale to go down but it became something I enjoy. I don't want to give it up. As for my diet, cutting out more calories would be dangerous (MFP set me at 1200 daily 30 pounds ago) and I already avoid eating too much of any element like sugar, carbs, and fat.

Since the beginning of my weight loss journey in 2015 I have always had a cheat day once a week. I gave it up for a long while to see if that would help lose the last five pounds and it did not. I went on vacation months ago where I admit that I indulged every day and did not workout as much. I was so convinced that when I came home the scale would go up like it did my last trip and it never did.

I am intrinsically motivated to do this, but with some people being so negative about my weight loss I now want it even more.

lorrpb

You are so close to your TDEE that it becomes very hard to create that deficit needed to lose the last 5-10 lbs. You need to up your exercise &decrease food a little a bit . Recalculate your calories in MFP for .5 loss per week. Even that will be hard to achieve. Be sure you're weighing and logging everything. Add in some more exercise, even a couple miles of walking to burn a few more cals.

BWadeRN

Hey, I can totally relate! While I am not as close to my goal as you are, I hit a plateau back in March and struggled with every half lb. but what finally broke that plateau (and has resulted in another 20 lb loss!) was changing up my routine. I was counting calories, but I wasn't eating the RIGHT calories! And my workout wasn't sufficient for what I wanted to do. Can I ask what your actual diet plan/workout regimen is?? (If you can PM me that would be great, I tried to message you but I got an error)

leopardessa

Thank you both so much! (@BWadeRN - I definitely have to check out what is going on with my PMs! So sorry you had a problem. That is so awesome you broke your plateau! )

The thing about decreasing food is if I decrease calories I would be eating fewer than 1200 calories a day. In terms of what I eat, I make sure to not eat too much food high in fat or sugar and drink just water, seltzer, and tea. Soda, iced tea, and lemonade are only once in a while treats. I have a Slim fast shake in the morning, a sandwich or yogurt for lunch, and some type of meat or fish with usually two different vegetables.

As for exercise, I run 40 minutes a day. I first started off at 20 and planking, but I got really hurt planking one day so I stuck to just running. I eventually increased my runs to 30 minutes and have been doing forty minutes almost every day. Should I up my runs to an hour?

I am sure to add my runs and whatever I eat at the right portions on here daily.

middlehaitch

I was in close to your position 7 years ago. (Trying to get from 110-105 at 5'1)

The last 5 lbs and eating 1200 plus 200 for exercise. It took a good review of my numbers, and 5 months of steady teeny-tiny losses to get there.

You probably need to do nothing but wait it out and tighten your logging.

We all get a little lazy when we have been logging a while and do rote entries- my orange wasn't weighed any more, just averaged, I had been eating one every day for 9 months, same with my sugar in my 2x day coffee, 1x day bowl of yogurt, etc. I went back, reviewed the entries I had been using all year, yes some were wrong, and got meticulous with my logging.

As for exercise, a few months previously I had looked at my data and 200 cals was a good average burn for the workouts I was doing, I did another review of my data at my my current weight and found 175 was now a closer burn so dropped 25 cals.

What really helped with those last few lbs was upping my daily activity. I walked places that were a quick 5 min drive, I squatted taking things out of the dryer one by one, I didn't ask to be passed things, I went and got them.

All those little extra movements do add up during the day. And, when you are close to goal, and your calories cannot go lower, and it would be unwise to do more strenuous exercise without eating back the calories, this is a good way to get a 100+ cals burnt.

Cheers, h.

leopardessa

I really appreciate your feedback and motivation. It was just disheartening to go from seeing progress to a frozen scale for the most part for months. I will wait it out like you said and add more movement to my daily activity.