Have plateaued for about 1.5 months

deimosphoebos

Hey all,

I am 156 days into my journey and seem to have plateaued between 200-205lbs. I think my main issue has been not being as good with watching what I eat (too many cheat foods/days), but also I've been consistently PowerLifting and thus hungry.

I would like to get back on track and would appreciate any tips and advice.

My priority is weight loss, but I am trying to maintain as much muscle mass as possible. I'm lifting 3 times per week StrongLifts 5x5.

Thanks all.

livingleanlivingclean

Be good with watching what you eat.

Leannep2201

^^^^ This. Track consistently and honestly, making sure you hit your calorie target as set up for weight loss, and you will lose.

64ghostrider

Change diets for a month get on keto and shock the system go to YouTube and search dr.berg keto and if he will change your life and check out keto connect for great advise .and look at Scott the trucker for laughs good luck

rheddmobile

Gotta tighten up your logging. There's nothing wrong with cheat days as long as they don't take you out of your deficit for the week, but if you don't log it you don't know.

Try eating protein and carbs right after lifting, and a few carbs before, to try to stave off the hunger by giving your body what it needs before it asks for it. I usually have an orange before and some Greek yogurt with fruit after.

AnvilHead

bigone1964 wrote: »

Change diets for a month get on keto and shock the system go to YouTube and search dr.berg keto and if he will change your life and check out keto connect for great advise .and look at Scott the trucker for laughs good luck

Hopefully OP knows enough to ignore this advice, as it offers absolutely nothing toward helping him attain his goals. Keto is not magical and doesn't cause any more weight loss (or any faster) than any other diet. It is also a sub-optimal diet for retention of lean mass/building muscle. And Dr. Berg is nothing but a shoddy chiropractor who has been formally reprimanded and fined by the State of Virginia Medical Board for practicing woo and making false claims. He's nothing but a snake oil peddler: https://www.casewatch.org/board/chiro/berg.shtml

RuNaRoUnDaFiEld

bigone1964 wrote: »

Change diets for a month get on keto and shock the system go to YouTube and search dr.berg keto and if he will change your life and check out keto connect for great advise .and look at Scott the trucker for laughs good luck

Shocking my system sounds painful.

callsitlikeiseeit

callsitlikeiseeit

bigone1964 wrote: »

Change diets for a month get on keto and shock the system go to YouTube and search dr.berg keto and if he will change your life and check out keto connect for great advise .and look at Scott the trucker for laughs good luck

WTF kind of BS is that? shoo with your woo

Kst76

Just doing what you did before you stalled.
Nothing has changed really. You just got lazier with your tracking which is fine. I am like that too. Just get back on track again.

Cheesy567

The good news is, you’re maintaining! Congrats! Sometimes the body takes “unplanned maintence breaks” for you.

There are a couple ways to approach this.
1- see how high you can push your calories and still maintain. This will help you determine your maintenance range for when you’ve hit your goal weight. Its good info to have. Some people refer to this calorie increase as a “metabolic reset”. What you’d do is add 100-200 calories a day each week, keep doing that as long as your weight stays in the 200-205 range. (It might help you with your strength goals, too!). Once you find the highest calorie level you can maintain at, you take a deficit of 250 calories a day from there, and see if you start losing again. Dr Yoni Freedhoff has some great info on losing weight with as many calories as possible, if you want to read up on it more.

2- Alternatively, take more of a calorie deficit from where you are now.

Either way, you need to be honest and accurate with your tracking to get the best data possible to work from.

And I’d drop the idea of “cheat meals” “cheat days,” “good foods,” and “bad foods.” Your diet needs to be sustainable for you life-long, so that you keep the weight off. Plan in and include fun foods. Take control of them, eat them, don’t use them as a passive-aggressive type excuse to derail yourself. Just be honest and realistic with what you want and need. Then plan accordingly. And track accordingly

sweetpawdogs

Actually, changing diets for a bit always busts me out of a plateau. Calories in/calories out is not enough anymore. We now know how hormones can affect that and how certain foods affect those hormones. It's pretty common knowledge by now but so many people on this board sadly hang on to that dated science. So change things up for a bit. Keto works great for me. I usually have a big drop early on that gets me right out of the plateau. Or go vegan for a few weeks. You can research this pretty easily to find out which foods have the most impact on hormones and set you up for failure no matter how much or little you eat.

MalkinMagic71

sweetpawdogs wrote: »

Actually, changing diets for a bit always busts me out of a plateau. Calories in/calories out is not enough anymore. We now know how hormones can affect that and how certain foods affect those hormones. It's pretty common knowledge by now but so many people on this board sadly hang on to that dated science. So change things up for a bit. Keto works great for me. I usually have a big drop early on that gets me right out of the plateau. Or go vegan for a few weeks. You can research this pretty easily to find out which foods have the most impact on hormones and set you up for failure no matter how much or little you eat.

So much wrong here.

kimny72

deimosphoebos wrote: »

Hey all,

I am 156 days into my journey and seem to have plateaued between 200-205lbs. I think my main issue has been not being as good with watching what I eat (too many cheat foods/days), but also I've been consistently PowerLifting and thus hungry.

I would like to get back on track and would appreciate any tips and advice.

My priority is weight loss, but I am trying to maintain as much muscle mass as possible. I'm lifting 3 times per week StrongLifts 5x5.

Thanks all.

Focus on 100% logging for at least a couple of weeks, using a food scale as often as possible, to see if your calories are where you think you are. This includes cheat meals. If you were losing slowly and now you're not, it's probably "portion creep". Happens to the best of us, just tighten it back up!

melissa6771

deimosphoebos wrote: »

Hey all,

I am 156 days into my journey and seem to have plateaued between 200-205lbs. I think my main issue has been not being as good with watching what I eat (too many cheat foods/days), but also I've been consistently PowerLifting and thus hungry.

I would like to get back on track and would appreciate any tips and advice.

My priority is weight loss, but I am trying to maintain as much muscle mass as possible. I'm lifting 3 times per week StrongLifts 5x5.

Thanks all.

Go back to what you were doing. You were doing so well but you've changed what you're doing/trying to do numerous times in the last 6-8 weeks. Keto, IF, eating at maintenance. Just go back to logging consistently and staying in a slight deficit. You were losing too fast for a while and that's when you started struggling. This approach though , staying in a Consistent deficit, is when you did your best. You will be a little hungrier because you're working out much harder than you used to but that's what exercise calories are for, to support that. Eat back half for now and then adjust according to your losses, up if you're losing too fast, down if it's too slow. Look how far you've come already, you got this.

NoExcusesFromNowOn

I have never ever read that food affects hormones. Very odd statement. Care to provide some research articles? I'm very curious!

Cheesy567

adamlambert1877 wrote: »

I have never ever read that food affects hormones. Very odd statement. Care to provide some research articles? I'm very curious!

You need to do some reading and catch up my friend!

Read up on Grelin (sp?) and Leptin, these are probably the most important hormones known to date that control hunger and satiety. The foods we choose to eat definitely impact them.

And, other hormones affect hunger and satiety. The menstrual cycle is full of great examples for you to learn about.

Let me know if you have trouble searching google or PubMed for reliable sources of info. I’d love to help you beef up your research skills!

try2again

The good news is, it's likely not a plateau, but just a lack of careful logging. Easily fixable (well, maybe not "easy" in the sense that it sounds like you want to be eating more, but a "simple" fix anyway).

64ghostrider

AnvilHead wrote: »

bigone1964 wrote: »

Change diets for a month get on keto and shock the system go to YouTube and search dr.berg keto and if he will change your life and check out keto connect for great advise .and look at Scott the trucker for laughs good luck

Hopefully OP knows enough to ignore this advice, as it offers absolutely nothing toward helping him attain his goals. Keto is not magical and doesn't cause any more weight loss (or any faster) than any other diet. It is also a sub-optimal diet for retention of lean mass/building muscle. And Dr. Berg is nothing but a shoddy chiropractor who has been formally reprimanded and fined by the State of Virginia Medical Board for practicing woo and making false claims. He's nothing but a snake oil peddler: https://www.casewatch.org/board/chiro/berg.shtml

This info is serious I had no idea he did these things thanks for pointing that out I really need to do my homework on keto before I offer advice again thanks again