Recovery and plateaus

arrowprayer

Are the two related and how.
For example if ur doing stretches etc to help ur muscles recover better is that going to help at all with preventing plateues.
I realize it can help by allowing u to make your exercises more intense
But any other ways you can link the two?

AnnPT77

arrowprayer wrote: »

Are the two related and how.
For example if ur doing stretches etc to help ur muscles recover better is that going to help at all with preventing plateues.
I realize it can help by allowing u to make your exercises more intense
But any other ways you can link the two?

I wouldn't expect any effect that would be big enough to observe, in practice.

Plateaus are just a thing that happen, for some people. If you know your logging is as accurate as you can make it, and that you are eating in a way that should result in weight loss, then a "plateau" is typically going to be something that's temporarily hiding fat loss from you on the scale, even though the fat loss is actually happening behind the scenes.

The usual things that temporarily hide fat loss on the scale are water retention, or more than normal digestive contents in transit in your body.

Common causes of water retention are new exercise (requires water retention for muscle repair), eating more sodium or carbs than normal (even if a perfectly sensible amount of either: it's just part of the process of metabolizing them), minor illness/injury (related to inflammation and healing), changes in weather (mostly ambient temperature), timing of water intake/outgo (relative timing of when you drink, eat, sweat, urinate), stress (related to stress hormones), various points in the menstrual cycle for various women (hormone fluctuation again), and more. Some of these last for a short time; others can last a longer time.

More than normal digestive system contents (within a relatively unchanged calorie goal) would be related to the timing of eating/drinking vs. when you eliminate (urinate/defecate) vs. when you weigh yourself, or to a significant change in eating (like doing a whole-day liquid diet for colonoscopy prep so less contents in transit, or going from a limited-fiber/residue diet to a high-fiber/residue diet all at once).

Water weight is part of how a healthy body functions, so not worth worrying about. Ditto for changes in digestive contents.

I know of no sure way to prevent true plateaus. If you know it's just water or digestive contents, because you've been at a carefully-logged and appropriate calorie level, wait it out. Don't try to game it.

If your logging is off, or you lose a bunch of weight without appropriately adjusting your calorie goal, or you undereat so much that you become fatigued and rest/sleep a lot more so burn fewer daily-life calories, you could see things that look like plateaus, but are really eating maintenance calories by accident. If you stay at stable weight for a month or more, consider whether these things could be happening. Less than a month, I'd suggest just staying the course.

lorrpb

I don't know what connection there would be between stretching and Weight loss

nk9o

Just had a discussion with my nutritionist on the subject of plateaus. As I approach the 6 month diet period and life style changes, she warned me that the body hormones will be kicking in. The result maybe a decrease in weight loss that is currently achievable with my current calorie routine. She indicated that much is still not understood in the medical world and that everyone is impacted differently. Should be interesting going foreword and seeing how I will be impacted and if I will need additional assistance from her.