I have 5kg to go to goal but my weight loss has slowed significantly and is just hovering - advice?
Katerr1kk
Posts: 81 Member
Hi everyone. I'm a little stumped and could use some advice if anyone can offer any help please?
I am 40F, 5"7' and have lost 17.5kg/39lb since March through CICO using MFP, sticking to around 1350 calories a day based on TDEE - 500. I use a food scale and am meticulous about weighing my food and tracking accurately.
I walk and do pilates daily and lift weights 3-4 times a week and have seen a huge change in my body, however, while I have never been a big loser, I was regularly losing 2-2.5kg/about 5lb a month. Since early October however I have been hovering between 64 and 65kg (my starting weight was 82kg) and am seemingly unable to drop any lower than 64kg.
I understand that as I get closer to my goal (60kg) and am now in a healthy weight that it will inevitably slow down and take longer, but is there anything I can do to get the scales moving? It feels very much like one step forward, two steps back and I am finding it a little upsetting. I am trying to focus more on measurements and strength, etc and less on the scale but it is hard!
I'm very grateful if anyone has any advice, or have experienced this themselves and got through it? Thank you all!
I am 40F, 5"7' and have lost 17.5kg/39lb since March through CICO using MFP, sticking to around 1350 calories a day based on TDEE - 500. I use a food scale and am meticulous about weighing my food and tracking accurately.
I walk and do pilates daily and lift weights 3-4 times a week and have seen a huge change in my body, however, while I have never been a big loser, I was regularly losing 2-2.5kg/about 5lb a month. Since early October however I have been hovering between 64 and 65kg (my starting weight was 82kg) and am seemingly unable to drop any lower than 64kg.
I understand that as I get closer to my goal (60kg) and am now in a healthy weight that it will inevitably slow down and take longer, but is there anything I can do to get the scales moving? It feels very much like one step forward, two steps back and I am finding it a little upsetting. I am trying to focus more on measurements and strength, etc and less on the scale but it is hard!
I'm very grateful if anyone has any advice, or have experienced this themselves and got through it? Thank you all!
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Replies
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Have you eaten the same amount of calories from the beginning of your weight loss till now? You mention your TDEE minus 500 calories, but a smaller body burns less calories, so while you've been losing weight, your TDEE has been dropping as well. Being so close to goal and already at a healthy weight, I would aim for TDEE minus 250 kcal, but based on your current TDEE.7
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With only 11 lbs to goal weight, .5 lbs a week or 2 lbs a month is realistic, not the 5 you were seeing previously. At 5’7” and 141 you are within the healthy range.
Have you recalculated your daily calorie intake? If you are eating the same number of calories as previously, you probably need to adjust your daily caloric goal. Also, if you track exercise calories, make sure you don’t overestimate your calories burned.
Other than that, a few weeks of no loss isn’t that abnormal. Try taking measurements also if you aren’t already. Even if the scales aren’t moving, you might be losing inches.2 -
Thank you Lietchi - I don't really think I can go any lower - my current TDEE is just over 1600. For most of my weight loss I was eating 1200 calories, I have only really increased it this last week to see if it might help kickstart my loss (probably not the right thing to do but I was clutching at straws really) so I haven't really left myself anywhere to go unfortunately.1
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Reassess your tdee. It has likely gone down due to being a lower bodyweight, unless you've also increased your activity/exercise.
Options would be to lower your intake (not much room to work with there as you're already at 1350) and/or to increase your activity/exercise (which may make you hungrier) or to accept a slower rate of loss. You know accuracy in logging is important - so look for any areas where there may be accidental errors. Such as verifying that your entries in your food diary are accurate. (User entered could have errors.) Weigh even pre-packaged items, as the package weight is often inaccurate.
And look long term. In general, you should be able to lose a little weight over time: 1-2 pounds in a month rather than 5 perhaps. But you may not 'see' the #s from weekly weighins as water weight fluctuates. So patience is as important as accuracy.3 -
Congrats on your successes so far! So just to confirm, you haven’t lost any weight in 6 weeks?
How often do you weigh?
The obvious solution would be to cut another 100 calories. This concerns me to suggest because your calories are already pretty low for the amount of activity you get. I am your height but much older and lost on 1700 per day. I didn’t lose every week but I did lose every month.
What does MFP give you to lose .5 per week?2 -
Thank you all so much for replying. I'm very grateful to you all.
I was eating 1200 and as that was the lowest I was happy to go I didn't change it as my TDEE decreased. I reassessed my MFP last week to lose 0.5lb a week which gave me 1350. I'm a lot happier with that, but was equally happy at 1200 so could go back to that. I never count my exercise calories or eat them back and don't include exercise on my TDEE.
Lorrpb I weigh daily, record the number in Libra and move on.1 -
And I haven't not lost weight, but one day I will be 64.6, the next 64.8, 64.4 for 2 days, back up to 64.9, that sort of pattern.1
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For perspective, I was 132.8 11-11 (my most recent 'low' which I consider to be my current weight, until I have a new 'low') but 135 today. I guarantee the +2.2 is water weight from a) eating/drinking differently over the weekend and b) female water weight fluctuations. 10-11 I was 134.8. So average of about 2 pounds down in a month.0
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It has been 64.9 for the last 3 Mondays, hovering up and down in between. 1st Oct was 65.9, 1st Nov was 64.9. So while I have lost 1kg that's still so much less than I had been losing before (between 2-2.5kg a month) and there has been very little movement since.1
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A 1 kg/2.2 pound loss in a month does not seem unreasonable - when you consider your smaller body uses less energy.
The slow down could also have coincided with other small differences. Any changes in the types of foods you are eating and/or the types of activity with the weather change?3 -
Thank you. I guess I will just have to be patient and stick with it.nanastaci2020 wrote: »A 1 kg/2.2 pound loss in a month does not seem unreasonable - when you consider your smaller body uses less energy.
The slow down could also have coincided with other small differences. Any changes in the types of foods you are eating and/or the types of activity with the weather change?
I have started to eat a lot more vegetables but I still eat the same breakfast every day (overnight oats, weighed, with Greek Yogurt, measured), a small lunch and my main meal in the evening but no significant weather changes). No changes to my exercise routine, I did increase weights for my legs and did wonder if that could cause fluctuations but it was 8 weeks ago so I'm sure that would have become clear by now.
Thank you again, all of you.
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Thank you Lietchi - I don't really think I can go any lower - my current TDEE is just over 1600. For most of my weight loss I was eating 1200 calories, I have only really increased it this last week to see if it might help kickstart my loss (probably not the right thing to do but I was clutching at straws really) so I haven't really left myself anywhere to go unfortunately.
I'm having trouble following your timeline at a detailed enough level to be certain, but if you were losing an average of a pound and a quarter a week at 1200 (shortly before the recent stall), then your maintenance number is more like 1825. (1200 + ((1.25 lb x 3500 approximate calories in a pound of fat) / 7 days)).
Another sign MFP's estimate is a little off for you: If you dropped your goal rate to half a pound from a pound a week, MFP would've added 250 calories daily, not 150, so at 1200 you were asking for a weight loss rate it thought was too fast to be sensible for your size. (1200 is the lowest it will give a woman.) On top of that, your results suggest that your needs are even higher than MFP thinks. (This is unusual, but it happens. MFP, or any other calculator, just gives you an estimate. Your tracking experience, over many weeks, gives you a better answer.)
I'm going to lazily quote a reply I put on another thread with almost exactly the same question, because I think the info applies to you, at 0.5 pounds a week, too.
I'm going to post this with some trepidation, because I fear the main point may be lost.
The main point is that slow loss can be a freakin' misleading b-word, in practice - excuse my vague hints at bad language. 😉 For you, OP, I'm hoping that may be a little reassuring.
Background: I'm in year 5 of maintenance now, after losing 60 pounds, so I really trust my process (details of calorie counting, what my maintenance calories are, effects of exercise and more). Over about the past year, I've been losing a few vanity pounds ultra-slowly, averaging half a pound a week, and usually less. (I like painless, especially for vanity pounds.)
I'm going to share my recent Libra (weight trending app) chart, then add a few comments after the image. The horizontal to downhill-ish connected line is my weight trend (just a statistical thing, kind of a rolling average). It's supposed to dampen out the effect of daily fluctuations. The little vertical lines connect my daily weigh-ins to the trend line. (More comments below.)
Over this period, mostly nothing much changed. There are occasional over-goal days in there (which account for some of the high daily weigh-ins, mostly from water weight & digestive contents changes). But clearly, over the full timespan, the overall trend is very slow loss.
Now, look at July specifically. The trend starts about 129.5, ends up just a tiny bit lower. The first 2-3 of weeks look like gain, in the trend line. The daily weights are crazy-fluctuate-y. I didn't change much of anything in July . . . except for one small thing. I (re-)started a strength training routine. We're not talking long sessions, daily sessions, or heavy weights. We're talking a li'l ol' lady doing some basic conditioning with lighter weights, 3 times a week, for maybe half an hour each time: Not dramatic.
That whole month looks like no loss at all, overall. But there was just fat loss still happening slowly, hidden by water retention. (It shows up, finally, in that steeper-downslope drop in August.)
Many, many things can cause that effect, via water retention: A salty dinner the night before weigh in, some sore muscles, a little head congestion from allergies, a minor injury involving inflammation/healing, and many, many more possibilities. Bodies are just that weird.**
I'd also suggest that you look closely at my daily weights (endpoints of those little vertical lines). Most of the time, I was eating at a consistent net calorie level. The daily weights were still up and down, sometimes by a pound or more. If you look super closely, you'll see periods where there are weigh-ins around a week apart, that are exactly the same weight - in September, say. My actual fat weight was declining, my daily weights were up and down in a confusing way, but it's possible that weekly weigh-ins would've implied there was no fat loss and no change in weight.
Do you see what I'm saying?
I'm not trying to convince you to weigh daily, or anything like that. I'm simply trying to use my recent experience to illustrate graphically/viscerally that you may well be losing fat, and still getting the result you see on the scale.
Best wishes!
** https://physiqonomics.com/the-weird-and-highly-annoying-world-of-scale-weight-and-fluctuations
This is the thread that came from, if you want to see other replies: https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10815577/weights-stayed-the-same-for-3-weeks-not-up-nor-down-any-advice
ETA: If you're now eating 150 more calories daily, the associated change in water weight (from a tiny bit more sodium/carbs), and increased average digestive contents, will cause some scale fluctuation for a short time. It's not fat, NBD. Probably not enough to completely explain your current weight results (though I'm not sure of that!), but could certainly be part of the big picture, with some other factors.5 -
That is really interesting AnnPT77. I did read that post in my searches!
I think you may be along the right lines, I do use a TDEE spreadsheet which puts me at about 1800ish. That felt a little high and I wasn't convinced of its accuracy, and I was happy at 1200 so didn't take too much heed. Maybe I ought to be looking a bit closer. It feels so counter intuitive to eat more, though!
Thank you again!1 -
That is really interesting AnnPT77. I did read that post in my searches!
I think you may be along the right lines, I do use a TDEE spreadsheet which puts me at about 1800ish. That felt a little high and I wasn't convinced of its accuracy, and I was happy at 1200 so didn't take too much heed. Maybe I ought to be looking a bit closer. It feels so counter intuitive to eat more, though!
Thank you again!
Just for an extra jolt of "it could be possible" sauce:
I've been tracking for over 5 years now, most of it at/near maintenance. It's been a while since I checked, but MFP (and my good brand/model fitness tracker that estimates well for others) think I'd maintain around 1500. The chart I included above was from eating 1850 *plus all exercise calories on top of it*, and periodically much more, over that time period. I actually maintain at 2100-2200 plus exercise, more or less depending on the season. It's rare for the estimates to be that far off, but it's absolutely possible.
There's a lot of weird mythology in the culture about all women always needing to eat tiny numbers of calories; I think it distorts our perceptions. Some need to eat lower than the estimates, many/most close to them, a few on the high side.
I vote "believe your results".4 -
It does feel counterintuitive but it works, even when you are so close to goal. Those last five or ten pounds seem glued to your body.
Trust the math, and, if you have a smart watch or device, make sure you know it well enough to comfortably trust the results it calculates. I feel like my Apple Watch has been right on the money.
I do understand though. It does feel wierd and counterintuitive. I’m currently at 2300 and the math (and scale) says I need to bump up another 200-300 a day just to maintain and I can’t wrap my head around that. Like Ann says, there is indeed a mythology about women needing to eat dainty numbers, and it’s even become ingrained in my own head.
It’s all a numbers game. (And logging. Always logging. )3 -
springlering62 wrote: »It does feel counterintuitive but it works, even when you are so close to goal. Those last five or ten pounds seem glued to your body.
Trust the math, and, if you have a smart watch or device, make sure you know it well enough to comfortably trust the results it calculates. I feel like my Apple Watch has been right on the money.
I do understand though. It does feel wierd and counterintuitive. I’m currently at 2300 and the math (and scale) says I need to bump up another 200-300 a day just to maintain and I can’t wrap my head around that. Like Ann says, there is indeed a mythology about women needing to eat dainty numbers, and it’s even become ingrained in my own head.
It’s all a numbers game. (And logging. Always logging. )
Isn't it mythology! My mother loves to tell me she has to drop to 600 calories a day to lose weight. Thanks mum! (I've no intention of doing this, btw)
Thank you. I'll stick with 1350 for now, (based on tdee of 1850ish with 500 deficit) or should I reduce the deficit to 250 or so? I'm really happy with my diet and what I eat and don't necessarily want to eat more just for the sake of it.
Thank you so much, all of you. It is very much appreciated. While my weight loss hasn't been easy and it has been a bit of a slog with plateaus and stalls and ups and downs this is the first time I've hit a big bump in the road and it has thrown me a little. A lesson in patience and getting your head down and carrying on I think.4 -
Have you entertained the idea of eating off for a meal or one day within reason? then jumping back on your plan. It seems to work for me.. even while I'm losing. I eat one meal off on the weekend..but never binge. It seems to keep me losing.1
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Thank you! I'm not quite sure what you mean - skipping a meal? I'm such a foodie I'm not sure I could bear it. I really need my three meals a day (regardless of how small they are!)elisa123gal wrote: »Have you entertained the idea of eating off for a meal or one day within reason? then jumping back on your plan. It seems to work for me.. even while I'm losing. I eat one meal off on the weekend..but never binge. It seems to keep me losing.
How would that help? (genuine question, I am not being flippant) I just can't see how it would make a difference?0 -
Thank you! I'm not quite sure what you mean - skipping a meal? I'm such a foodie I'm not sure I could bear it. I really need my three meals a day (regardless of how small they are!)elisa123gal wrote: »Have you entertained the idea of eating off for a meal or one day within reason? then jumping back on your plan. It seems to work for me.. even while I'm losing. I eat one meal off on the weekend..but never binge. It seems to keep me losing.
How would that help? (genuine question, I am not being flippant) I just can't see how it would make a difference?
I think she means a 'cheat meal', not skipping a meal
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