weight loss plateau now gaining

demonoid5k

I've been dieting for about a year. I logged everything I've eaten in that time (yes everything). For the most part I ate 1500kcals or less a day during that time, until recently. Mostly I ate less that 1300. Most weeks I lost 0.7kg. That's less than predicted for those numbers.
I'm 39 M and started out weighing 90kg. My goal was 75. I plateaued at 78.3 for 3 weeks. I did used to go to they gym and was in pretty good shape. I don't work out atm but I still carry some muscle so perhaps 75 is too little for me? I chose it because its the middle of my bmi. 79 is the top end of my bmi. After 3 weeks of the plateau I decided to switch to maintenence (using mfp calculator) of 2150kcals /day. I started slowly gaining weight just in 2 weeks. I admit I did overdo it on one weekend, (ate 3000kcals on sat and sun) but that was just 2 days and I went from 78.3kg to 79kg (that's a weeks worth of weight loss for 2 days) .
So am I right to think that I need to stick to a maximum of 1500kcals just to maintain? If I take a day off and eat some cake or drink some beer I have to diet for a week to make up for it. That sucks.
I can't go boxing or jujitsu because of the virus so my main cardio is dead. Do I have to go back to 3 heavy weight training session a week? Cos honestly I hate that.
I'm Pissed off sorry to moan but I have no one to ask about this stuff.

cmriverside

I doubt seriously that 2150 (if logged accurately) is going to cause you to continue to see upticks on the scale.

You did stress your body - a lot - by trying to eat at 1300, though. Even 1500 is way too low for most men. That causes all kinds of weird hormonal shifts and down-regulations.


I suggest you stay at that 2150 for a month. Try to disregard your scale for that time. I don't know if 75 is realistic for you or not, 78 may be where you need to be for now.

Give it time for your body to get out of the shock you put it in by under-eating. Stay the course.

Here's the Refeed thread. The first couple pages will tell you what you need:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10604863/of-refeeds-and-diet-breaks/p1


You'll be able to work in that beer or cake, not to worry. Patience...

FitAgainBy55

Man, there's a lot to unpack here.

demonoid5k wrote: »

After 3 weeks of the plateau I decided to switch to maintenence (using mfp calculator) of 2150kcals /day. I started slowly gaining weight just in 2 weeks. I admit I did overdo it on one weekend, (ate 3000kcals on sat and sun) but that was just 2 days and I went from 78.3kg to 79kg (that's a weeks worth of weight loss for 2 days) .
So am I right to think that I need to stick to a maximum of 1500kcals just to maintain?

First, you tossed out a lot of individual daily numbers. I always use my average calorie intake over at least 2 weeks to make any kind of conclusion. I would suggest you do the same. My calories, like yours, over that 2 week period spike on the weekends when I have a few beers and usually eat more calories. I have no trouble losing weight with this kind of volatile calorie intake but I make sure my average for the week is within reason. That means I'm under budget some days and over others.

Also, if you go from under-eating for a long time to a much higher calorie intake it's normal to pick up some extra weight due to higher volume of food and water in your body. I would wait for it to stabilize before drawing conclusions. As a 39 year old male weighing 171 lbs you should be able to maintain your weight eating (on average) around that 2150 number -- because that sounds like a sedentary number (even though you didn't give us your height). Your number might be lower now because of a long time period of undereating where your body has made adjustments to conserve energy. If you refeed as suggested above you hopefully can get back to a normal. I want to emphasize the average part of this equation. You can't eat a maintenance Sun - Thursday and overeat Friday and Saturday. You need to maintain an average calorie intake (including those over days on the weekend). That means eating below 2150 during the week to save up for some overage on the weekend. Whether or not 2150 is YOUR number depends -- but it's certainly not 1500. You'll have to experiment and draw conclusions based on averages over a couple of weeks to find YOUR number.

demonoid5k wrote: »

I can't go boxing or jujitsu because of the virus so my main cardio is dead. Do I have to go back to 3 heavy weight training session a week? Cos honestly I hate that.
I'm Pissed off sorry to moan but I have no one to ask about this stuff.

This is an entire thread on its own. I always tell people never do anything to lose weight that your aren't willing to do long term to maintain it. I love lifting. If you don't then find something else -- it doesn't matter what but just sitting around all day isn't healthy -- regardless of weight loss or gain.

cwolfman13

If you eat more, you have more inherent waste in your system...you also will typically retain more water. You don't just pile on fat in two days...do the math.

demonoid5k

Thank everyone. I guess I'll stick to the higher numbers as an average over the week as suggested and see what happens in the month. I didn't mention my height, I'm 5'11".

Obviously I'm no expert, but 0.7kg up in water weight alone seemed like a lot

wunderkindking

demonoid5k wrote: »

Thank everyone. I guess I'll stick to the higher numbers as an average over the week as suggested and see what happens in the month. I didn't mention my height, I'm 5'11".

Obviously I'm no expert, but 0.7kg up in water weight alone seemed like a lot

I'm not a man but one salt heavy day or the right time of the month hormonally and I REGULARLY see 3lbs of water weight. That's roughly twice .7kg.

And I'm 5'5" and weigh 155 lbs so there's less room for that water to BE.

AnnPT77

demonoid5k wrote: »

Thank everyone. I guess I'll stick to the higher numbers as an average over the week as suggested and see what happens in the month. I didn't mention my height, I'm 5'11".

Obviously I'm no expert, but 0.7kg up in water weight alone seemed like a lot

I went from 124.8 pounds (56.6kg) to126.2 (57.2kg) pounds from one morning weigh-in to the next, from eating about 650 calories above normal goal. That's 1.4 pounds, about .64kg, but I'm 5'5" so quite a bit shorter as well as lighter. I've had bigger jumps, that's just a recent one.

I've been calorie counting for almost 6 years. This is not even remotely unusual, and occasionally happens even without exceeding normal calories. (Following day, I was back down to 124.6 lb (56.5kg) again.)

On a 5'11" body, 0.7kg seems pretty normal . . . maybe high normal, but normal.

cwolfman13

demonoid5k wrote: »

Thank everyone. I guess I'll stick to the higher numbers as an average over the week as suggested and see what happens in the month. I didn't mention my height, I'm 5'11".

Obviously I'm no expert, but 0.7kg up in water weight alone seemed like a lot

Not at all...and particularly taking into account that when you eat more food, you also have more inherent waste in your body...that waste has mass and thus has weight that registers on the scale. Similar to when you lose weight and have a nice water drop at the beginning, same thing happens when you eat more and move to maintenance. That water is being used in the metabolic process to help you metabolize more food...this can be even more pronounced if you've gone very low carb and introduce more carbs going into maintenance or increasing calories...every gram of carbohydrate carries roughly 4 grams of water.

.7 Kg is roughly 1.5 Lbs...well within very normal weight fluctuations. My weight can easily be up or down anywhere from 0-3 Lbs day to day...even more (up) if I have a super salty day...and airline travel packs on about 8 Lbs of water weight for me.