Stuck at a plateau.. am I not eating ENOUGH?

jenna2cu

Hello all! I have had good success so far, eating between 1300-1500 calories a day. I started at 274, and weigh now 228. I can not get past the 228 mark. Things I have been reading say that I should be eating more around 1700-1900 calories for my weight height and age (29, 5’4). I’m nervous to bump up the calories, but need to get out of this 228 rut. Please help, advice! PS I never eat my exercise calories back. Thank you!

L1zardQueen

How long have you been stuck? When did you start? Do you use a food scale to weigh everything you eat? Eating your exercise calories back will be important in the long run.

jenna2cu

Stuck about 2 weeks, And yes I use the food scale! Down to the last gram or ounce, for every item and every condiment =\

jenna2cu

L1zardQueen wrote: »

How long have you been stuck? When did you start? Do you use a food scale to weigh everything you eat? Eating your exercise calories back will be important in the long run.

Stuck about 2 weeks, And yes I use the food scale! Down to the last gram or ounce, for every item and every condiment =\

wunderkindking

Two weeks is within the realm of hormone related water retention - though it's also possible you're holding onto water due to stress from under eating, sodium, or just being stressed out in life or constipated. I'd probably bump the calories some but I'd also wait another week or two. You're not going to see loss on the scale every week, unfortunately. It's just not how bodies work.

paperpudding

2 weeks doesn't seem long to me - some weeks you don't lose weight or even go up a tad, weight loss is not linear.

If you have lost 50 lb and then have 2 weeks of same weight I would just continue on the same.,

Not sure how increasing your calories would help?

heybales

Depends on reason.

Are you measuring several body parts besides the weight scale?

Because if your body is stressed and you are slowly gaining cortisol induced water weight - that could end up being upwards of 20 lbs gained - how many weeks of plateau would that seem to cause? (10 weeks perhaps or more, would that add more stress?)
With that though would be measurements still slowly decreasing as fat is still lost because of being in a diet.
But body may be stressed due to extreme of the diet.

But if weight the same, measurements all the same over many spots - then you really aren't gaining water weight to offset fat loss.
In which case examining logging skills of food eaten is needed, even if using a scale.

Because even sedentary should cause a loss if truly eating that much, even if food logging is sloppy.
I'm going for stress water weight gained. Because you have a deficit to likely a sedentary setting, and then you exercise causing more deficit and stress.
Bad choices can cause success at the start with lots to lose, but become foolish later on.

Obviously if the body is that stressed to cause that, that isn't good long term, may be better to eat more and cause less deficit.
When many do that they get a pretty fast whoosh water weight loss, as well as more energy so they move more and burn more, bringing back about the same reasonable deficit.
You probably aren't even aware of how bad your workouts suck compared to what they could be doing this more reasonable.

ETA:
I'm curious too about question already asked you missed answering:
How long since the diet started, how long to lose the 46 lbs before the 2 weeks of no loss started?

penguinmama87

I would wait a couple more weeks to see what happens, but if you are stuck still AND have noticed an increase in fatigue or tiredness, eating a little bit more (like 100-200 calories per day more, or eating back a portion of your exercise calories even if not all) might be a useful experiment. If you're undereating and fatigued, your body might compensate by slowing you down, stopping you from fidgeting, etc.

leggup

Adding calories can't get you out of a plateau.

A true plateau (same calories in - measured, same calories out- activity level) would be longer than 2 weeks and would indicate you're eating at maintenance level.

Can you open your diary?

glassyo

leggup wrote: »

Adding calories can't get you out of a plateau.

A true plateau (same calories in - measured, same calories out- activity level) would be longer than 2 weeks and would indicate you're eating at maintenance level.

Can you open your diary?

Well, it CAN get her out of the plateau. It just wouldn't go the way she wanted it to. 😀

heybales

I would not assume lack of losing weight on the scale equates to lack of losing fat.

That's the problem with water weight - 0 calories but not much of an increase in volume to add weight even faster than fat can be lost.

Because as many N=1 people have shown along with actual studies - small increase in calories can indeed cause weight loss on scale, fast sometimes, hence whoosh - and cause that calories out to change, due to prior AT occurring that was not noticed.

One of many articles on the effect, but much better than digging through the MN starvation study for it, though it is there too.
https://www.southwestfamilymed.com/blog/water-retention-and-weight-loss-you-can-lose-fat-but-not-weight

Lyle discusses also, years ago - some of his articles a tad more harsh on how to solve, since his book on women specific weight control, he seems to be nicer, instead of just "calm the F down"
https://bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/adjusting-the-diet

AnnPT77

Besides what heybales said (when heybales types, smart MFP people read attentively, IMO!), I'd point out that human bodies are dynamic systems, and our bodies figure out how to get better at handling things we train them to expect.

Under-eat, and we're training our body to expect famine. It gets good at conserving energy. No, this is not "starvation mode makes your body hang onto fat and you'll stop losing weight". (If that were a thing, no one would ever starve to death. Sadly, thousands of people worldwide starve to death every year, and they aren't overweight when the time comes. We relatively well-off folks aren't physiologically different, we're just luckier: We're dealing with food surplus, not the periodic food shortage that's characterized the long sweep of natural selection's effect on human physiology.)

That energy conservation can be quite subtle: Fidgeting less, slowed hair/nails growth, putting off or simplifying home chores or work-life tasks, lowered workout intensity or skipping workouts, leaving behind active hobbies thinking we're "just not interested anymore" or "don't have time", etc. It's doing less, burning less than we would if our body didn't think it was facing regular food shortages (that we think of as "diets"). It can be subconscious. The result is a daily calorie expenditure lower than it could have been, with a better strategy.

Like I said, bodies are dynamic systems, not static. If we eat too little, things slow down. If we eat a bit more, the energy level can perk up, via those same subtle mechanisms (even if that added eating's not enough to wipe out a theoretical calorie deficit). It's not super unusual in the maintenance part of the Community here to see people maintain for a few weeks to a month or so at the calories they'd expect, then start slowly losing weight again. Same kind of a deal. Anecdotally, I suspect the dynamic response to intake is somewhat variable among people, but I don't have any science to support that. (Nutrition or other factors that vary with calorie intake might have an impact, too, who knows.)

Under-eating is counter-productive, certainly for health, and probably even for long-term weight management. Instead of training our body to expect famine, a better strategy IMO is to manage calorie levels and nutrition, trying to convince our body to expect good treatment over the long haul. Rather than teaching it to limp along on minimum calories, scrimping and saving on energy expenditure where it can, eating adequately (and getting reasonable exercise, all that good stuff) is more like training the body to thrive. That can happen alongside weight loss, if the loss is taken at a sensible rate, plus includes some refeeds, maybe some longer breaks.

This effect would apply in addition to the water retention effects heybales (and the very good articles he linked) talked about.

OP, a thread here with some other relevant info is this one:

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

ndj1979

Only other thing I would add is are you using correct food diary entries?

Luke_rabbit

I can personally speak to what AnnPT77 mentioned. As I approached the end of my dieting time, I started adding an extra 100 calories a month. First month, lost at exactly the same rate as before. Second month, same thing. Third month, again! Not until I was eating 400 calories more did my weight loss slow down. I never would've guessed that I was subconsciously slowing down to conserve energy during the earlier months, but I must've been. I wish I had been eating more the whole time!

newlifegoals2020

In similar boat but so much worse...... lost a great amount of weight (over 60 lbs) but now been stuck for several months in the same 5 pound up and down range. It’s driving me nuts...... how do I get out of this. I am active-work out daily. Trying to stay around 1400-1500 calories a day.

Help!!!

paperpudding

newlifegoals2020 wrote: »

In similar boat but so much worse...... lost a great amount of weight (over 60 lbs) but now been stuck for several months in the same 5 pound up and down range. It’s driving me nuts...... how do I get out of this. I am active-work out daily. Trying to stay around 1400-1500 calories a day.

Help!!!

Have you adjusted your calories?

If you have lost 60lb you may need to reduce your calorie amount now - re put your stats into MFP and see what it gives you now.

yweight2020

Only here to tell you congratulations on your success so far you've seem to have it under control.

And for me when I was in a true plateau I dropped my calories a few hundred calories, because even though healthy foods and charting it all I was eating to much for weight loss. My scale continued to move downward, not necessarily at the rate I'd like or when I'd like because it's been said weight loss isn't linear.

Take care

nooshi713

Usually a true plateau means you are eating too much.

kshama2001

jenna2cu wrote: »

Hello all! I have had good success so far, eating between 1300-1500 calories a day. I started at 274, and weigh now 228. I can not get past the 228 mark. Things I have been reading say that I should be eating more around 1700-1900 calories for my weight height and age (29, 5’4). I’m nervous to bump up the calories, but need to get out of this 228 rut. Please help, advice! PS I never eat my exercise calories back. Thank you!

Unless you are very very short, you have been undereating for your weight and you should also have been eating back exercise calories so something is wrong, assuming you've been stuck at 228 for at least a few weeks.

There are mistakes that people commonly make that cause them to not lose weight that we might be able to spot if you change your Diary Sharing settings to Public: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/diary_settings

Beverly2Hansen

This might sound odd but try changing your scale batteries and weigh something a different weight than you. Sometimes low batteries in a scale cause it to stay on the same number.

LtHammerhead

Try change what you are measuring. I had a period where I was lifting weights and didn’t lose a pound for a month..but my body fat dropped noticeably.

Also, could try taking a week or two off. Not saying go crazy, but just relax a bit. Losing lots of weight is hard work!

Final thought: shake it up a bit. Do a week of intermittent fasting, try a full fast for a day. Sometimes that helps me.