4 month plateau

CaptCheerwine

My trainer, nutritionist, and dietitian are stumped. I have been on a plateau for about 4 months. My weight, body fat percentage, visceral fat level all stay the same. My muscle mass increases most weeks but sometimes down a half pound. I shifted from keto to paleo, adjusted cardio, intensified weight training, and change the calories and percentages I eat daily. Any ideas or suggestions?

siobhanaoife

Is it possible that you are inadvertently eating a maintenance level of calories?

CaptCheerwine

I was eating way too few calories, as in 12 to 1300 daily. For the past two months I adjusted that to eat 300 less than the number of calories burned that show on my Fitbit. I try to stick close to 25% protein, 30% fat, and 45% carbs, although I rarely get close to the number of carbs. I'm still in a Keto, anti carb mentality and slowly adding complex carbs. I get checked and weighed weekly with my nutritionist. My dietitian reviews my daily food logs.

yweight2020

Doesnt sound like a plateau if your going down 1/2 lb sometimes, it sounds like your deficit for weight loss is very small. And are you weighing and measuring all your food, drinks, condiments to make sure how much you're truly eating. You could truly be consuming entirely to many calories not the opposite. It's good you have nutritionist, trainer and a dietary person, but their not at the house with you accounting for what you consume or do. Baring there being a medical issue, I think you really need to tighten up your food measuring/deficit and you will see further progress.

Best of care⚖ 🙃😀

ninerbuff

If there's weight movement, it's NOT a plateau. Question: why do you have a dietician AND nutritionist? A dietician trumps a nutritionist in most cases just based on knowledge in most instances. Could their info be in contrast with each other. Also IF you're not adhering to the plan and sticking to what you think works, why would expect a different outcome than before (meaning carb intake)?
And DON'T rely on FitBit giving you an accurate calorie burn. You can just move your arm around and get steps in without stepping. Be more accurate on TDEE by figuring out everything you do in a day.


A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

CaptCheerwine

Good information. My insurance provides coverage for corelife, which assigns a team and I believe one is a nutritionist, one to dietitian and one I don't use is a trainer because I already have one. I've only been with them for about 2 months. They do weekly electrical body analysis for composition, which I had not done before. I had no way of knowing what my visceral level was.

CaptCheerwine

I like things to make sense and I'm not very educated in this area. I've been working hard for about a year. Dropped from 247 to 224. I'm I'm trying to shake things up since I am not getting results often or regularly. My muscle mass tends to grow 1/2 to 1 lb most weeks. If I muscle workout it may drop a half a pound. My body fat percentage and visceral fat numbers rarely change more than 1% and often Remains the Same. This week for instance I lost 7 lb and .6 muscle.

My trainer is big and to Kehoe, which I was, too, until I stopped seeing results. My other team is a bigger fan of paleo. There's so much conflicting information out there and so many opinions it is hard to know what is best to shake things up. Hence, asking you folks in the Fitbit

I work with my trainer on weights for 30 minute sessions each week, to Upper and to lower alternating. I had been doing an hour of elliptical, often with a 40 pound weight vest. I mix it up with a 30-minute stationary bike ride, a one-mile swim, a 2-mile walk with steep hills, and sometimes something random I feel like doing. I will do cardio 5 or 6 times a week varying between 30 minutes to an hour. I usually get about 12,000 steps in per day and average according to Fitbit 3000 to 3200 calories daily. Resting calorie burn rate is 2200. I try to stick within three or four hundred of the number of burn calories showing on Fitbit. I tried to get 25% protein, 30% fat, and 45% carbs. I tried to eat only complex carbs and rarely come close to the 45%.

I'm just trying to figure things out and, like I said, there are so many varying opinions.

viajera99

I'm sure the more experienced folk here will have good advice, but a couple things jumped out at me.

Unless you're on anabolic steroids, it's highly unlikely you're gaining ½ - 1 pound of muscle a week. Not impossible, but highly unlikely, especially eating in a deficit. And there is no way of measuring .6lbs of muscle change in a single week. No matter what your trainer is using to measure that, that level of accuracy seriously does not exist in any method or device.

It seems that maybe you need to get more simple rather than more complex. Lift weights using a well-designed progressive program 3-4x/week. Do 30-60 min cardio on the non-lifting days. Shoot for something like 2500 cal per day, log accurately, get around 180 gm + protein per day, and do this for 4 weeks and see where you're at, then make adjustments. Don't get hung up on the day to day variations.

I'm not saying this is the only way, but it's a suggestion.

JBanx256

CaptCheerwine wrote: »

They do weekly electrical body analysis for composition, which I had not done before. I had no way of knowing what my visceral level was.

That is horribly inaccurate. Some people can use them to see trends reasonably reliably, but I would not put an ounce of faith in their readings, especially when you're talking fractions of a percentage change - chugging a bottle of water or taking a good poo will throw it off by more than that in a matter of minutes.

As someone else pointed out, even if you were juiced to the gills, there is no way you're adding 0.5-1 lb of muscle mass per week.

swimmom_1

CaptCheerwine wrote: »

I like things to make sense and I'm not very educated in this area. I've been working hard for about a year. Dropped from 247 to 224. I'm I'm trying to shake things up since I am not getting results often or regularly. My muscle mass tends to grow 1/2 to 1 lb most weeks. If I muscle workout it may drop a half a pound. My body fat percentage and visceral fat numbers rarely change more than 1% and often Remains the Same. This week for instance I lost 7 lb and .6 muscle.

My trainer is big and to Kehoe, which I was, too, until I stopped seeing results. My other team is a bigger fan of paleo. There's so much conflicting information out there and so many opinions it is hard to know what is best to shake things up. Hence, asking you folks in the Fitbit

I work with my trainer on weights for 30 minute sessions each week, to Upper and to lower alternating. I had been doing an hour of elliptical, often with a 40 pound weight vest. I mix it up with a 30-minute stationary bike ride, a one-mile swim, a 2-mile walk with steep hills, and sometimes something random I feel like doing. I will do cardio 5 or 6 times a week varying between 30 minutes to an hour. I usually get about 12,000 steps in per day and average according to Fitbit 3000 to 3200 calories daily. Resting calorie burn rate is 2200. I try to stick within three or four hundred of the number of burn calories showing on Fitbit. I tried to get 25% protein, 30% fat, and 45% carbs. I tried to eat only complex carbs and rarely come close to the 45%.

I'm just trying to figure things out and, like I said, there are so many varying opinions.

I started Keto on 5/14/21 and 1200 calorie restriction. I try to get only about 15 grams of Carbs a day. Some days I go over 1-3 grams but some days I'm under a few too. I wasn't loosing at first and questioned why on the Low Carber Forum. I was adding fats to meals to try to get the recommended daily amount in. Someone told me to not worry about the daily fat %. When I let the fat, come what may, with what I'm eating, I started to drop and now loosing about 10 lbs/month. 30 lbs since I started. It was probably too much fat for me, everyone is different, how we lose, and my body was burning my nutritional fat and not my body fat at first!

zebasschick

are you weighing everything you eat, then logging using accurate database entries? many database entries here are wrong (i find entries that either match the manufacturer info or USDA). btw, those electronic body analysis measuring devices are inaccurate; they will show you more or less fat or muscle based on hydration. i'd be concerned about going to health or fitness professionals who don't know that.

btw, if you eat less calories than you burn, and you don't have a health condition, you will lose weight. again, weigh everything. did you know that many bread slices are more than 1 serving? so are many other foods, so weighing is the only way to know...

natasor1

To get a 1 lb a week is impossible. Many body builders work hard for months to gain 0.5 lb. I think if you are new in this area, somebody really is not telling you all truth.

About your keto, ... You mention "25% protein, 30% fat, and 45% carbs," Needs to be closer to diametrically different say: 40% potein, 30-40% fat and 20-30% carbs or even less.

After 4 months flat weight, anybody would start doubting, what the heck? Time to change your macros. Try for 3 days, if you see difference, so be it

kshama2001

CaptCheerwine wrote: »

I like things to make sense and I'm not very educated in this area. I've been working hard for about a year. Dropped from 247 to 224. I'm I'm trying to shake things up since I am not getting results often or regularly. My muscle mass tends to grow 1/2 to 1 lb most weeks. If I muscle workout it may drop a half a pound. My body fat percentage and visceral fat numbers rarely change more than 1% and often Remains the Same. This week for instance I lost 7 lb and .6 muscle.

My trainer is big and to Kehoe, which I was, too, until I stopped seeing results. My other team is a bigger fan of paleo. There's so much conflicting information out there and so many opinions it is hard to know what is best to shake things up. Hence, asking you folks in the Fitbit

I work with my trainer on weights for 30 minute sessions each week, to Upper and to lower alternating. I had been doing an hour of elliptical, often with a 40 pound weight vest. I mix it up with a 30-minute stationary bike ride, a one-mile swim, a 2-mile walk with steep hills, and sometimes something random I feel like doing. I will do cardio 5 or 6 times a week varying between 30 minutes to an hour. I usually get about 12,000 steps in per day and average according to Fitbit 3000 to 3200 calories daily. Resting calorie burn rate is 2200. I try to stick within three or four hundred of the number of burn calories showing on Fitbit. I tried to get 25% protein, 30% fat, and 45% carbs. I tried to eat only complex carbs and rarely come close to the 45%.

I'm just trying to figure things out and, like I said, there are so many varying opinions.

Leaving aside the numbers from the notoriously inaccurate electrical body analysis, what did you weigh four months ago and what do you weigh now? I'm confused because you said you lost 7 pounds this week, which would mean you are not in a plateau.

Are you using a weight trending app? I weigh daily and log it into Happy Scale. Some weeks or months I feel like I am not making any progress, but the trend line and my 30 pound loss since January 2 say otherwise.

I'm against weighing weekly because more frequent data points* = faster results in the trend line.

*This is not an argument for weighing more than once per day.