Hitting that dreadful plateau.

TattooedNici

Hello! I have some complaints about my weight loss mission. I've started the clean eating diet and was misled the first month I was doing it. I thought all I could eat was veggies/fruits, white fish and chicken breasts. No wonder I lost five pounds within a week and craving junk food! Now that I've discovered there's more to the eating than what I've listed, I've hit a pleateau, while my mother is steadily losing weight and enjoying junk food without lifting a finger towards any cardio exercises. I just started to up the ante on my work outs yesterday and doing it twice per day. I'm not sure if I'll lose the 40 lbs I packed on after giving birth, but I'm in desperate need to lose this weight. Any and all advice is welcome. Please, help!

LivingtheLeanDream

How long has your weight stalled for??
is your diary open? how many cals do you eat? any time my weight has stalled I upped my cals by 100 and that worked :-D

Just keep on going, it will come off but it takes patience

TattooedNici

Thanks for the motivation; I need that! Silly question, but what do you mean stalling calories? Right now, my set goal per day is to eat under 1,250 calories. That too, is a challenge for me. All of my life, I've struggled with having a low metabolism, as well as controlling my cravings.
I believe my diary is open; I'm very new to this site and started my profiling yesterday.

LivingtheLeanDream

I meant your plateau, how long has your weight stayed the same?

I don't think your diary is open, not that I can see anyway, if you want to make it public go into settings.

What height are you?
how much weight do you need to lose?

ps if you're doing a lot of workouts you wont be eating enough at 1250, you need to eat most of your exercise cals back - even up to half of them to account for mfp errors when they calculate the calorie burn its not overly accurate but its a good guidline.

TattooedNici

I've struggled with this plateau for almost a month. I'm 66 inches and weigh 205 lbs. My target goal is 160.

LivingtheLeanDream

ok a month is too long, you're not eating enough is my guess - up your cals by at least 100 and on the days you workout eat up to half those cals back - you could easily lose eating at 1500 - 1600 cals per day.

You can do this ok, it takes patience and expecting a loss of up to 2lbs/ week, slow and steady wins the race

TattooedNici

Thanks! You hit the nail on the head. I don't eat like I should or I skip meals. For some reason, I get into that "funk" where I don't want to eat anything, even when I'm hungry. Other than the fact my appetite severly decreases when I'm under a tremendous amount of stress, I don't see another reason why I won't eat more than 1-2 meals per day. I hate that I do this and my metabolism suffers for it.

LivingtheLeanDream

1 - 2 meals a day?? gosh I would be starving lol
I eat loads! 3 good meals with 2 snacks! theres no need to go hungry, if you're hungry ..eat your body needs fuel ok.

workout_ninja

looking at your diary, you must seriously be starving!! Get some food in you woman!! I exercise alot and I make sure I eat around 1800 calories a day and I have been losing 1-2 lbs a week.

Eat more!!!

Sunitagt

You only have 45 lbs to lose, you should be aiming for a pound a week. Go back to your settings and update it to that, and then as stated above, eat at least half of your exercise calories back, more if you have a hrm and can get more accurate burn amounts. It is really important to eat enough for your body. I'm your height and I eat at least 1800 per day, more if I go to the gym, and I am losing very steadily.

TattooedNici

My problem is I have a love and hate relationship with food. Struggling with eating disorders from both sides of the spectrum growing up, this is something I want to get rid of for good. I wouldn't say I have BDD, but I do have body image issues. I am my own worst enemy when it comes to working out/eating. Hope I'm making sense; I know this can come off as confusing or hypocritical.

LivingtheLeanDream

ahhhh eating disorders make you have a bad relationship with food - I'm not qualified to advise you on this.
Have you seeked professional help for this?
your body needs food to survive and be healthy and you need to get your head round the idea that its GOOD to eat, food is not the enemy etc.
Body issues, well most of us have those but I guess most of us can put our issues aside - focus on the good points, focus on the good things you have going on in your life

lauren3101

We can only give you so much help here. I went back through 10 days on your food diary and you have only filled out one day, and on that day, you didn't eat enough. I know logging your food can be tedious but it's the best way to see your intake and macros and therefore work out where you are going wrong.

I agree with the others, you need to eat more. As for your relationship with food, you need to see a professional about that if you aren't already.

TattooedNici

Ah, you all are right. I have seen a professional, as well as two nutritionists. The first one was very thorough and talked in layman's terms without having me feel like an imbecile. The second one didn't care whether or not her clients gained/lost weight; she was simply there to collect a paycheck and that's the impression I got from one of her open lectures. She didn't answer the questions I had, leaving me confused.
Has anyone tried the clean eating diet? If so, what's your candid thoughts on it?

Camera_BagintheUK

I was eating 1200 calories - because that's what MFP told me to eat.

No matter what I changed in my goal data, it only upped it to 1240 calories, and everywhere you look people are suggesting that's too little. I certainly found it hard.

So I searched out some other TDEE (that's Total Daily Energy Expenditure for anyone who doesn't know) calculators online, and found that different ones were telling me my calorie use a day were anything between 1800 and 2100, and I read somewhere you should be aiming for your TDEE less 20% to lose weight. So I worked out the average, deducted 20% and now I'm eating 1500 a day. In the first week, I seem to have dropped a pound after not losing anything since beginning July. Well, one week isn't much, I'm not logging it yet till I see if it's genuine loss, and that the needle is heading down again. I'm also bracing myself for a little gain first, which hurts to think about, but it'll be worth it if it means I can shift the next stone!

TattooedNici

I've started recording my exercises by minutes because I hate to estimate and be off. I've heard of people doing this with their diet and it seems to help them lose weight. Not sure if that's true but it's worth a shot, in my opinion.