I'm stuck!!!

byestomach
byestomach Posts: 3 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I've done well tracking my calories and gradually losing 2 stone by dropping .5 to 1lb per week. I'm in no rush as this is a lifestyle change for me.
Thing is I have 7lb to go and i've hit a plateau. The scales go down one week then up the next. Ive been roughly the same weight for months now. How can I get my head back into it? Any tips to help with the last push?

Replies

  • byestomach
    byestomach Posts: 3 Member
    yes that does make sense, thank you for taking the time to reply. I'm not sure I have the willpower to eat fewer calories but I'm so close to my target weight now so I need to get my act together!
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 28,053 Member
    byestomach wrote: »
    yes that does make sense, thank you for taking the time to reply. I'm not sure I have the willpower to eat fewer calories but I'm so close to my target weight now so I need to get my act together!

    This might help with that - with only 7 pounds to go have you redone your weekly weight loss goal?

    9kjwnia17qv9.jpg

    If you've already done that, you can always get more calories by exercising more :smile:
  • callsitlikeiseeit
    callsitlikeiseeit Posts: 8,626 Member
    byestomach wrote: »
    yes that does make sense, thank you for taking the time to reply. I'm not sure I have the willpower to eat fewer calories but I'm so close to my target weight now so I need to get my act together!

    Sounds like you are eating at maintenance, if you've been hovering right around the same for a few months.

    I know you dont want to eat fewer calories, but the sad reality is, that in order to lose the rest (although for 7 pounds, I may or may not personally worry about it) and then to maintain that loss, you will have to eat a bit less. Or find a way to burn more calories, which can just make you more hungry and be a bit self defeating.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 33,748 Member
    If you'd prefer to burn more calories, keep in mind that increased exercise is one way to do it, but you can also increase daily life calorie expenditure. That's not really something you can log and eat explicitly as you would with formal exercise, but it can nudge loss rate up a little, which is an OK thing to work at if not already losing at an aggressive rate (which you aren't!).

    There's a thread here sharing ideas about ways to increase movement in daily life:

    http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10610953/neat-improvement-strategies-to-improve-weight-loss/p1

    Not all of the ideas shared there will be workable for everyone, but perhaps you can find some ideas to try.

    Also, speaking as someone who intentionally (re-) lost a few vanity pounds *ultra* slowly over a period of many months, it's hard to see the progress on the scale, because of daily fluctuations, even when slow loss is happening. (Looking backwards at my data, I was averaging a 100-150 calorie daily deficit, which is a snail's pace . . . but it's a pace - adds up to 10 pound or so over the course of a year, virtually painlessly.)

    If you aren't already using one, a weight trending app might help visualize whether slow progress is really happening. Examples are Libra for Android, Happy Scale for Apple iOS, Trendweight with a free Fitbit account (don't need a device), Weightgrapher, others. It's important to realize that these are just doing a statistically fancy rolling average to make projections - they're not a crystal ball. While I was losing slowly, even Libra thought I'd stalled for a month or more, when I was pretty I hadn't (and I was right). But most of the time, even with slow loss, it did help see a super-slow down-trend among lots of daily ups and downs that were hard to interpret without the app.

    Just a couple of thoughts. Wishing you success!
  • byestomach
    byestomach Posts: 3 Member
    Thank you so much for your replies. Theyve really helped me focus. I'm going to aim for 100 cals less per day and move more. I need small sustainable changes as I need this to be something I can live with.

    Sorry to sound stupid but if I'm eating at maintenance now, does that mean if I'm successful in losing 7lb I can go back to eating this amount of calories, or am I only at maintenance for my current weight?
  • spiriteagle99
    spiriteagle99 Posts: 3,730 Member
    You're at maintenance for your current weight. If you weigh less, you'll need fewer calories to maintain that weight.

    FWIW, several years ago, I got down to a weight I hadn't seen since high school. I was thrilled, but soon realized that maintaining that weight meant I had to eat a lot less than I was happy with. So I deliberately decided to go back to a weight that was more sustainable. I gained 10 lbs. and stayed there for a while. Then I started running more seriously and discovered that I could maintain a lower weight if I exercised more. I dropped the ten pounds and get to eat what I want. I've maintained that weight for several years now. Win win.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 33,748 Member
    byestomach wrote: »
    Thank you so much for your replies. Theyve really helped me focus. I'm going to aim for 100 cals less per day and move more. I need small sustainable changes as I need this to be something I can live with.

    Sorry to sound stupid but if I'm eating at maintenance now, does that mean if I'm successful in losing 7lb I can go back to eating this amount of calories, or am I only at maintenance for my current weight?

    Your maintenance calories technically would be estimated to be slightly fewer at a bodyweight 7 pounds lighter, but that difference is small enough that it'll tend to be lost in the noise of daily variation in logging accuracy and differing activities. (I'm not dissing your logging accuracy: I'm saying we're talking about a difference that's small enough that it's likely to be in the realm of the cumulative effect of things like one apple being sweeter than the next, or the difference between some nuts weighing just barely 14 grams vs. just not quite 15 grams, y'know? On the activity side, maybe one day you do some window shopping while you're at the mall, and another day you watch more TV instead (or whatever). This stuff is all estimates and approximations; we just try to make them as accurate as we reasonably can, usually. Inevitably, we'll be off by a few calories, but it kind of averages out over time.)

    So, quite possibly your maintenance calories will be around what you're eating now, unless something changes.

    There's no guaranteed, but some people find they can maintain a little *above* the calorie level their weight loss would lead them to expect. If you've truly been holding steady for months, that may not apply for you, but who knows? (Consider pushing the daily life activity up? 😉)

    Oversimplifying, the general mechanism behind that slightly-higher-maintenance effect is that when we're in a calorie deficit for a long time, there can be a bit of "adaptive thermogenesis", where our body does some tiny subtle adjustments like maybe slower hair growth, perhaps a fraction of a degree lower body temp, less spontaneous movement (think fidgeting and such), etc. Then, when we start eating at full maintenance and have been there for a bit, the body sort of perks up and those tiny things speed up a bit again.

    Anecdotally, it seems like some people see more of this sensitivity to reduced/increased calories than others do. There are those who use a strategy called "reverse dieting" to try to invoke or enhance the effect, try to drive their maintenance calories up a little bit. Mixed evidence about whether it works, I think.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 33,748 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    byestomach wrote: »
    Thank you so much for your replies. Theyve really helped me focus. I'm going to aim for 100 cals less per day and move more. I need small sustainable changes as I need this to be something I can live with.

    Sorry to sound stupid but if I'm eating at maintenance now, does that mean if I'm successful in losing 7lb I can go back to eating this amount of calories, or am I only at maintenance for my current weight?

    Your maintenance calories technically would be estimated to be slightly fewer at a bodyweight 7 pounds lighter, but that difference is small enough that it'll tend to be lost in the noise of daily variation in logging accuracy and differing activities. (I'm not dissing your logging accuracy: I'm saying we're talking about a difference that's small enough that it's likely to be in the realm of the cumulative effect of things like one apple being sweeter than the next, or the difference between some nuts weighing just barely 14 grams vs. just not quite 15 grams, y'know? On the activity side, maybe one day you do some window shopping while you're at the mall, and another day you watch more TV instead (or whatever). This stuff is all estimates and approximations; we just try to make them as accurate as we reasonably can, usually. Inevitably, we'll be off by a few calories, but it kind of averages out over time.)

    So, quite possibly your maintenance calories will be around what you're eating now, unless something changes.

    There's no guaranteed, but some people find they can maintain a little *above* the calorie level their weight loss would lead them to expect. If you've truly been holding steady for months, that may not apply for you, but who knows? (Consider pushing the daily life activity up? 😉)

    Oversimplifying, the general mechanism behind that slightly-higher-maintenance effect is that when we're in a calorie deficit for a long time, there can be a bit of "adaptive thermogenesis", where our body does some tiny subtle adjustments like maybe slower hair growth, perhaps a fraction of a degree lower body temp, less spontaneous movement (think fidgeting and such), etc. Then, when we start eating at full maintenance and have been there for a bit, the body sort of perks up and those tiny things speed up a bit again.

    Anecdotally, it seems like some people see more of this sensitivity to reduced/increased calories than others do. There are those who use a strategy called "reverse dieting" to try to invoke or enhance the effect, try to drive their maintenance calories up a little bit. Mixed evidence about whether it works, I think.

    ETA: For me, a TDEE calculator estimates that at sedentary, I'd burn roughly 36 more calories daily if I weighed 7 pounds more, i.e., if I weighed 132 rather than 125. There's no way my daily logging accuracy is that accurate (and I'm pretty careful), and my random household activities easily vary by more than that every day. That's what I mean by "it'd be lost in the noise".

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