Help with 5 Month Plateau - Tried Everything

JBanx256

DeesPancakes wrote: »

What do you disagree with? Or did I misunderstand something?

I'm not the one who went clicky on "disagree" BUT someone may have been reacting to your comment about damaging the metabolism. That's not a thing. It's not a car; you can't dent, ding, or wreck it. There is such a thing as metabolic adaptation but that is absolutely NOT the same thing as claiming metabolic damage.

AnnPT77

arisilbermann wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

It would help if you told us your height, age, current weight, and the nature of your job and exercise. (Fitness trackers are more reliable guides for some activities, vs. others.)

It would help if you'd open your MFP food diary, if only for a few days, so some of the experienced folks could assess the possibility of logging issues.

(That last is not a dig: Logging is a skill set that takes practice and refinement based on experience and learning. Since you're not getting the results you expect, that's one possible source of variation, so it would be helpful to either be able to suggest refinements to you that might help your data precision, or to rule out possibilities of logging being a significant source of variation. Calorie counting is a data-driven weight management method, the log is the main data, so some precision there can be helpful, if things aren't working out as expected).

Thanks for this. I've made it public. Height 171cm, weight 99kg (started at 109), using garmin connect and fr45 and h10hrm for tracking exercise. I do mainly desk work with some teaching although it's a standing desk. I set my mfp to maintain weight and then strive for the minus calories. I run/cycle about 3 times a week for about 1 hour and then agaim for about 2 hours. Usually low intensity jogging. Some strength work and speed work.

Any insights would be great. Thanks

Thank you.

Mostly, that looks pretty good, honestly. There are a few places you could tighten up, if you want to pin down intake more precisely. Examples: If possible, I'd weigh things like rice raw; weigh the "per piece" items (bread, sausages, Costco cookie, whatever) at least a few times to confirm (some foods are persistently over the label weight, and if calorie dense that can be meaningful); separately log things like beef mince at its labeled fat content, plus any fat you fry it in (vs. the "Lean Beef Mince Pan Fried" kind of thing).

I don't see much in the way of condiments, beverages, oils/fats used for cooking, dressings: If you're not eating them that's fine; but if you are using some and want a bit more precision, log those explicitly, at least for a while. Some of us (me!) think that it's good to log every BLT (bite, lick, taste) for a while, to get a handle on personal calorie needs.

To be clear: I'm not saying everyone needs to weigh/log food with tight, compulsive precision. What I'm saying is that if one has a bit of a caloric mystery going on, doing that tight precision for a month or so can improve one's own data, make it more useful for diagnosing what's really happening in the situation. People who can fall into obsessive counting probably shouldn't go there. People who simply don't want to do it don't have to; it's just a tool that can be used, nothing more.

You've already said you'll try logging your non-logged days for a bit, IIRC, which seems like a good plan to me (but I love data unnaturally much, sometimes . . . though in a pretty pure non-emotional way 😆).

I hope others might take a look at your diary, too, see if they see things I missed. Thank you for opening it!

I think Heybales commented on issues of trusting Garmin for the exercise estimates in your case. He's the most knowledgeable guy around here on that kind of topic, so I have zero to add on that.

I will add one editorial comment: All of this nonsense is *estimates*. The base calorie goal is an estimate (average of similar people from research studies), the logged food is an estimate (one apple sweeter than the next, 20% variance in product labeling, etc.), the exercise calories are an estimate (even in the case of a tracker, as I'm sure Heybales' comments make clear) - everything.

It's really common around here to see people decide, when things aren't happening as expected, that the exercise calories are wrong. Maybe so . . . but there's also a bias to assume that, because those were the last and most suspect piece of the puzzle. It's more "scientific" IMO to consider all the pieces and the pros/cons of how we estimate them. (It's like a fun science fair project for grown-ups, in my weird world.)

I think you have a good plan to log eating more precisely for a while. Your early months, as you seem to understand, seem to suggest that either your base calorie needs are lower than the population average (possible), your exercise is overestimated (also possible, with Heybales analysis of possibilities really insightful), or there's something missing from your food intake . . . or a combination.

As an approximation process, you could stick with your current logging, believe those first month's feedback and adjust base calorie goal accordingly . . . though that's only one option.

Knowing that the estimates are all estimates is important, IMO . . . but it's also important to know (believe?) that for many/most people, they can be accurate enough to be a good guide, when applied in a practical (non-compulsive) way. Sometimes people toss baby with bathwater, think that if they can't count their apple to the last sugar gram then calorie counting is trash. Nah. Close enough can work fine, works for lots of people.

Five months is a pretty long time, but since your calorie goal seems surprisingly low, the "undereating, stress hormones, creeping water weight gain" hypothesis could be in there someplace, too. If Heybales has had an opinion about that, I'd listen to him about that, too. Meantimes, pinning down your logging accuracy may give some insight, as long as doing so doesn't make you feel anxious, obsessive, or any other negative way.

Best wishes!

AnnPT77

DeesPancakes wrote: »

What do you disagree with? Or did I misunderstand something?

I wasn't one who disagreed with you either (in terms of clicking "disagree"). But:

If OP was losing 1-2kg per month when at what was expected to be a 1000 calorie deficit (which should be a loss more like 3-4kg per month), then he probably wasn't really at a 1000 calorie deficit, for whatever reason(s) . . . especially if those were the results in an early phase of calorie restriction. (Later on, creeping cortisol/stress-related water retention could confuse scale-weight results, but that's less likely early on. Yeah, new exercise can add water weight early on and similarly confuse matters . . . but 5 weeks is a long-ish time for that to happen, unless the exercise ramps up a good bit over that period.)

Absent confounding factors (like cortisol effects from longer, extreme cuts), one's actual loss rate over a multi-week period is usually a decent-ish indication of actual effective average calorie deficit, for most people . . . better than the so-called "calculator" estimates of calorie needs, or even fitness trackers' estimates.

In that context, extreme alarm over too-deep calorie cuts seems misplaced, to me. But heck, JMO: WhadDoIKnow? I'm not a pro, just some whacky li'l ol' lady. 🤷‍♀️

arisilbermann

AnnPT77 wrote: »

DeesPancakes wrote: »

What do you disagree with? Or did I misunderstand something?

I wasn't one who disagreed with you either (in terms of clicking "disagree"). But:

If OP was losing 1-2kg per month when at what was expected to be a 1000 calorie deficit (which should be a loss more like 3-4kg per month), then he probably wasn't really at a 1000 calorie deficit, for whatever reason(s) . . . especially if those were the results in an early phase of calorie restriction. (Later on, creeping cortisol/stress-related water retention could confuse scale-weight results, but that's less likely early on. Yeah, new exercise can add water weight early on and similarly confuse matters . . . but 5 weeks is a long-ish time for that to happen, unless the exercise ramps up a good bit over that period.)

Absent confounding factors (like cortisol effects from longer, extreme cuts), one's actual loss rate over a multi-week period is usually a decent-ish indication of actual effective average calorie deficit, for most people . . . better than the so-called "calculator" estimates of calorie needs, or even fitness trackers' estimates.

In that context, extreme alarm over too-deep calorie cuts seems misplaced, to me. But heck, JMO: WhadDoIKnow? I'm not a pro, just some whacky li'l ol' lady. 🤷‍♀️

Thanks for your two posts...very helpful and I think doubling down on recording is worth a shot.