Stagnant

luiv28

I have been using MFP for over 6 months. I lost 50 pounds going from 195 to 145. I want to hit my goal which is 130lbs. For some reason it has been hard to achieve this lately. I have been 145lbs for over 4 weeks. I wonder if anyone else has been in this position and could share some advice. I probably should be exercising more because my focus has been mostly on diet due to a busy schedule.

csplatt

Are you eating the same number of calories that worked for the original loss, or have you adjusted it down?

cmriverside

It was easy(ish) for me to lose the first 50.

The last 15 took me nine months. NINE.

..and I had to log every bite, exercise for an hour five days a week and in general be pretty disciplined. I fixed all my own meals so I could log them accurately. I quit drinking alcohol. I was careful to get good balanced nutrition. . .and I was hungry a lot of the time.

Keep going. The end part is worth it, but it isn't easy.

pony4us

Why don't you "test drive" maintenance at your goal of 130 for a week or two. You will still lose and consider it a diet break. I did this to help decide on a goal weight, turns out I was miserable at my original goal and changed it up. I stayed at goal maintenace calories to lose the last five pounds. This made maintenance easy.

tomcustombuilder

Go get a 50 pound backpack and walk around with it all day. You’ll begin to see how much more energy it takes to lug around that 50 pounds so you need to drop your calories by 100 to 200 a day to continue to lose however, the leaner you get the slower, you wanna take it

yirara

Someone has to crunch the numbers...

So you lost 50lbs in about 6 months. You didn't have too much to lose to start with. Yet you somehow managed to have a daily calorie deficit of nearly 1000kcal. That's massive! That's also a lot of stress on your body. Relax, you lost a lot faster than you should have. Give your body some time to relax and de-stress. With so little to lose, it will take time to get to goal. The last few pounds really are the slowest because a smaller body needs less calories, and hence your calorie deficit is smaller.

FibroHiker

Those last few pounds may take some time. I went from 185 to 130 in 2007-2008 when I was in my 30s. The last ten pounds took 6 months. There were times when I only lost 1 pound in a month.

Things that helped me at that time:

I only weighed myself on one day per month and then compared myself to the previous month. This helped me to focus on the desired end result more than the yo-yo of the scale with my monthly hormone cycles etc.

I focused on really maintaining my habits. If my goal was to run three times per week I made sure that happened. I also made sure that I stuck to my calorie goals. No more treats here and there, just laser focus on maintaining the plan I designed for myself.

I also let go of time constraints I put on myself. They say a goal without a plan and a due date is just a wish, but weight loss in middle age can be really frustrating. When we put due dates on ourselves to lose a certain amount of weight by a certain date and then don't meet that goal, it is devastating. I was focused on developing habits for my life and also wanted to lose the last ten pounds. I actually gave myself a year to do it, but ended up acheiving it within 6 months.

rileysowner

My experience is that the last 10 pounds or so is very slow to come off. I figure a big part of it is I am basically in the healthy weight range so there will be more push back from my body. I have went to the maintenance calories for my goal weight, and figure I will get there eventually. I also started to pay more attention to other things like measurements changing. It is a slow measure of progress, but it does work.