Seem to be stuck (again)
I have never cast shade on people complaining about being stuck at a particular weight on this forum, and I never will. I've always told them: "keep on program and the weight will come off." I tell that to myself, too, but it can be amazingly hard, particularly as I'm getting older.
I'm currently stuck at a certain weight, and it ends in a zero, which makes it particularly maddening. My weight seems to skip along it like a rock on a pond, bouncing up on the weekends (when I eat more— but not that much more), and reducing during the week. But, at the end of 7 days, my net deficit is supposedly huge if you include exercise— and I never eat all of my exercise calories.
But, I have a symptom that is rather telling. Recently, when I sit still in a room, my hands get cold. I'm often tired. Also, my cooldown after exercise is amazingly fast, like about 20 minutes. If I don't put on a sweatshirt, I'm left freezing at indoor temps. What it means to me is that I'm seeing a lot of metabolic adaptation after 5 months of restricting calories. Even exercising nearly daily isn't countering it. Too bad!
Oh, snap, I just remembered that MFP has a bug where it doesn't recalculate your plan as you lose weight, you have to go into the tool, change your settings slightly, then change them back. I just did that and it reduced my plan by 80kcals/day! That's still about 80kcals higher than I get from the MstJ formula as calculated at the link below. In any case, with exercise, I've been putting up seemingly huge net deficits, but it definitely isn't creating consistent weight loss! Arrrrrg!
Thanks for reading my complaints and good luck on your own weight control journey!
Replies
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lol, you're not alone. Try not counting ANY exercise calories. Exercise can cancel out NEAT calorie burn.
Your body doesn't know numbers, it only knows if it's being given energy to either gain mass lose mass or maintain mass.
Maintaining mass=maintenance calories.
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Haha! I so feel you! My weight was stuck for a while, suddenly dropped over 1kg, then jumped up again, and of all times dropped again after an office day (I sit a lot more with legs up in home office and walk more). Weight's crazy. And I just flew today, will be back on Monday. I'm sure my weight will be doing crazy loops again.Annoyance: I do see this! I have abs! 4 of them if waterweight is not sticky. A hint of abs if it is. I'm sure it sticks between the muscles to hide them.
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Jimmy. The core cooldown and adaptation is, in my opinion, a real thing. The five months falls very close to the six month mark (see hall's research). Obviously apparent vs real deficit do not always match. Whether you term it as Tom did: neat being cannibalized by exercise. Or whether you term it like you or possibly I are: metabolic down regulation.
The question becomes how to counter or progress.
There is Tom's favourite way: drop calories.
For me there is some lack of belief that drop calories is always the correct solution.
Other options include refeeds which you may or may not be optimizing on your weekends. And diet breaks.
And. Of course. Both of them have side effects and dangers including the danger of regain if unsuccessful in keeping the situation under control.
The temporary side effect of a diet break being that you're pausing the loss effort. Though there does exist research that says that the overall speed to the end goal is not detrimentally affected if both breaks and resumption of loss are correctly implemented.
Of course one of the benefits, in addition to being able to re implement loss from a position of less adaptation, is that you get to practice maintenance which by itself may be a good thing.
Part of this, I guess, will depend on how you feel. Re the exercise you may get more "metabolic" benefit by engaging in something you're less adapted to. Then again, for me at least, efficiency or lack of efficiency and caloric burn should be secondary to performing exercise you enjoy
Anyway: roses smell good so they might as well be enjoyed when we slow down 🤷♂️ you've already got the benefit of five months of losses and consolidating them is not a terrible thing.
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You didn't ask for advice.
You and I both know that you know a lot more about this stuff than I do.
What worked for me in the past. 3 days of eating at tdee. Not adding cake and ice cream, but meat, veggies, salad, etc. Then back to it. Almost immediate loss of 2 pounds? Then back to losing more slowly.
I feel your frustration. I sympathize. I empathize. Good luck!
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Plateaus are frustrating, even when you feel like you are doing everything right, the weight loss stops! I know they are hard, it is your body trying to fight weight loss - a natural response.
I've been stuck at 240 for 2 weeks now. Sometimes changing up a routine a little - changing the muscles you use for exercise (adding more bike instead of treadmill, rower instead of elliptical) or fooling a little with the calories can help.
As much as we like to simplify weight loss as 'calories in and calories out' that is not the case. It also depends on how well you sleep, body's adaptations, etc.
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I'm sorry you're going through this, sincerely. I know you know all the routine advice, so I'm not going there.
I think you and PAV have a point, or rather complementary points.
Which leads me to wonder - without necessarily asking a question for which I expect a reply - whether you've re-read the refeeds and diet breaks thread lately.
Personally, I like to re-read the Starvation Mode - Adaptive Thermogenesis and Weight Loss one periodically, too.
All that aside, I hope you find a way to break through this temporary stall.
I know you won't fall for the "switch up exercise to confuse your body" or "your body gets used to exercise so stops burning calories" kind of nonsense. I'm surprised not much about that has been posted, TBH. 😆
Good wishes!
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I’m really glad you figured it out and were honest with yourself about the calories being the key factor, not the other stuff. That said, I just wanted to share something in case it helps: after five months of consistent effort, it’s completely okay to take a diet break if your body or mind needs it. Even if the numbers could be lower, sometimes we just need to pause and rest. It’s not a race, and I have to remind myself of that too.
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Thanks, everyone. It seems to be an aging thing— it used to be more straightforward to lose weight, although never easy. And, I'm the type that needs to do it periodically.
@AnnPT77 "I know you won't fall for the "switch up exercise to confuse your body" or "your body gets used to exercise so stops burning calories" kind of nonsense. I'm surprised not much about that has been posted, TBH. 😆"
Oh, sht, I've already fallen for that. I'm doing 16/8 fasting and some days I finish eating by 7, but cant get my lunch until 1, so it as much as 18/6. I try to get my lunch under 600kcals and then dinner might be another similar meal. I've been going on pretty vigorous workouts (an hour on the spin bike or a run) without eating many of the calories back.
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I don't diss TRE/IF, if it suits people - even though it doesn't suit me. Is TRE/IF a "confuse your body" idea? I didn't know that. I thought that it was either simply a neutral tactic that suits some people's style, or maybe something that - as some say - fits circadian/biological cycles in a more health-promoting way, or something like that? I admit, I feel some concern about it after 55-60ish, given the international Prot-Age expert study group recommendation that we spread protein through the day at that point because of risks/tendencies that we metabolize it less efficiently as we age.
I also have nothing against vigorous workouts - I do some myself - but my coaches have led me to think of high intensity as more optimally a small-dose thing in the overall fitness context, not a steady daily routine or close to that. My motivation for exercising isn't really to maximize calorie burn, though: More food is just a nice bonus.
As far as eating exercise calories or not . . . undereating is IMO a poor idea, so I think people who literally completely ignore exercise when planning calorie intake are risking under-fueling and under-performance . . . and maybe their health. However, it's loss rate that tells the story, not how the calorie accounting is done. Either the MFP method (add exercise separately) or TDEE method (average exercise into daily goal) can work fine.
Letting exercise create the deficit can be OK, too, as long as weight loss isn't overly fast (or maybe if adaptive thermogenesis seems like part of the picture). Exercise calories aren't inherently special; it's just that there are varied ways of accounting for them. Because my exercise schedule varies seasonally and with weather - let alone because of illness, injury or surgery sometimes - the MFP calorie accounting method works best for me.
As someone who's been doing mainly the same type of exercise for around 22 years now, if doing the same exercise stops burning calories because our bodies get used to it, that's truly radical news to me. My personal experience very much suggests otherwise. I think physicists would be troubled by the idea, too? That's not the same as saying I disbelieve in calorie compensation/energy compensation from overdoing, though.
Just one woman's opinions as always, though. 🤷♀️
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I am so sorry you're going through this. Thank you for both the thread, the responses you've gotten as well as your feedback: they are super useful for someone like me.
I'm sorry if this may seem like a silly question to ask, but can you tell me more (if you can) about the "cold hands" → metabolic adaptation thing if possible? Or if you could point to me to where I could find out how to deal with it?
I'm starting to have that (past week really, but I also was a little sick) while working towards and trying to figure out my maintenance and it's been annoying me.
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@NotForJustNowForever : Just search the phrase "metabolic adaptation" and you'll find tons of stuff.
What it means is pretty simple. Metabolic adaptation is a process by which your body counters caloric restriction by being more sedentary. Since I'm older, hypothyroid, and generally lazy, it's a thing for me.
The best way to counteract it is to consciously be more active. Instead of lazing on the couch watching TV all day, busy yourself with various tasks. Get a standing desk and "teeter board" (I just bought one) for your office. Basically, I've been sitting still too much, and I'm cold all the time, so my non-exercise thermogenesis (NEAT) is reduced from the average, particularly on exercise days, when I'm a bit more tired.
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@AnnPT77 : I use IF as a method to reduce intake. I think it does confuse my body!
I just went to the breakroom and there were beautiful brownies put out. I pass on them by remembering that I don't eat before noon. Hopefully, they'll be gone the next time I stop in for my afternoon tea.
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It only glancingly mentions body temperature, but I think this (link below) is the best thing here about metabolic adaptation in a weight loss context, even though it's an older thread. The mention of cold hands in this thread is because one aspect of that adaptation is body core temperature dropping a little bit, and maybe prioritizing keeping the central body warm in preference to extremities, because the organs are more important for survival. It's only one of many possible signs that adaptation may be happening, and possibly not the most potentially-injurious adaptation.
Read at least the first several posts in the thread, all by the OP of the thread. He also has outside links for some of the information. The whole thread is good, with discussion, questions and answers . . . maybe even a few arguments. But the first few posts give the central information.
The other thread I linked in a PP on this thread is about tactics to avoid adaptation kicking in.
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@Jthanmyfitnesspal Thank you! That's good to know! I was afraid that the cold hands were a sign of… something worse I guess? I'm still trying to work on that (my weight loss goal prior, and now my maintenance goal while strength training goal have always been to 'feel awesome!' however vague that goal may be! LOL). For the NEAT I'm using (meant to add it to the NEAT thread) the Drinking Games you can often find (I recently binged watched some Law & Order: SVU episodes for example. Every time Olivia Benson looked concerned I did squats or toe raises! 😅)
@AnnPT77 Thank you! Will read that! Will also really try to stick to my maintenance now. I'd already decided that I think my body needs the break from a deficit for a few months.
On IF, as a sidenote as to why it may be potentially appealing: some people say that it can also help cognitive capacities (or so I've read, and why I do it: I get paid to think very quickly and perimenopause apparently may threaten that), and the 16-18 range can help reduce excess skin naturally over time of course (also why I do it: I'd have to travel to a neighboring country to eliminate mine so I'm working on all the natural ways to reduce them).
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@notforjustnowforever : You can look at my thread about time-restricted feeding, AKA Intermittent Fasting.
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10900407/fun-with-time-restricted-feeding-trf/p1
I read the same claim you mentioned, that it increases cognition. I've been doing it for more than a year, and I don't think I've gotten any smarter. Also, in terms of "extra energy," perhaps I get a little boost in the morning where I'm eager for distractions to stave off hunger, but I also sometimes get a low after eating lunch, when I probably have a little insulin spike.
But the most interesting claim was that some people lose weight just by limiting their eating window, not tracking what they eat at all. In one study, eating was limited to just 6 hours of the day, which is very short (I would have to sprint home for dinner). So, I've been doing 7-8 hours. I can say that I did not lose any weight until I also went back to counting calories. It's all to easy to eat both breakfast and lunch at 12 as you are particularly hungry. Also, as you see 8PM arriving, it's all too easy to grab something extra to eat because it's "within the rules."
But, eating in an 8 hour window has helped me to stay within my calorie budget for one big reason: I get to eat a bigger dinner, which fully satisfies me until bedtime. I'd much rather deprive myself in the morning than in the evening!
Best of luck to you!
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And, I broke through my weight barrier today by just .2lbs. That means I have less than 5lbs to go. Let's hope this is a trend!
(As a note about my goal weight: at that weight, my BMI will be about 26. My doctor thought that, with my build, even my current weight is fine (BMI ~= 27). Of course, he sees endless patients who are obsessed with their weight, and he tries to remain neutral except in extreme cases!)
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That's great, @Jthanmyfitnesspal! Sometimes patient persistence is the main thing required. I hope you'll have smooth sailing from here.
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Oh, interesting, I emailed my doctor that I was feeling rather cold at times. He recommended I come in. I was just given another blood test looking for a few things aside from "TSH," the thyroid marker. I didn't actually expect that. Not sure what may come of it.
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Back at the same weight again today, ending in NN0.0. I feel like I'm "doing the work," but the lbs keep sticking to me. Here's my "net calories" plot for about the last two weeks. My base plan (red line) is only 1500kcals. So, my net deficit for the past two weeks has been (supposedly) well above that. (I'm a reasonably accurate logger these days.) I'm expecting to see well above a 2lb loss in this period, but I've only seen barely 2lbs off, and I'm flat since the 27th. (The 2lbs were due to a little bump around the 21st, a day where I did a longer bike ride, getting a very low net calories.)
Now, I should admit that my total loss since 1/1 is 16lbs (18 weeks). Not so bad, but so ridiculously slow compared to my younger years! And, it implies that maintenance is going to be something like 1800kcals/day (net). That's going to be tough!
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Give it 2 more weeks. At those calories you'll lose however you're probably retaining water. A high calorie day may be in order to possibly cause a whoosh a few days later.
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@tomcustombuilder : That's what I did over last weekend!
I was recovering from some dental surgery, so I didn't exercise much, and I had to eat soft food, which means "mostly carbs." But, by Sunday night, I was getting stir crazy and I took a run (more like a jog). Wow, it was a good one, setting PRs on all the segments (per Strava). So all those carbs really helped!
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Maybe 1800, but maybe not. From reading in the Maintaining Weight section here, some people do seem to be more responsive than others - in a good way - to increased calories. Reversing any adaptive thermogenesis is usually a longer term thing, if it happens at all. But some people report going to experience-estimated maintenance calories, then a month or so later starting to see the scale creep down again.
We know that calorie balance is dynamic, right? To some extent, calories in affect calories out. I don't have any research cites for this **, but anecdotally some people seem to get an energy boost fairly quickly when calories are increased, and increase NEAT without deliberate action.
** Though variation around the mean in studies of other things might hint at it.
Maybe you'll turn out to be one of the lucky ones in that dynamic adjustment way? Maybe some chance any deeper adaptive thermogenesis would reverse slowly over the long term, too.
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@AnnPT77 : You're right on the money, and there are many articles about it. One is below
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33677461/
From the abstract: As the scientific literature has continuously shown, body mass loss attempts do not always follow a linear fashion nor always go as expected even when the intervention is calculated with precise tools. One of the main reasons why this
tends to happen relies on our body’s biological drive to regain the body mass we lose to survive. This phenomenon has been
referred to as "metabolic adaptation” many times in the literature and plays a very relevant role in the management of obesity and human weight loss.The only thing about this paper is that the average person might burn <5% of their daily calories by doing a workout, whereas some of us can burn more like 20-30%. When your Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (EAT) is large enough, there's no way for the body to adapt enough to compensate for it (by lowering Non-EAT = NEAT). The paper assumes that NEAT > EAT.
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I was just about to say ‘get your thyroid checked’ when I saw you posted that you are a known hypothyroid? I would get your full thyroid screen re-checked in case this is contributing.
congrats on the progress you have made so far!1 -
@wz7zc6qx5y you're right on the money. Thyroid is weak and I'm on replacement. According to blood tests, I'm getting enough of the stuff.
I searched the community for "feeling cold" and found a number of posts about people who have lost a lot of weight feeling cold all the time. So, I'm not the only one, although I really haven't lost that much weight (8%).
I'm scared to try it, but some people swear by cold plunges. I don't know if I'd come out invigorated or 3 sheets to the wind!
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PS @wz7zc6qx5y : Welcome to the club!
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That's a really great survey paper on the subject - open access full text for free, too. Thank you for linking it. While most of those concepts IMO are common in generic advice that's frequently given here**, so the topics are familiar, and I've read some of the studies it cites (or similar ones), I don't think I've read that specific paper before.
(** In no particular order, things like preferring slow loss rates, increasing protein, increasing fiber, including exercise but not going overboard with it, including refeeds/diet breaks, paying attention to NEAT, . . . .).
I wish there were a similar survey article in less academic terminology, covering the same territory equally well. While I think this is readable/understandable by most adults, it could be an easier go if the style were aimed at a less specialist audience.
Good stuff!
ETA PS/afterthought: Are you saying that people here on MFP - a fair number of them? - burn 20-30% of TDEE as EAT? That surprises me, at least considered net of energy compensation (loosely, fatigue effects from overdoing). Some might, but it seems unusual. When I think about what I'd need to do to achieve that, for me it wouldn't be sustainable physically/logistically, and would throw off good life balance. I know we're all different: I'm just trying to explain why 20-30% surprises me. It's super approximate, but out of curiosity, I asked Garmin Connect to tell me how many calories I'd recorded in exercise over the last 365 days, which came out to an average of just 182 calories daily. It's maybe been on the low side this past year (I won't belabor why), but that's roughly 8% of estimated current TDEE for me.
2nd ETA/PS/afterthought: I guess I hadn't really thought about it, but it did surprise me to see them present TEF as a bigger factor (as a percent of TDEE) than EAT for typical people. I always think of TEF as fairly minor, but I guess even if TEF's sometimes a larger fraction of TDEE than EAT, TEF is harder to manipulate without screwing up other important stuff (like nutrition 😉). EAT's pretty flexible, within limitations of energy compensation and good life balance as practical issues.
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Jimmy don't forget that you ARE more efficient than your average cat.
This is NOT a bad thing because it means that you CAN actually perform the "work"! At levels which would be impossible for someone else, such as myself, who is untrained!
And you can actually perform this amount of more intense "work" at a LESS subjective cost and with less of an impact on your NEAT later in the day than the aforementioned untrained and inefficient "me".
This is in direct reference to your percentage of NEAT vs EXERCISE percentage for a day.
…. cross checking with AI's… (I did NOT double check any of her sources, not her propensity to hallucinate what they state because, hey, she agreed with what I was thinking anyway! ;-))
The total caloric output of a cyclist during a one-hour indoor exercise session is not entirely captured by a power meter, as individual metabolic efficiency influences energy expenditure. Here's the breakdown:
Gross Efficiency (GE) Differences
- GE = (Mechanical Power Output / Metabolic Energy Input) × 100 23.
- Trained cyclists typically have higher GE (~20-25%) compared to untrained riders (~15-20%)27.
- A less efficient rider expends more metabolic energy to produce the same mechanical power.
Variability in Gross Efficiency
Studies show GE varies significantly between cyclists due to factors like muscle fiber composition, pedaling technique, and fitness27. For example:- In trained cyclists, GE explained 26-34% of power output variance during time trials2.
- Individualized GE calculations reduced energy expenditure estimation errors by up to 11% compared to group averages37.
Impact on Caloric Expenditure
- Two riders producing 200W for 1 hour will both register 720 kcal via the power meter (200W × 1h × 3.6)5.
- However, a rider with 20% GE burns 900 kcal metabolically (720 / 0.2), while a rider with 25% GE burns 720 kcal (720 / 0.25)56.
- This aligns with findings that GE directly affects metabolic cost37.
Conclusion
- Power meters measure mechanical output, not total metabolic expenditure.
- An inefficient rider burns more calories for the same power output due to lower GE.
- Peer-reviewed studies237 confirm individualized GE is critical for accurate energy expenditure estimates, supporting the view that efficiency impacts total caloric burn.
For precise calorie tracking, power meters should be combined with individualized efficiency testing37
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[^2]: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/43673/1/Jobson et al 2012 efficiency and cycling performance.pdf
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BTW, as a fellow hypothyroid: In the article you linked, the info about weight loss effects on T3/T4 encouraged me to look up whether I had that data in the online medical records. Unfortunately, I only had T4 in one recent interest, so will need to go back through filed paper results here at home if I want to learn more. I'm one whose TSH didn't change with meaningful weight loss, but I don't know about T3/T4.
FWIW: I don't know what your TSH is, but I'm grateful to have a PCP with a "treat the patient, not the numbers" philosophy. I've been hypo since at least late 2016, have always felt best down around the lower border of the normal range, and have zero hyper symptoms there. Most recent result - last week - was 0.604 UIU/ML, with a reference range of 0.350-5.500. It's been below the lower bound 3 times since May 2019 without problems, and the highest was 2.660, which may've been when I asked to experiment with dropping the levothyroxine dose a bit, don't recall for sure. Only one other time since 2019 was it above 1.
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Without disputing your reasoning or evidence here, I'd consider the range of 720-900 calories for an hour of exercise - at 200W cycling - to be a quite moderate estimating variability, compared to the options we have for estimating other exercise activities. 😆 And I'm saying that as a happy "estimate exercise calories separately" practitioner. Close enough for gubmint work, eh? 🤣
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