Any tips and ideas for breaking into my weight goal zone?

Reaperuu

I’m new to MFP and actually using it to track movement and calories. For some background I was weighing nearly 200lbs back in 2021 and have since lost that weight primarily through weight watchers. However, I reached a hard plateau using them and ended up stopping.

At the moment I am sitting at 155lbs give or take. The last week I went down from 157lbs after gaining some weight over the last couple of years with a goal weight on 140-145lbs. I got excited thinking I dropped down to 153lbs earlier but immediately spiked back up to 155-156lbs again. Since that initial drop I haven’t had any luck going back down.

I fear I’m still at a plateau. Tracking calories, I’m regularly around 400-500 below the 2100 I’ve been given. This also makes some wiggle room for any missed calories when tracking. I’ve been paying more attention to serving sizes and eating breakfast in the morning while also making adjustments for lower calorie options. I’m also an avid walker both at work and in my free time. It’s just frustrating and I’m so close to my goal weight.

Does anyone have any ideas on what to change up or try? I really don’t feel like making myself feel almost like I’m starving either.

Thanks in advance!

tomcustombuilder

if you haven't lost for 4-6 weeks then thats a clear sign that your weekly calories are too high. What was a deficit when you were heavier ceases to be a deficit when you get lighter. You need to lower calories if you're chasing more loss.

yirara

How are you measuring your calorie intake? For how long are you on this weight while using MFP every single day for everything that contains calories?

cmriverside

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/48809930#Comment_48809930

^^THIS.

Now that you have very little weight left to lose, accuracy is of utmost importance.

I also started at 220 and stalled out at 155. Here's what I did:

1. I ate 20 out of 21 meals per week prepared by me. I used a digital food scale set to GRAMS for everything I ate. No excuses.
2. I walked for 45 minutes on hilly terrain five out of seven days per week.
3. I stepped on the body weight scale rarely - like one or two times per week. I did log my body weight here.

Using those three points, I will say: I was often hungry. Really hungry. I didn't have that buffer of body fat and I could tell the difference. I lost 0.5 pounds per week maximum. That was as low as I could go - calories wise - without crashing.

It took me nine months to lose the last 15 pounds. It was tough. Did I mention I was hungry? 😐️

Dial in those numbers. Use a small deficit and be disciplined.

AnnPT77

Well, you don't give us your demographic info nor do you say how long you've been at a plateau; and as others have pointed out, we don't have details of how you're counting calories, whether you have days you don't log, etc. You also don't say whether you're eating 1600-1700 gross intake, or adding exercise calories to that as MFP is designed to support. You don't say where the 2100 maintenance estimate came from - MFP or elsewhere - nor do you share anything about how fast you were losing when you were losing, or how long you were eating at/around this calorie level. It's not clear whether your weight loss (at consistent calories and activity) gradually slowed to a stop, or stopped suddenly. It isn't obvious whether your activity level has increased recently, or been pretty consistent for a long time. That makes it hard to suggest anything specific, y'know?

So, pretty much what others said: Re-evaluate your calorie goal based on your current demographics, if you haven't re-evaluated recently. If you've been logging faithfully for at least 4-6 weeks, use your own data to estimate current maintenance calories. Details about how to do that are in this thread, along with alternate ways of estimating maintenance calories:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10638211/how-to-find-your-maintenance-calorie-level

If you're not using a food scale consistently, do that. If you're using other people's recipe entries from the database (like "meat lasagna" or "ham sandwich"), stop doing that and instead input what you put in your own recipe using the MFP recipe feature. Make sure all the entries you use match the package or a solid source like https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/ . You may not need to be that tight forever, but do it for 4-6 weeks so your numbers are accurate as possible.

Don't try to lose weight fast with so little to lose, either. An actual 500 calorie deficit might be a little aggressive at this point, even. (Caveat: If you're not losing for 4-6 weeks or more, there's no deficit, no matter what the calorie calculators or your fitness tracker say.)

If you've lost aggressively before this point, or been losing for a long time, gradually increasing calories might improve your energy level, but that's speculation. I know you mention 2021 and losing 45 pounds since, but it's not clear whether that was steady gradual loss up to the plateau, then a gradual slowdown to a stall, vs. bouts of losing fast with bouts of not losing between. There might be relevant information in this thread, if there were periods of aggressive loss in there:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10604863/of-refeeds-and-diet-breaks

If you have more info you'd like to share, even maybe open your diary to other MFP users temporarily so some of the old hands could take a look for any issues, we might be able to be more specific.

Best wishes!