Plateau. Hoping for some advice.

Celtic_Ace

Weight loss is purely biological chemistry. If you eat less calories than you burn, you will lose weight. Contrary, if you eat more calories than you burn you will gain weight. This of course is also looking at your weight over a period of time as your weight can fluctuate +/- 3 pounds due to hydration. I always weigh myself at the same time (1st thing in morning) and I look at the weight loss using a 5 day rolling average. I also closely watch my measurements. Neck, waist, hips, and chest.

A true plateau in weight is really just your body telling you that your caloric intake requirements have changed. You are no longer consuming less than you burn. IMHO, you need to drop the caloric intake by 10%. Run with that for a month and reassess.

Increasing caloric intake when you are currently not losing will surely just make you gain.

Edit: Metabolic changes only account for up to 5% change in metabolism. So starvation mode just gets you losing less quickly but still losing more than at a higher caloric diet. Bigger concern is damage to health when eating too few calories.

heybales

Weight loss is purely biological chemistry. If you eat less calories than you burn, you will lose weight. Contrary, if you eat more calories than you burn you will gain weight. This of course is also looking at your weight over a period of time as your weight can fluctuate +/- 3 pounds due to hydration. I always weigh myself at the same time (1st thing in morning) and I look at the weight loss using a 5 day rolling average. I also closely watch my measurements. Neck, waist, hips, and chest.

A true plateau in weight is really just your body telling you that your caloric intake requirements have changed. You are no longer consuming less than you burn. IMHO, you need to drop the caloric intake by 10%. Run with that for a month and reassess.

Increasing caloric intake when you are currently not losing will surely just make you gain.

Edit: Metabolic changes only account for up to 5% change in metabolism. So starvation mode just gets you losing less quickly but still losing more than at a higher caloric diet. Bigger concern is damage to health when eating too few calories.

Incorrect regarding the potential change to metabolism, and extent of the damage if you keep pressing it.
By applying your method of only going down from wherever you happen to be stalled, you could make it a whole lot worse, and make recovery take a whole lot longer.

Interesting research in this thread pointed out.

First few posts spell out many of the studies and results that are being found with abuse of the body with typical eat a whole lot less and exercise a whole lot more scenario.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1077746-starvation-mode-adaptive-thermogenesis-and-weight-loss

“Maintenance of a 10% or greater reduction in body weight in lean or obese individuals is accompanied by an approximate 20%-25% decline in 24-hour energy expenditure. This decrease in weight maintenance calories is 10–15% below what is predicted solely on the basis of alterations in fat and lean mass. Thus, a formerly obese individual will require ~300–400 fewer calories per day to maintain the same body weight and physical activity level as a never-obese individual of the same body weight and composition. Studies of individuals successful at sustaining weight loss indicate that reduced weight maintenance requires long-term lifestyle alterations. The necessity for these long-term changes is consistent with the observation that the reduction in twenty four hour energy expenditure (TEE) persists in subjects who have sustained weight loss for extended periods of time (6 months – 7 years) in circumstances of enforced caloric restriction in the biosphere 2 project, bariatric surgery and lifestyle modification.”

But even at that reduced muscle mass state and therefore expected slower metabolism compared to someone else your age, weight, height - your metabolism is STILL lower than would be expected for that LBM.

Eating more can also unstress the body, get hormones set back right, body willing to release energy stores, increase LBM and metabolism, and prepare you for now taking a reasonable deficit.
Sadly for far too many, just slowly raising calories by a mere 150 say doesn't cut it. Some luck out, and that is enough to unstress the body and the loss continues, and they get to keep eating at higher levels.

sunshyncatra

Increasing caloric intake when you are currently not losing will surely just make you gain.

That isn't always the case. MFP had me at below my BMR, and I ultimately stalled for over a month. I increased my calories and started losing again.

Celtic_Ace

I understand that this is what you believed happened but its physically impossible. What most likely has happened is that you are looking at daily weight fluctuations. Your body is a machine. A wonderfully designed machine. It uses energy and we feed it energy by eating. Metabolism only slows down weight loss by decreasing the energy used as a reaction to its circumstances. Healthy weight loss is a gradual caloric deficit induced long term reaction. 2400 calories needed less 1200 calories eaten equals 1200 calories removed from storage (fat) to stay in balance. Its quite common to over estimate your bodies daily energy requirements which in turn throws off all of your numbers. You can not starve yourself into not losing weight! As some people suggest. But be warned, if you do drop below +/- 1200 calories a day, you are risking health issues at the cost of losing weight.

Edit: There is no such thing as a STALL......

Again, IMHO