Post 140lbs. Weight Loss Nutrition Help/Guidance

NLud4118

Hello Everyone,

A little background information about myself; I’m a 27 year old female who has recently gone through a weight loss “transformation”. Between 2011-2012, I dropped a little over 140lbs (going from 300+ down to my current 150lbs.) through changing my diet and working with a personal trainer. I’ve managed to maintain that weigh loss for another year and a half, which is great, but where I’m stuck is that during that time I’ve been trying to lose a little extra (maybe another 15lbs or so) and develop some muscle. Now, I know the scale isn’t everything so numbers wise I’m not really too tied down by that, but my reason for posting on the forums is, I’ve been working my butt off since I got down to my currently weight and have made little to no progress, muscle gains, definition, since then… I’ll post my workouts, food intake, and others stats below.

My concern and current issue is, during my major weight loss, the first thing I did was started watching what I ate, tracking my caloric intake/exercise, and started eating better like adding proteins shakes, watching portion control, eliminating processed sugars, etc. Doing what I THOUGHT was the right thing to do at the time, I managed to cut my caloric intake down to an EXTREMLY low amount of food each day (for example I would net –calories). I have since learned that wasn’t the best or right thing to do and have since started focusing on my macros more (50/30/20, P/C/F) and have added more calories to my diet. Right now, I KNOW I’m still extremely low on my intake and I was wondering if this could be the reason why I haven’t seen any further changes.

I’ve read about reverse dieting from a number of sources but I wanted to ask some more experienced people their thoughts and opinions before I do anything else. Here are my current statistics:

Age: 27
Height: 5’ 7”
Weight: 150 average (flux +/- 2lbs.)
Job: Sedentary (office)
Training: Currently doing P90X3
Average Calorie Burn: 350-450 per 30 min work out (using HRM)
BMI: 23.5
Body Fat: 24% (would like to get down to 18%)

On average I only consume around 1000 per day but from what I’ve been reading I need at least 1200-1500. Any suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated. Being at a plateau for almost 2 years has been very frustrating and I know it’s time to make a change to get the results that I want.

Thank you in advance for your help