Stuck on Weight Plateau

RiseWayward

I've been working extra hard the past week or so to shift what look to be reallyyyyyy unrelenting pounds!!! by now - given that i'm exercising a lot aaaand under my calorie goal daily its driving me a bit mad -why have i stopped loosing??!
Has any one else been stuck on a plateau? and if so what did you do/how long did it take to resume weight loss? any advice would be greatly appreciated!xxx

i_love_vinegar

you aren't supposed to go under your calorie goal...when you exercise, you are supposed to eat most of your exercise calories.

At your height, there is no reason to be under your calorie goal (except maybe by around 100 calories).

Make sure you are drinking enough water and getting protein too. I wasn't getting enough protein, which I believe caused me to hit a plateau. Last night I finally caved and ate chicken and hard boiled eggs, and lost .5 pounds.

dlafarga

I would suggest zig zagging your daily calorie intake for a couple weeks. For example, if you normally eat about 1200 cal a day then for a week aim for about 1000 then the next week aim for 1400 or 1500. Then go back down to 1200 caories a day.
You can add on to your exercise and change things up a bit. Try something new. Run up stairs/bleachers, hike, jump rope, run in intervals, etc.
Your body has you all figured out so you need to change things up a bit and I guarantee you'll continue to lose weight!

RiseWayward

hiii!
well i happened to have dropped 0.6 of a lb over night so all is not lost! i did change my routine today though, instead of the normal gym workout i got a good hour and 15 mins swimming hopefully ill continue to see a budge in these vicious few pounds! thanks for the advice!, i hope your journeys are going well xxxx

pepper396

I have been working out like a mad woman. I burn close to 1000 cals sometimes on machines.... this week, I am tired and not burning as many calories. I took a break yesterday. My scale will not budge out of the 140 zone. I do see my results in clothes and such so not too worried however I would like to see a difference on the scale. What are some things that I can do???

lin7604

i too haven't budged in 1 month now.. stuck at 133. i don't know why i am so stuck on this...why is it so hard!

Cmh1211

when ur body reaches a plateau it usualy means ur body has gotten used to ur workout routine. ex: if i run for 5 minutes every day, eventually my body will take that 5 minutes as a warm up. in other words, the more fit u get the harder u need to work to continue to achieve ur goal. i know it sucks but that is the law of life. nothing is easy. also, i tend to add more water to my diet when my weight loss doesnt budge. another thing u can try, as mentioned above, is change ur routine completely. if u used to run a mile and swim for 15 minutes, start running for 15 minutes then jump in the pool and swim a mile. hope this helps.


when i lost 130lbs, i went from running a mile to running 12 miles a day just because i refused to give up on running and try something else. i love to run but suggest to do the opposite of me.

STrooper

My weight loss has not been constant and has been defined by a series of plateaus. It started as a pound per week for a few weeks and then just flattened. My plateaus last anywhere from 4-8 weeks and then all of a sudden down 2-4 pounds. Largest single week drop was 5 pounds after weeks at a constant weight. I can't explain it but I think in the long term now.

I've gotten off the weigh every day trap. Minimum of once per week, maximum of twice (Sunday morning weekly, Sunday morning/ Wednesday evening when I do twice per week).

I started monitoring food intake last September. My weight was on the 190-192 pound plateau all the way through the beginning of 2012. Part of that was including some strength training and that concerns me less. What has been clear is that to people who don't see me but once per month, even when I'm on the plateau, they think I've lost more weight (I call it "losing the bubble wrap").

I'm now down to 184. Maybe part of it is closer tracking of my food intake (now that I'm using MFP) or maybe part of that has been bumping up my walking program by 10 percent from last year's goal (which I met). Anyway, I'm expecting another plateau because that's what I've found for my body.

Finally, I wished that I had a full set of measurements throughout my weight loss. Even when my weight loss flattened, my body shape was changing (as evidenced by the way my clothes didn't fit any longer). As my ex-wife told me last summer, I needed to stop wearing my dad's clothes (referring to the way we used to dress-up as children). However, I know that I've gone from a place where a 42-inch waist pant to a 34 inch waist pant (and even they are just a a touch "baggy." Jacket sizes of 48-50 inches now are too loose.

So, stick with it. If you aren't in starvation mode and you are burning more calories than you are taking in, the weight must eventually come off. As you lose the weight it will become progressively harder to lose the weight if everything remains equal simply because you aren't hauling around all that extra weight.

As an aside, I periodically place enough weight in a backpack to represent the weight I've lost just to remind myself of how much I used to haul around. It's pretty remarkable. But then again, I've been at this since 2008.