Still losing, but not trying!

SteveO390

Ok, this might sound like I'm trying to brag or something but that is NOT the case AT ALL! Allow me to explain, I am a 36yr old man 5'10" tall and back in February I weighed 180lbs, not fat but not where I believed my ideal weight was so I started a modest training program using an Xbox Kinect game 30 minutes a day, three days a week and lost about 10lbs. Then I discovered the myfitnesspal app for my Android phone and started keeping track of what I ate religiously (my diary is public BTW in case you want to glance at it) and lost another 10lbs, so by June/July I was where I wanted to be, floating between 156 and 159 depending on the day.

I might be getting a little paranoid and jumping the gun here but in the last three days I've made a couple of changes to my daily "diet" (I used that word only to define what I eat during the day, not because I consider myself ON a diet) which amounted to ADDING more calories in the form of a lean protein shake with my toast and peanut butter with my morning snack and another one with my almonds and raisins with my afternoon snack and I have dropped TWO MORE POUNDS and as of this morning I now weigh 154.5.

If I am to gain weight at this point I want it to be muscle, I don't want to stop working out and eating more or eating less healthy just to add fat to my body. I'm hoping there's a trainer or nutritionist reading this who might be able to point me in the right direction here. Should I just up my workouts? Will that cause my body to start growing muscle weight? Is my metabolism so fast now that I have to add even MORE calories in order to allow my muscles to grow or will my body start to store it as fat because it'll be too much excess?

Someone please give me a little guidance.

rileysowner

I'm not a trainer or nutritionist, but if the weigh loss continues it would tend to make me think you are still in a calorie deficit based on you activity. However, a one off drop of 2 pounds could simple those fluctuations that are part of how bodies function.

RoanneRed

I've had something similar in the past when I've decided that I can ease up as I'm happy with the weight I'm at but then the last couple of kilos drops off over a few weeks without me really trying - my sense is that there's a 'tipping point' in terms of muscle mass and metabolic rate so even though I've dropped 1 workout a week I still lose. I'd guess just slightly tweaking your calories every few days to work out exactly where maintenance is for you - I'm assuming you've changed your MFP goals to not wanting to lose any more weight.

ATT949

My take on this is? You are jumping the gun and you are within a normal range of body weight.

I went through the same thing back in July when I stopped losing and went into "maintenance". Since then I've ranged from a high of 201 to a low of 190.

Weigh daily and chart it — you're looking for trends, not events.

I plot my stats (almost) every day:

http://cbeinfo.net/weight.htm


Insofar as gaining pounds of muscle - it ain't easy. I came across an article a few months ago (don't have the link) about an study as Penn where they tracked a group of college athletes/body builders. They estimated the theoretical max of 24 pounds in a year but the best they got was one fellow at 18 pounds in a year.