My Plateau Nutrition Story, Learn from my mistakes.

HandsomeLarry

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jdcraik

Fantastic post; thanks! I saw the word "plateau" and thought, "yep, that's me." Your narrative mirrors much of my experience, and I bet others' as well. My next web stop is Amazon.com for the book. Thanks for sharing.

Linalaila

Eat more people!!

I think you'll find there are laws against eating people. :noway:

.

Haha...indeed

AnnaPixie

good work OP, will keep reading this when I'm tempted to not eat my exercise cals!! :noway:

Thanks for taking the time to explain:flowerforyou:

cowgirlslikeus86

Eat more people!!

I think you'll find there are laws against eating people. :noway:

:laugh:

wakeywildcat

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chic_mama_25

Ive only been doing this for 3 days so am very new to this.

My net for yesterday was -510.

My intake was meant to be 2080 but i cycled to and from work which burnt off 3000 calories...

Should i there for be eating more or as i have just started not worry about it at the mo?

How do you know your burning 3000 calories cycling? I began cycling over the summer and I wear a heart rate monitor almost everyday and barely ever came close to 1400 after an hour and a half of hard cycling. Not calling you a liar, so don't take offense Just saying don't rely of MFP estimates for there stuff. Want to figure it out really? Go buy this and you'll thank me every day

http://www.amazon.com/Polar-Heart-Monitor-Watch-Silver/dp/B001U0OFDC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1326397406&sr=8-1
This will help you keep track of calories burned.

Now if you truly are burning 3000 calories and you end at a net -600 you're body and it's organs are eating themselves for energy. My suggestion if you are burning 3000 calories, which i'm still very leery of, you better start eating a metric ton.

Agree. I cycle to and from work every day which is a 40min each way and total is 350cals ish each way = about 700 for the day burnt. I wore a heart rate monitor the first few times to measure it. Although now I am fitter I should probably wear it again as the calories will be less.

slim422

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mom2mozart

Thanks for sharing...

kristinkt

Eat more people!!

I think you'll find there are laws against eating people. :noway:

Was thinking the same thing. :bigsmile:

chuckle chuckle

jemmott223

Inspiring story. Thanks for sharing, I learned some valuable tips. In regards to muscle loss vs fat loss, I weigh myself weekly for the past year using "weight watchrs" scale. It shows BMi,, fat, water, bone, lbs. As my weight fluctuated over the past year up and down 1 to 4 lbs all the other measurements seem to fluctuate proportionately. I always felt that strange and that maybe the scale was not really measuring everything it claimed to measure but just changing the numbers according to your weight. Can anyone recommend a good scale that measures lbs and fat etc? Or is the weight watchers scale a accurate scale?

30yearssincebikini

I am so glad that eating more calories worked for you. Unfortunately, for me, it doesn't work. It makes me gain, even working out at the gym six days a week. I tried eating my exercise calories and when that didn't work, I tried just eating the 1200 allotted to me. Even that didn't work(in three weeks) so I started on the atkins diet three days ago and have lost four pounds. This seems to be the only thing that is working for me, so I will continue. Different things work for different people, but I am really happy that you have found what works for you.

sandimack

Thanks for posting, the farther I get and the more I think I know, I turn a new corner and there is a pile more to learn. I'm loving it!! When I read posts about eating more and eating back calories, I thought they were talking about someone else. I have now done the math and realize I NEED TO EAT MORE! I've been off track for a week but now I am excited to get back at it. Thanks you have perfect timing! :glasses:

jleWings

Bump for later

londonms

Complex carbs like grains are good to eat at night. Things like cereal (not Fruit Loops) or a granola bars are good for your body at night. Just be careful about the milk since it is harder for your body to break down. Fruits are a good snack food, but not as good at night because of their acidic content. They can give your heartburn or give you a tummy ache. So, grab some granola or nuts for protein for your body to break down overnight. Also, MFP puts a lot of stress on the midnight to midnight aspect. If you are still short on calories when you go to bed but are full, don't push it. Just eat a little extra for breakfast the next day. Maybe an extra piece of wheat toast or an extra hard boiled egg. Someone else mentioned, it's not math but chemistry.

JoanneLynn

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lilkitn

Thanks for the post! I was curious and I worked out the equation to see if MFP was figuring it out correctly for me. I was pleased to see that it was, now I really appreciate this website!

mhotch

Bump, I want to continue to follow this topic.

opalmel

Bump

CoderGal

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MissConfidence

sorry to repeat but, bump!

Starlage

Glad folks are still coming back to this thread!

FlexAppeal79

^Ditto

catbrand

Hello all! I thought I would share some of my experience from my journey to 70lbs lighter I promise there is a happy Hollywood ending.

I started in June 2011 based off a bet and a contest. I was trucking along and losing weight pretty rapidly every month. I started at 271 and found myself at 218 by November. Everyone I told about how much I lost was amazed and I was pretty excited at how quickly this was happening. I was averaging about 1200 calories a day eaten and that was WITHOUT my workouts. With workouts I was trying to keep my net calories less than 400 for the day. So technically my body only had about 400 calories of energy to rebuild all of the muscle I was tearing up doing extremely heavy lifting at the gym. I was getting frustrated that I couldn't get my racked weights to go any higher and keep in mind that I wasn't TOUCHING carbs so I had 0 fuel practically. Workouts were miserable, but I endured. If you've ever worked out legs with 0 carbs in your body you do not know what hell is.

Fast forward to end of November/December and I find myself at 205.5, 205.2, 205.5, 205.2, 206, 205. THE FREAKING SCALE wouldn't move and I was getting frustrated. I tried everything, introduce carbs back, carb load days, carb starvation days, changed my workout, muscle adaptation I thought, increased cardio, reduced cardio, increased lifting, bottom line is nothing worked. I would wake up run to the scale and 205. I'm an avid reader, OCD about the things I'm passionate about and I'm incredibly passionate about health now. I found an article by Martin Berkhan discussing calories and "one of the biggest mistakes people make is they eat too few calories while cutting." At first I was confused and thought "Ugh, what? I thought when you cut that is why it sucks because you can't eat calorie rich food." Boy was I wrong. After an email exchange back and forth I was recommended to read "Feed the Muscle, Burn the Fat" by Tom Venuto to learn the basic pillars of diet, muscles, fat, carbohydrates and overall just how our bodies work. BEST THING I EVER DID! What was I doing wrong? I WASN'T EATING! I had sent my body into a "Starvation Mode", which I never believed existed but I'm walking proof. My body was literally holding on to the little calories I gave it, burning my Lean Body Mass, cannot STRESS HOW IMPORTANT LBM IS, and hanging on to the fat to endure the long slow death my body thought I was going through.

January 1st, 2012 I decided to change my calorie goal from 1800, which it was set at, but actually EAT 1800 calories. I did this for the 1st and 2nd, woke up on the 3rd and weighed myself in the morning 204. HOLY SCHNIKEYS! I'm currently at 201 with a goal of 1Lb per week to ensure the tiniest of loss to my Lean Body Mass. Keep in mind that while you're losing weight you're going to lose LBM, but you can negate this by losing slower. The more LBM the more fat your body burns and the faster your metabolism runs. I'm still learning from Tom Venuto's book, I calculated my actual calories using Katch McArdle method and realized I should be eating about 2200 calories. I bumped up my calories and haven't looked back since. I smashed my plateau, immediately noticed my body measurements dropping pretty damn fast, body fat dropped, body responded "Holy crap Nick you're not dying, we'll get back to work burning this nasty fat immediately sir!"

Morale of the story: Eat your freaking calories, you will get stuck sooner or later. You will not be able to keep cutting calories if you only eat 400 calories. Also, if you think you're losing weight eating that little, you are, but guess what? It's muscle not fat thus creating a "Skinny Fat Person". I suggest when you weight yourself on whatever day you have scheduled keep track of your body fat rigorously ensuring that you can determine your Lean Body Mass. At one point in my LBM was 185 and as of today I'm currently sitting at 169 That's a lot of muscle burned up when it should have been fat. Don't confuse weight for fat because it may be muscle.

Nutrition recommendation: Don't rely so heavily on shakes. They're expensive and they're not nearly as filling as real food! I was drinking 3 - 4 Protein shakes everyday when I should have been eating whole food. If you have the time and you have to choose always choose whole food. The only time I really use shakes now is after a workout, before bed (casein) or if I need a little extra protein for my macros that day.

If you like my story, friend me and you can look at my nutrition diary to see what's working great for me I'm always able to help also!

Brilliant post, thought it should be repeated on the new thread.

Before Christmas I was eating all my calories, plus eating back my exercise cals and dropping weight really well, then Christmas came and I over indulged (didn't we all!) but then I started cutting back more and more calories and doing more and more exercise but losing less and less weight until I got stuck hovering around 190 for about a month (I know, not a true stall) Plus I started feeling pretty rubbish most of the time too. 3 days ago I started eating all my calories again, including exercise cals, and I feel way better and have lost 3lbs already!!

Starlage

wow your body responded quickly huh? Nice! It took mine a few weeks to a month to catch on to the increased cals thing but it's got the game now for sure!

Starlage

ok eat-more-food-friends, look at these two groups and read a few of their topics:

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/groups/home/17-women-eating-2-000-calories-per-day http://www.myfitnesspal.com/groups/home/3088-eating-for-future-you

They both advocate eating over 2000+ a day. The "future you" group uses the same calculator that was referenced on the very first page of the first part of this thread but explained to calculate the daily activity as an average of the activity over your week (so say 6 hrs sleeping weeknights, 10 hrs sleeping weekend nights = 50 hrs a week sleeping divided by seen days a week =7.1 average sleeping/resting). Anyways, I used the calculator to recalculate things thinking this way (the eating-for-future-you group explains it better than I did) it said I should be totalling (not netting) about 2330ish a day when I exercise and when I don't about 2000 a day.

I tried the calculator from the other group: http://www.health-calc.com/diet/energy-expenditure-advanced

and it also says before exercise I should be about 2300 a day

Anyways, now I'm thinking about increasing to 2,000 a day because if I'm supposed to be eating that much to maintain I figure before too long at 1600 i'll plateau again. Also I figure the closer and closer I get to my GW the more I should be increasing calories until I'm at maintainence level.....

.....anyways.... those are my toughts for the day. I'm just starting to lean closer and closer to the "eat for the person you want to be" idea meaning eat the calories you'd need to maintain your new lifestyle if you were at your goal weight and your body will naturally drift toward that number )

MissConfidence

Not sure how to do the math if I don't know body fat % let alone lean body fat... I'm trying to figure this out for my hubby.

Starlage

without knowing for sure what the BF% is, you can only get a guesstimate from online calculators... but this one wasn't far from my LBM.

http://fitness.bizcalcs.com/Calculator.asp?Calc=Lean-Body-Mass

MaynardLD50

Soooooooooooo, how's everyone doing? Still chugging along? Any burning questions out there? Almost finished reading a book on Leptin and let me tell you Leptin is absolutely fascinating. The effect that Leptin has on weight loss is pretty damn remarkable and I'm amazed that outside of Alan Aragon, Lyle McDonald and a few others Leptin goes mentioned as an afterthought.

One of these days I'll start that damn blog, just have to create time.

malindaja

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