The Dreaded Plateau

ellekaytexas

Hi all! Just joined this site today as a way to keep closer track of my calories and exercise! I hit the major stall/plateau last April and just cant shake it!!! I was doing a program called Medifast and dropped 40 pounds! Felt great and then one day last April, the scale just flat out stopped moving. I lose and gain the same 3 to 4 pounds but can't break past it! Ugh! Was hoping by tracking it better, I might be able to figure out what's going on.

I can't believe MFP is suggesting I eat about 1700 calories per day. I ate so much less on Medifast. Worries me that bumping that high will make me automatically GAIN weight, but hopefully not. Anyone had a similar experience?

We will see what happens I guess! Here's to an interesting 2012!! Cheers!

maryjay51

im so used to plateaus that they do not bother me any more.. i just realize that its time to make changes and that usually is what works..

yesiamaduck

Maybe the site was suggesting too few calories and your body finally went into starvation mode because it had less excess fat to get energy from? How many calories a day were you eating?

fakeplastictree

1700 sounds about right. try it for about a month and see how it works. I was at 1200 and plateaued for awhile. went to 1400 and dropped 12 lbs.

ctroxell2011

Cut out carbs for a week and don't eat your exercise. See what happens and tweak it from there. Good luck!!! And welcome!!

ninerbuff

Hi all! Just joined this site today as a way to keep closer track of my calories and exercise! I hit the major stall/plateau last April and just cant shake it!!! I was doing a program called Medifast and dropped 40 pounds! Felt great and then one day last April, the scale just flat out stopped moving. I lose and gain the same 3 to 4 pounds but can't break past it! Ugh! Was hoping by tracking it better, I might be able to figure out what's going on.

I can't believe MFP is suggesting I eat about 1700 calories per day. I ate so much less on Medifast. Worries me that bumping that high will make me automatically GAIN weight, but hopefully not. Anyone had a similar experience?

We will see what happens I guess! Here's to an interesting 2012!! Cheers!

Dieting alone will cause a plateau. Dieting alone LOWERS metabolism which is why even at calorie deficit, you may not lose weight.
Stop the madness. Hit the weights and lift heavy and hard. You WILL raise your metabolic rate and burn off more fat.

A.C.E. Certified Personal Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 28+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

heybales

Several places for inaccuracies that if they all go one direction, could have your calorie goals higher than they should be.
Now, I'm not advocating killing your metabolism by eating 500 under your BMR. Which is the other reason for not seeing advancement.

But it could be your BMR estimate by MFP is wrong.
Which means your calculated maintenance calories based on that is wrong, and if the wrong activity level, even more wrong.
And then your exercise calories could be way off if not using a decent HRM estimate.

So suggestion:
Confirm your BMR using another respected formula, which requires bodyfat % and is more accurate.
Get a better estimate of daily activity for the maintenance calories.
Do your math for weight loss to get your daily calories.
Update MFP.
Figure out if exercise calories is way off.

Here is site for getting your body-fat %. May not be super accurate, but the estimate is good enough for use in calculations.
The plus here is, you record these measurements in MFP as additional things to track and see positive progress.

http://www.fat2fitradio.com/tools/cbbf/

Take the results over to here after noting them.

http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/CalRequire.html

Change height to BF in the calculator, and the Katch-McArdle formula is used for BMR.
Do NOT include exercise in the levels and time of activity, because you'll still enter that into MFP and it will credit you, but really thing about your normal average daily activity levels and time outside exercise.
Now you have a better BMR figure (keep that in mind because you should not eat below that ever) and more importantly, maintenance calories.

Now do the math from those maintenance calories just like MFP does on it's estimate.
500 cal/day is 1lb week. Add 250 to that figure depending on being realistic. Even 10% of maintenance is recommended sometimes.
So take that calorie figure from the maintenance calories - and there is your goal calories.
This should NOT be below your BMR figure. You should never eat below what your body requires for basic life, unless you just want to slow your metabolism down and make weight loss harder.
If it is lower, your goal calories can be your BMR, but you would be better served sticking to 10% in that case.

Now you can enter that figure in MFP Goals manually. Don't worry about the figures on the right now, but may be interesting to see how it compares to that formula.

Now go to Enter Weight, and Add additional measurements for what you took for the body fat %.

Now eat back those exercise calories, and use a cheap HRM to get some sort of decent estimate.

Do this all over again in a month. And progress beyond the scale can be seen now too.

Example here. (30 yr old female, 180 lbs, desk job - not me)
Body fat% calculated - 32%
8 hrs resting, 15 very light, 1 light
BMR - 1572
Maintenance - 2162
Goal weight loss weekly - 1lb, 3500 calories, 500/day
Goal calories - 2162-500= 1662 daily (just above BMR, so would have been unrealistic to attempt 2lb/weekly).

Any exercise gets logged, and manually corrected by HRM estimate of calorie burn.
Extra food eaten is snack before and after workouts that are balanced carb/protein, with extra protein afterwords.
Want to feed that muscle, since that is what will help it grow, and burn fat 24hrs a day.

ellekaytexas

Will do, thanks!!

ninerbuff

Hi all! Just joined this site today as a way to keep closer track of my calories and exercise! I hit the major stall/plateau last April and just cant shake it!!! I was doing a program called Medifast and dropped 40 pounds! Felt great and then one day last April, the scale just flat out stopped moving. I lose and gain the same 3 to 4 pounds but can't break past it! Ugh! Was hoping by tracking it better, I might be able to figure out what's going on.

I can't believe MFP is suggesting I eat about 1700 calories per day. I ate so much less on Medifast. Worries me that bumping that high will make me automatically GAIN weight, but hopefully not. Anyone had a similar experience?

We will see what happens I guess! Here's to an interesting 2012!! Cheers!

Diets don't work. They lower your metabolism. Try the old fashion way of eating right and exercising.

A.C.E. Certified Personal Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 28+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

folmar

I lost 40 pounds in 5 months like clock work then for the past 2 or 3 months I was at a plateau that I thought I'd never get out of but I kept tracking calories and going to the gym and just the past week or so I broke through to a 50 pound total weight loss. So I was losing at a rate of 8 pounds a month and then went flat for 2 months and then lost about 8 pounds again. So hang in there on the plateaus. It may take 2 or 3 months but it will eventually break for you..