Starvation Plateau Illustrated

Chipmaniac

I have a clear demonstration of the starvation plateau effect that I'd like to share with the community.

I decided to start getting healthy again on February 1, 2012. At that point I began to watch my diet and hit the gym. My goal was to burn at least 700 calories a day in the gym and cut out the obvious snacking and calorie dense foods I had been eating. I wasn't yet aware of MFP, though I had purchased a FitBit.

For the first twelve days, I burned from 700 - 900 calories per day at the gym in an hour of cardio usually split between the treadmill and elliptical machine. I had some early weight loss success and was buyoed by my initial results. I tend to have two speeds, 0 or 1000 MPH so it wasn't long before I got into the groove and was pushing myself harder and for longer periods of time. On the thirteenth day I decided to extend my workouts to 90 minutes which resulted in a daily burn of 1000 to 1300 calories. In addition to the increase in cardio, I began to really clamp down on my diet. I wasn't tracking how many calories I was eating but I can estimate now that it was about 1200 or so.

Around March 1 I stopped losing weight. My weight bounced back up and down a pound or two at a time in a inexplicable pattern. I couldn't figure it out. That's when I found out about MFP through the FitBit Web site. After reading lots of information I came to the somewhat unsettling conclusion that I had not been eating enough. I began to track my calories and trying to eat most of my exercise calories back. Sure enough, this broke the stalemate and my weight loss resumed. Since Februay 8th I've recorded my weight every day, on the same scale, around the same time. I input this weight into a simple statistical tracker program on my Android phone. Here is the result (with some markup by me):



The dashed line is the moving 7-day average. You can clearly see when I began to fuel my body correctly and it's interesting to note that my weight loss became more predictable as well as more consistent long-term. Count me as a convert to the MFP weight-loss rationale.

By the way, I use the same tracker program to record my daily calorie burn in the gym. I've burned over 40,000 calories since February 1! My fitness has improved leaps and bounds in this period with my resting heart rate going from 74 to 58 in that same time.

cmriverside

I'm glad you figured it out, that you have to eat to lose. Nice!!

cmsiemsen

Thank you for that great demonstration! Most people don't seem to be aware of it.