Plateauing despite sufficient calorie intake?

led6777

I've been at the same weight for a few weeks and I'm becoming impatient. I have weighed myself every few days and there are small fluctuations but I attribute those to water weight. I have measured myself and I haven't lost any inches either.

I'm 5'9" and I weigh 171 lbs. I net around 1550 per day. I eat my exercise calories (approx 400-500/day) so I get to eat around 1800-2100 calories per day - thanks to fat2fit radio I know how much I need to eat. I have a few cheat days every once in a while, but nothing more than 500 or so calories over my calorie budget, which I'm sure is compensated for by my modest overestimation of how much I eat and reasonable underestimation of how much I burn.

I eat generally healthy foods, I'd say 80% natural/whole foods and 20% processed foods (although "processed" is a fairly vague term... I don't eat things like cheetos, but sometimes I do eat frozen meals and the like).

I have a bodybugg that tracks my calories burned while I work out and I believe it is accurate, but as I mentioned above, I always underestimate the amount I burn by at least 50 to 100 calories just to be safe. My workouts vary from running, dancing, weight lifting, yoga, and spinning.

I feel that I'm doing everything right. I'm eating enough, drinking water like crazy, exercising consistently, and sleeping plenty (9 hours per night). I have about 15 more pounds to lose and I'm going to go nuts if I don't start losing again soon. Please help!

em9371

You seem to be doing everything right, the only thing I can think of is to eat more fruit & veg as there is not much in your diary, and try switching up your workouts for a few weeks.
Sometimes eating a maintenance for a week can help break plateaus too x

ETA : what is your loss goal set to?
With only 15lbs to lose you shouldn't be aiming for more than 0.5 per week.

suziecue66

Don't eat back exercise calories and cycle calories. say 1500 cals daily your calorie amount multiply by 7 to get calorie amount for week. Then spread the calories over week by eating some days lower calorie other days higher calorie but adding up to the weekly amount. do interval sprints a couple times per week.

http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm

led6777

You seem to be doing everything right, the only thing I can think of is to eat more fruit & veg as there is not much in your diary, and try switching up your workouts for a few weeks.
Sometimes eating a maintenance for a week can help break plateaus too x

ETA : what is your loss goal set to?
With only 15lbs to lose you shouldn't be aiming for more than 0.5 per week.

Right now it's set to 1 lb per week. I'm scared to try 0.5 because I desperately want to achieve my goal before I leave for school in August!

trud72

rules
eat a healthy diet(veggies,fibre,fruit protein not too many carbs)ect
WATER water and more WATER
EXERSICE try to vary it and do it daily if you can! min 30 mins atime.
count the cals
dont weight weekly if you can help it
have what mfp sets for you...to lose!
and if you honesly are doing all these then your body needs time to "catch up" with the weight loss so give it time itwont be long!

led6777

Don't eat back exercise calories and cycle calories. say 1500 cals daily your calorie amount multiply by 7 to get calorie amount for week. Then spread the calories over week by eating some days lower calorie other days higher calorie but adding up to the weekly amount. do interval sprints a couple times per week.

Calorie cycling may be a great solution that I haven't thought of! Thanks

suziecue66

Don't eat back exercise calories and cycle calories. say 1500 cals daily your calorie amount multiply by 7 to get calorie amount for week. Then spread the calories over week by eating some days lower calorie other days higher calorie but adding up to the weekly amount. do interval sprints a couple times per week.

Calorie cycling may be a great solution that I haven't thought of! Thanks

here is a calculator that you can use, also works out the calorie cycling (zig-zag).
http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm

ladyraven68

I've been at the same weight for a few weeks and I'm becoming impatient. I have weighed myself every few days and there are small fluctuations but I attribute those to water weight. I have measured myself and I haven't lost any inches either.

I'm 5'9" and I weigh 171 lbs. I net around 1550 per day. I eat my exercise calories (approx 400-500/day) so I get to eat around 1800-2100 calories per day - thanks to fat2fit radio I know how much I need to eat. I have a few cheat days every once in a while, but nothing more than 500 or so calories over my calorie budget, which I'm sure is compensated for by my modest overestimation of how much I eat and reasonable underestimation of how much I burn.

I eat generally healthy foods, I'd say 80% natural/whole foods and 20% processed foods (although "processed" is a fairly vague term... I don't eat things like cheetos, but sometimes I do eat frozen meals and the like).

I have a bodybugg that tracks my calories burned while I work out and I believe it is accurate, but as I mentioned above, I always underestimate the amount I burn by at least 50 to 100 calories just to be safe. My workouts vary from running, dancing, weight lifting, yoga, and spinning.

I feel that I'm doing everything right. I'm eating enough, drinking water like crazy, exercising consistently, and sleeping plenty (9 hours per night). I have about 15 more pounds to lose and I'm going to go nuts if I don't start losing again soon. Please help!

if you are using fat2fit to work out your TDEE , it already includes exercise so you don't need to add them back in.

led6777

I've been at the same weight for a few weeks and I'm becoming impatient. I have weighed myself every few days and there are small fluctuations but I attribute those to water weight. I have measured myself and I haven't lost any inches either.

I'm 5'9" and I weigh 171 lbs. I net around 1550 per day. I eat my exercise calories (approx 400-500/day) so I get to eat around 1800-2100 calories per day - thanks to fat2fit radio I know how much I need to eat. I have a few cheat days every once in a while, but nothing more than 500 or so calories over my calorie budget, which I'm sure is compensated for by my modest overestimation of how much I eat and reasonable underestimation of how much I burn.

I eat generally healthy foods, I'd say 80% natural/whole foods and 20% processed foods (although "processed" is a fairly vague term... I don't eat things like cheetos, but sometimes I do eat frozen meals and the like).

I have a bodybugg that tracks my calories burned while I work out and I believe it is accurate, but as I mentioned above, I always underestimate the amount I burn by at least 50 to 100 calories just to be safe. My workouts vary from running, dancing, weight lifting, yoga, and spinning.

I feel that I'm doing everything right. I'm eating enough, drinking water like crazy, exercising consistently, and sleeping plenty (9 hours per night). I have about 15 more pounds to lose and I'm going to go nuts if I don't start losing again soon. Please help!

if you are using fat2fit to work out your TDEE , it already includes exercise so you don't need to add them back in.

Ah, I should have mentioned I always choose "sedentary" with calorie calculators so I can eat my exercise calories.

ladyraven68

I've been at the same weight for a few weeks and I'm becoming impatient. I have weighed myself every few days and there are small fluctuations but I attribute those to water weight. I have measured myself and I haven't lost any inches either.

I'm 5'9" and I weigh 171 lbs. I net around 1550 per day. I eat my exercise calories (approx 400-500/day) so I get to eat around 1800-2100 calories per day - thanks to fat2fit radio I know how much I need to eat. I have a few cheat days every once in a while, but nothing more than 500 or so calories over my calorie budget, which I'm sure is compensated for by my modest overestimation of how much I eat and reasonable underestimation of how much I burn.

I eat generally healthy foods, I'd say 80% natural/whole foods and 20% processed foods (although "processed" is a fairly vague term... I don't eat things like cheetos, but sometimes I do eat frozen meals and the like).

I have a bodybugg that tracks my calories burned while I work out and I believe it is accurate, but as I mentioned above, I always underestimate the amount I burn by at least 50 to 100 calories just to be safe. My workouts vary from running, dancing, weight lifting, yoga, and spinning.

I feel that I'm doing everything right. I'm eating enough, drinking water like crazy, exercising consistently, and sleeping plenty (9 hours per night). I have about 15 more pounds to lose and I'm going to go nuts if I don't start losing again soon. Please help!

if you are using fat2fit to work out your TDEE , it already includes exercise so you don't need to add them back in.

Ah, I should have mentioned I always choose "sedentary" with calorie calculators so I can eat my exercise calories.

Maybe try the other way for a while - eat at a 20% defict to your real TDEE, including exercise..

That will be naturally calorie cycling as your net will be different depending how much exrecise you do.

em9371

^^^^^ this is good advice, I do this rather than eating back exercise and it's worked well for me. Takes away the problem of if you are eating back the right amount, and naturally cycles cals without you having to mess about choosing different levels each day.

Re your goal, just try it!! Eating for 1lb is obviously not working for you or you wouldn't have made this post, so what do you have to lose?
Losing 0.5 per week is better than aiming for 1 and losing nothing :-)

Sarauk2sf

^^^^^ this is good advice, I do this rather than eating back exercise and it's worked well for me. Takes away the problem of if you are eating back the right amount, and naturally cycles cals without you having to mess about choosing different levels each day.

Re your goal, just try it!! Eating for 1lb is obviously not working for you or you wouldn't have made this post, so what do you have to lose?
Losing 0.5 per week is better than aiming for 1 and losing nothing :-)

^^this

Weekly weight loss targets are not something you should really try to force. With your remaining weight to lose, you should be at 0.5lb a week.

Or try to eat at maintenance for a couple of weeks.

love4fitnesslove4food_wechange

^^^^^ this is good advice, I do this rather than eating back exercise and it's worked well for me. Takes away the problem of if you are eating back the right amount, and naturally cycles cals without you having to mess about choosing different levels each day.

Re your goal, just try it!! Eating for 1lb is obviously not working for you or you wouldn't have made this post, so what do you have to lose?
Losing 0.5 per week is better than aiming for 1 and losing nothing :-)

^^this

Weekly weight loss targets are not something you should really try to force. With your remaining weight to lose, you should be at 0.5lb a week.

Or try to eat at maintenance for a couple of weeks.

impressive replies. some people post stupid crap. do NOT eat 1550 a day unless you want to waste away, causing your body to break down its muscle tissue for energy because you're burning 500+ calories working out and netting ~1000. That surely would result in weight loss for a while but i don't think you'd like the results.

maintenance--true maintenance--for 4-6 weeks, followed by a small deficit of 250-330 calories (1/2 pound to 2/3 pound) should result in weight loss again. Be patient--don't give in to extreme methods and know that you're doing this the right way.

led6777

Thanks ladies. I am going to change my goal to 0.5 lbs per week and try the "built-in" calorie cycling method posted above.

em9371

Good plan, hope it works for you x

heybales

Your BodyBugg / BMF already underestimated true workout calories, you lopping another 100-200 off to be safe didn't help matters.

Since you have a much better view of your TDEE, you should really just deficit from that, split the difference between BMR and TDEE, rounding the deficit up.

Confirm you'll never NET under your current BMR when you take off good estimates of exercise calories (like if you use a HRM).

And calorie cycling is obtained, and a mini-spike day, by looking at a weekly avg of your normal week that BMF reports. So look at weekly avg TDEE, take off the deficit, and that is your daily goal until your normal routine changes in a permanent way. Or adjust it weekly perhaps.
That way your NET calories does cycle, and rest days become spike days.

CaseRat

If what you're saying is true about over-estimating your caloric intake, and underestimating your calories burnt, then as the poster above me said, you're a bit out.

In my opinion, if that's the case you might not have sufficient calorie intake like you think you do..

led6777

Interesting points. I don't think I overestimate calories consumed/underestimate calories burned by a huge margin - I do just enough to account for potential error and to be on the safe side - but I agree that now that I'm close to my goal I should be much more careful about that.

I should also mention that I have been really hungry for the past week, so upping my calories is a must at this point. Now if I could just clean up my diet a little bit more I think I'd be in business.

mruntidy

I just had a read of this too and conscious as people have said don't give poor advice so with a precursor of 'this is just my opinion based on my experience'. I've always been really worried about a plateau myself and have so far fingers crossed avoided it by changing my exercise routine every four weeks or so. I found this really hard to do because I was doing what I really enjoyed in the gym and thought 'I must be losing weighrt look at the calorie readout'

So my plateua had been going consistently for probably the 8 months prior to the 1st Jan when I joined - I must admit, net calories, eating back calories, macros and the science behind the food stumps me sometimes but what worked for me was changing my exercise routine and keeping it fresh.

Brace for the flames :bigsmile:

heybales

I just had a read of this too and conscious as people have said don't give poor advice so with a precursor of 'this is just my opinion based on my experience'. I've always been really worried about a plateau myself and have so far fingers crossed avoided it by changing my exercise routine every four weeks or so. I found this really hard to do because I was doing what I really enjoyed in the gym and thought 'I must be losing weighrt look at the calorie readout'

So my plateua had been going consistently for probably the 8 months prior to the 1st Jan when I joined - I must admit, net calories, eating back calories, macros and the science behind the food stumps me sometimes but what worked for me was changing my exercise routine and keeping it fresh.

Brace for the flames :bigsmile:

Nope. Perfect sense.
If your body gets efficient at something, your HR generally will go down, and you therefore burn less calories at it.

The machine calorie count won't know that, it just knows same pace, perhaps close to same weight.

HR monitor would know, and then you could know to increase effort to keep HR the same.

But switching up machines does the same thing too, in-efficient at something new.

But if you had something you really enjoyed, just increase the pace.

led6777

I make an effort to change my workouts every day (although I log most of them as "running" simply because I'm lazy and I know the calorie count from my HRM) and still no progress

I'm glad it works for you though!