Am I getting over my plateau?

contingencyplan

Okay this is going to sound CONFUSING...

I've been on a weight loss kick since mid 2009 and I've lost a lot of weigh since then, like in the neighborhood of ~115 lbs. I got down to 217 lbs from 335 when I decided to shift my training focus to one aimed more on muscle building than fat loss with a lot of heavy lifting. I pretty much abandoned any form of cardio other than 15-20 minutes a day of jump rope (and that wasn't even every day) and started steadily using creatine. After about 2-3 months of doing this I was up by about 10 lbs which I'm pretty sure was mostly water retention from the creatine. After spending a couple months or so frozen at ~225 lbs or so I decided to go back to adding a lot of cardio into my training plan and sure enough the weight started going back down, but not by very much. For a good long while I would not drop below 220 despite combining lots of cardio and heavy lifting. Beginning a few weeks ago I ditched the weight lifting for bodyweight training (calisthenics) using a suspension trainer and the weight started going back down again. Bear in mind I'm still taking the creatine. I'm down to 218 now.

What did it? And what does this mean? Is this fat I'm burning? Getting rid of excess water somehow? Losing muscle?

contingencyplan

anyone?

SarahE1092

Have you changed any of your eating habits? Like eating back all of your exercise calories? OR maybe you stopped that. I think it may be something with your diet.

contingencyplan

If anything I've been more strict about the diet lately.

wackyfunster

Are your lifts going up? Lifts going up + weight staying the same = trading fat for muscle, which is awesome.
Try using measurements instead of weight, as a novice lifter can put on quite a bit of muscle while still dropping fat.
You can always drop your calorie intake, but as long as you're putting on a ton of muscle, I'd stick with it. Fat loss is obscenely easy compared with putting on muscle, and if you put in more muscle now, you'll look better when you drop the rest of the fat.

If lifts aren't really going up, decrease calories. Make sure you get a minimum of 2.5-3g protein/lb. lean body mass (or just 1g/lb of body weight if you want an easier 'rule of thumb').

contingencyplan

Honestly I can't say whether or not my lifts have been going up since I switched weight training for bodyweight training. I can say that the exercises I can do have been getting easier. I don't struggle with chinups like I used to.