Is this a weight-loss plateau or is it me?

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MrsMangler
MrsMangler Posts: 63 Member
in Food and Nutrition
I've been tracking my food and exercise since April 20 of this year. I don't want my weight to define my success, so I have made calorie and exercise goals for myself. However, I do want to use weight as more of an indicator of how I've been doing. If I am losing about 10 pounds a month, I figure I am on track. Since April, I have lost 25 pounds. Now I'm sort of stuck in limbo. The scale hasn't moved in 2 weeks. If anything, it's gone up about a .5 pound or so.

April 20: 236 (pounds)
May 1: 226
June 3: 216
June 21: 211

In April, my calorie goal was 1200. Now that I have lost some weight, I'm in better shape, and I'm out of school, I can exercise more. Now I average about 1500 calories a day, but I'm also a lot more active. Any suggestions for pushing past this weight plateau? Should I just keep doing what I'm doing or change some things up?

By the way, I'm 30 and 5'1" and my diary is open. Don't be too harsh, I'm human, and I track everything. Even the "bad" stuff!

Replies

  • mcarter99
    mcarter99 Posts: 1,666 Member
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    I would just keep doing what you're doing. It'll end. You've lost a lot of weight in a short time. It always slows down. If you've significantly increased your exercise, that can make it slow down more. But good things are happening that the scale can't show. It'll catch up.
  • Captain_Tightpants
    Captain_Tightpants Posts: 2,215 Member
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    25lbs is a pretty phenomenal loss, well done.

    It could be that you need to recalculate your daily calorie allowance. You've lost over 10% of your initial body weight and that's enough that your new, smaller, more efficient body is probably burning less calories to get around.

    Most weight loss progresses like this:

    Eat below TDEE --> get smaller --> TDEE gradually comes down until you are no longer eating below it --> weight loss stalls.

    Hope that helps!
  • Twiztedbeing
    Twiztedbeing Posts: 389
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    The biggest thing I noticed is that your calories a day is set at 1000 and you eat back most of the exercise calories so I think in the end you might not be eating enough. Can not say for sure but that might be one reason. If you are not doing cardio or weight training of some sort, doing so might help shock your body and push you faster past this stall as well. If you do both thats great, but I do not know what type you do. Just a few suggestions, hope this helps.

    The other thing I noticed is you tend to go over on saturated fats a lot of the days. Lowering that might helps as well seeing as those are the bad fats.
  • MrsMangler
    MrsMangler Posts: 63 Member
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    My exercise consists mostly of walking and swimming, and some hiking, pilates, and circuit training (with weights). Thanks for the encouragement! I'll pay more attention to the saturated fat, too.

    I do have my calories set at 1,000 but for a couple reasons...it's easier math for me to see net calories and actual calories. It's also a buffer for me to see when I need to slow down. (I hardly ever eat a 1,000 calories a day.) Also, it's a buffer for calories I may forget (even if I'm pretty good at tracking) or calories that are underestimated.

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