Plateau, Calorie creep, Food Scales & HRM - I WIN!

wffolkes

After hitting a plateau for 3 weeks I reviewed my food diary, I am an avid reader of www.buillean.com which has fantastic article based on hitting a plateau.

http://www.builtlean.com/2012/05/22/weight-loss-plateau/

It says 70% of the time a plateau is down to the calorie creep. I invested in a digital food scale and stopped eating back my exercise burn as well as cutting out some snacks (some healthy some not) which crept in to my diet.

I also started wearing a heart rate monitor to get a better idea of calorie burn doing circuit training & Hi Intensity running as well as jogging. I understand it may not be the most accurate but I not only used the heart rate monitor but a formula entering the key factors of Sex, weight, time training average heart rate etc to check or give me a better idea.

What I have found is that I was underestimating calories I was eating as some food weighed more than I thought my excercise calories were about right surprisingly.

I found that was eating anywhere between 200 - 350 more calories than I thought.

I broke through my plateau and now have a better idea of how many calories im eating, I am not weighing/measuring every single thing I eat however doing so for a short period gives me a better visual idea of the quantity im eating as well as the calories.

carolyn000000

Thanks for sharing, I am going to go get a food scale tomorrow. I hit a plateau too. Hopefully it will help me get back on track. I am also going to read the article you mention.

Thanks!

Francl27

Yeah I can see that happening! I eat less calories than I should because I know I'm probably miscalculating some things... still at a plateau though.

CristinaL1983

Congratulations! That is awesome! I preemptively got myself a food scale a couple weeks ago it was the best $25 dollars I have spent in a while. I was overestimating almost everything (except potatoes and oats) and now have 'extra' calories.

buildingdreams

Thanks for sharing!!

wffolkes

Glad my post could help...

myofibril

Excellent post.

Total win.

CrazyTrackLady

Not to play devil's advocate here, but I also had a plateau. Instead of cutting calories, I UPPED my calories and LOWERED my exercise. I did this for three days and experienced a 2 lb loss.

I've heard several people have experienced weight loss by doing this. It doesn't seem possible, but apparently it works.

caroleannlight

Thanks for sharing and well done for getting back on track. I think the key is reassess if and when things are not working work out whats wrong and fix it. good luck everyone

stella1314

thank you so much for shearing, i will definetely read this article and will try all suggestions
plateus are a *****!

jontay81

"The dietitians underreported their energy intake obtained from the food records by an average of 223 +/- 116 kcal/day, which was not different from their energy expenditure. Participants in the control group, as hypothesized, significantly underreported their energy intake (429 +/- 142 kcal/day, P < .05)."


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12396160