Help, I'm Stuck!

monkey_2
monkey_2 Posts: 19
edited September 21 in Health and Weight Loss
So, I've been stuck at the same weight now for over a month. I've been excerising 30 minutes a day, 4 days a week, and staying close to my calorie goal (and I do eat my exercise calories), which is 1500 for 1.7 lbs/week loss. I decided today to change my goal to 1 lb/week, and now my calories are up to 1790. I have read on other posts that sometimes increasing your calories can help get out of a plateau, but I'm still a little skeptical. Does anybody have any thoughts on this, or tips for getting past a plateau?

Replies

  • mollymoo89
    mollymoo89 Posts: 202
    Try doing a different exercise. If you normally run, try a spin class. Your body will normally level off and get used to a certain exercise, by doing something different, your engaging different muscles than you normally do. Hope that helps!
  • deanamcmillan
    deanamcmillan Posts: 10
    First, Congrats on the weight loss so far!

    Here are some strategies for breaking a plateau:

    1) Increase your water consumption. You may be holding on to some water weight preventing you from seeing a loss at the scale.
    2) Double your fiber intake or take a fiber supplement. This can help remove water and other material in the colon.
    3) Increase your exercise by 15 more minutes twice a week or you could try to just walk an additional 5000 steps a day. This can be accomplished throughout the day and will easily help burn more calories and help break a plateau. A pedometer would help.

    Hope this helps and good luck.
  • amyfly
    amyfly Posts: 137
    Check out anything written by George L. Blackburn or look him up on bidmc.org. He's a metabolic and nutrition expert who done a lot of research on this and his advice REALLY helped me get through mine!
  • skinnygirlinhiding
    skinnygirlinhiding Posts: 14 Member
    Here's another thing to keep in mind. A cheat day. Yes, when you eat extra calories (occasionally, like once a week) you do two things:

    1) You send your body into a sort of confused state. It is not sure where all the extra calories are coming from and it's not used to it so it actually kick starts your body's internal furnace (metabolism) in order to compensate. The key here however is to do it OCCASIONALLY! If you do it too much, well, you know what happens there. However, I can tell you from experience ( I have a cheat day once a week and a BIG cheat day once every 30 days) that it is very effective. I have continued to lose weight since Jan. 9 of this year. I had a period where I was only losing ounces, but that counts.

    2) When you decrease calorie intake and increase exercise, your muscles' glycogen levels decrease which leads to fatigue and burnout. When you have cheat days, they usually consist of extra carbs and/or sugar and this increases the glycogen levels in the muscles, which in turn boosts energy and motivation.

    Plus, cheat days are just plain good!!!!

    Good luck and I hope that helps.
  • imarlett
    imarlett Posts: 228 Member
    Make sure you are not taking in too much sodium. I wasn't losing any weight either and I was doing all the right things. Turns out my sodium consumption was very high. I cut down on the sodium, changed up my work out routine a little and dropped another two pounds.
  • hiddensecant
    hiddensecant Posts: 2,446 Member
    When it comes to slowing down your "loss" during a plateau by increasing calories, it works! More often than not it did nudge the scale in the right direction for me. I think once I bumped up and had to bump back down before I finally saw a loss. But it was the change that shook things up.
  • disneyfetishboy
    disneyfetishboy Posts: 65 Member
    I've gone through two mini-plateaus, and done actually the opposite from those suggesting to up the calories; I made one or two day adjustments to my exercise routine.

    I usually do about 350-500 calories of exercise a day, 7 days a week (as estimated by my HRM). The times I felt I was plateauing (5 days or so of no loss), I did a major workout session of 1200-1700 calories. This usually not only restarted my weight loss, but put me back on my weight loss schedule.

    As a caution, during those sessions (2-4 hours) I had to pay special attention to hydration to make sure I didn't just lose water weight in the effort.
  • monkey_2
    monkey_2 Posts: 19
    Thanks for all the great advice everybody. I think I'm going to try a cheat day tomorrow and see what that does. I also drank more water today, so I'll try to keep that up as well. Hopefully I'll be able to get off this plateau soon.
  • doodlesll
    doodlesll Posts: 8 Member
    my doctor put me on : Green Tea Extract 1 cap twice a day. 500 mg

    and L- Carnitine fumarate 2 caps 2 times day 500 mg.

    I buy them from Vitacost.com this what the Doctor suggested. Because they are the cheapest.
    Also I wasn't eating enough calories and drinking enough water. I do water aerobics three times a week and I walk on the off days.. Hope this helps. Good job on the weight you have already lost. FYI I am loosing 11 lbs a month. Good luck, Doodlesll
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