month long plateau..help!!!

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sc10985
sc10985 Posts: 347 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I've hit a plateau and it's driving me nuts! I was steadily losing 1-2 lbs a week for about 2 months and now nothing. I was doing the 30ds 5 days a week with additional cardio a few days a wk. I need a break from Jillian so I've just been jogging 30-40 mins on the treadmill and doing some strength moves I picked up from the dvd. Usually about 30mins of abs, arms, legs. I know I need heavier weights but that can't be the only issue right? My diary is open. Please be nice I do have a sweet tooth lol.

Oh and I am 5'1" cw 145 sw 158.

Replies

  • SideSteel
    SideSteel Posts: 11,068 Member
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    Do you own a food scale and do you accurately record and track everything?

    Read this:

    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/872212-you-re-probably-eating-more-than-you-think
  • sc10985
    sc10985 Posts: 347 Member
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    Do you own a food scale and do you accurately record and track everything?

    Read this:

    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/872212-you-re-probably-eating-more-than-you-think

    I don't have a food scale so I do kinda estimate there, but I do measure everything else and portion things out. And I track everything 99.9% of the time. There was one day when we had family over and we had a cookout and it just got out of hand and I lost track lol.
  • bullsfan22
    bullsfan22 Posts: 104
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    So after a couple weeks of stalling out I found what worked for me. This does not mean this will work for you but you could try.

    Change is sometimes what the body needs to see some results, what I ended up doing was cutting a bit more in calories, I stuck to a normal 1500 calorie diet eating 100% of exercise calories back. Good results as my ticker shows, then when the stall hit I ate only half my exercise calories and generally on rest days stayed around 1350/1500 range. Then following week 2 pound loss. I have heard people do the opposite and go more calories but this didn't work for me.

    It is all based on the individual, good luck conquering this and be proud when you do, it is awesome to start seeing it moving again.
  • SideSteel
    SideSteel Posts: 11,068 Member
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    Do you own a food scale and do you accurately record and track everything?

    Read this:

    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/872212-you-re-probably-eating-more-than-you-think

    I don't have a food scale so I do kinda estimate there, but I do measure everything else and portion things out. And I track everything 99.9% of the time. There was one day when we had family over and we had a cookout and it just got out of hand and I lost track lol.

    I would do one of the following:

    1) Get a food scale ASAP and use it. You will be very surprised how big of a difference this makes in accuracy. There is a very good chance that you are simply over-estimating.

    2) Reduce caloric intake by 10%.


    I would do 1) if I were you.
  • alison590
    alison590 Posts: 61
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    I had a plateau that lasted months. It wasn't until I stopped having cheat days and cheat meals, cut out the alcohol and got serious about lifting that the scale started moving. Also you should measure! Some weeks I lose nothing on the scale but see changes in my measurements.
  • mklassy123
    mklassy123 Posts: 153
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    I agree about the food scale. I got myself a food scale a couple of months ago and it made a huge difference. It really is close to impossible to tell the weight of things just by sight. I proved this to my boyfriend just by weighing two chicken breasts and he was shocked at the difference in weight of the two, and how much more they weighed than he thought. Needless to say, he now uses a kitchen scale as well. By not knowing the weight of food and just guestimating, you can be eating hundreds more calories a day than you realize.
  • SpazQ
    SpazQ Posts: 104
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    Study after study says this:

    People underestimate their calories by 50%
    People overestimate their activity by 50%

    From Lyle McDonald at BodyRecomposition.com

    Get a scale and measure. :)
  • sc10985
    sc10985 Posts: 347 Member
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    Thanks everyone. I will get a scale asap!
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,867 Member
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    When I hit my plateau I was pretty convinced that I was "doing everything right" and that my body must just be turning tides on me. Turns out, after 6 months or so of logging and dieting and being very strict about it, I had gotten a bit lazy...I was having a little nibble here and a little nibble there..failing to weigh and measure (especially calorie dense stuff) and was generally just consuming a bit more than I thought I was which really slowed my progress.

    I was only at a 500 calorie per day deficit to lose 1 Lb per week...once I really got hardcore about logging again, I found that, on average, I was eating about 350 calories more than I thought I was...this pretty much consisted of a handful of nuts or trail mix here that didn't get logged...or my kid didn't eat his last bite of quiche and I didn't want it to go to waste there...or just a little handful of my kid's goldfish crackers here and there. It wasn't much, but it added up and pretty much eliminated my deficit. Once I got on track, I easily lost my last 10 Lbs to goal.

    Been maintaining a couple of months now and just started another cut to get down from 19/20% BF to 15% BF...this will be much slower than my previous and will have a much smaller deficit, requiring me to be very vigilant in my logging. I'm willing to cut myself a little slack this go around because I'm at a healthy BF% currently and just doing this last little bit for vanity reasons. I figure with all of my inconsistencies, it'll probably take me until October of November to lose about 10 Lbs.
  • mizzie1980
    mizzie1980 Posts: 379 Member
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    Add me to the food scale group. I've tested this myself about a year ago with cereal. The box said one serving was something like 1/2 a cup or 85 grams. Well, I measured half a cup then dumped it on my food scale and it came out to more than 100 grams! Ok, 15 grams one way or another isn't going to amount to much, but over time, several meals a day? Yeah, it adds up. And you can find a perfectly serviceable food scale at Target or Walmart for around $20.

    I'd also like to recommend a heart rate monitor. They are a little more pricey ($80 for a lower end Polar), but WELL worth it. Just be sure to get one that has the chest strap, they are more accurate. Polar is a really good brand, I love mine. With these two things, you can be sure you are tracking your calories accurately.

    That said, plateaus do just happen. I am *FINALLY* out of my 5 month plateau. Seriously, five whole flipping months! Drove me up a wall, but I knew I was doing the right things, I just had to push through it.

    You can try changing up your exercise routine, or varying your calories (for example, if you aim for 1600 per day, eat 1800 one day then 1400 the next, just average out to the 1600 over the week). Sometimes that can help. Eat different foods, not the same things every day. But just don't give up, your body is going through changes, it just doesn't always show on the scale. In those five months, my body really tightened up and my clothes started getting really loose.
  • sc10985
    sc10985 Posts: 347 Member
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    Bump!
  • SideSteel
    SideSteel Posts: 11,068 Member
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    Bump!

    At the risk of sounding like an arrogant douchecarrot, I think you should get and use your food scale with no other changes for two weeks. At that point, if your plateau isn't broken, make an intake reduction by 10%.

    Changing a bunch of things at once isn't a good plan. Get your intake dialed in with tracking improvements/food scale and leave everything else as is so you can make direct conclusions.

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