Interesting take on stalled weight loss

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asteriskrntt
asteriskrntt Posts: 29 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Or at least a stalled scale. I am in the position where my scale hasn't moved for a few weeks but I have dropped quite a bit of size (yay me!).

So my doc says early on in the process, if you are exercising hard, you can put on significant muscle to balance off the fat loss. However, he says many people plateau for a while due to an interesting body dynamic.

Fat and the surrounding cells have almost no water in them and very little support infrastructure. So while you are burning off fat, your body is very resistant to letting go of all the fluid as some sort of anti-starvation mechanism. At some point, your body will reset and start letting go of the fluids etc and the scale will start moving.

I had never heard this concept before. Thoughts?

Aster

Replies

  • dimam13
    dimam13 Posts: 35 Member
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    Not sure about body dynamic but this is 100% correct when it comes to eating too few calories. Your body thinks you're starving and it slows burning fat for energy to consume it. What I find interesting is that I am not seeing changes but keep lifting more and keep getting comments even though I measure myself tape/scale and numbers are all the same. Was wondering what is going on.

    Might be useful to read up on diuretic foods as they deal with liquids and flushing of the system.
  • valleymum
    valleymum Posts: 33 Member
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    google "the whoosh effect" you will find this very interesting :)
  • tula1980
    tula1980 Posts: 54
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    I've lost weight like this right from the word go. 250 calorie per day deficit and eating back exercise calories. I have, the whole way through, gone periods of time with no movement what-so-ever on the scale, then suddenly drop anything between 3 and 10lb over a few days. I don't think it's linked to 'starvation' or any diet with 'too few calories' as neither are applicable to my case. I've never lost consistently. It's been no change (not even 0.2lb), no change, no change, 5lb down. No change, no change, no change, no change, no change, 10lb down. No change, no change 3lb down etc. I can go anything from 3 weeks to 14 weeks before seeing a sudden drop from no-where on the scale.

    I also find that I initially put on weight when I introduce a new exercise as my body seems to treat every single change I make, no matter how subtle, by hanging onto as much water as possible, whether in fat pockets or muscle. I think some people are just more prone to it than others, although I was very sick through my pregnancy to the point I would spend 3-4 days throwing up and unable to eat, then I'd be okay for a few days and I'd scoff everything to try and keep weight on for the baby before going through a sick patch again. I think my body has got use to periods of my not eating anything at all and dehydrating, followed by periods of binge eating to compensate. It's almost like my body is expecting to need either the water or the fat pockets to be open in case I start throwing up repeatedly or binge eating again. It could be nothing to do with it but I've always wondered whether "yo-yo/crash dieters" may be more likely to suffer this than people who lose weight properly, slowing, carefully and once rather than repeatedly losing the few lb!

    Before the pregnancy I never had this problem, in all fairness I never had a weight problem either, I was tiny without trying. So perhaps hormones are involved too!

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