Hopeless Loser

viglet · October 2013

I guess my reason for posting is to get this off my chest but also to see if anyone has any positive input into my situation.

I have been losing weight since July 2012. I have always gone by the mfp calculations and on some days ate back my workout cals and other I didn’t. I would usually eat much more on weekends so I guess my weekly net was always in a “healthy” range.

For the last month, I have been reading a lot about tdee and such and have been trying to incorporate that. A spreadsheet I used posted on the forums said I should be eating around 1650 a day. But I gathered some of the data from the last year and it really isn’t much different from what I have been doing for most months.

August Net 1323
Lost 5lbs

September Net 1322
Lost 2 lbs

October Net 1373
Lost 2 lbs

I use a polar hrm to measure my workouts. I measure all my food when at home (digital scales/measuring cups). I must admit I have a weakness for eating out once a week, but when I do, I try and log the one with the highest calorie count so I’m not under estimating. I have just started to look at macros in the past few weeks (which honesty I haven't mastered). I don’t have a gym membership and don’t have much space at home so I focus mostly on cardio (elliptical and fitnessblender videos, kettlebell, hand weights).

Most people are telling me to wait it out, but it has been three weeks without a drop in the scale.
I feel like I have been pretty successful at this until now.

TLDR -body ... y u no lose weight?

inferiormeatsack · October 2013

Plateaus occur, they can happen for a number of reasons. Too much salt, too much water not enough salt or water. The body has so many biological processes going on it is hard o perfectly balance everything. I have heard people talk about refeeding, where you go over your calories deliberately for a short period of time and than back to normal and after a week you weigh again. I have had people say to use the tape measure instead of the scale or progress pictures, one of my friends had a 6 month plateau once he was within 20-30 lbs of his ideal weight and he broke it after months with intermediate fasting. I have also heard that if you drink alcohol you should stop, even if it is within your calorie limit and also eliminating sugars or balancing sugar and fiber as certain sugars store at high % than others.

I cannot really say what is the best way, just keep your head up and stick to a plan that is healthy and that you can realistically follow long term, switch up your routine as far as cardio and weights as much as you can try walking while doing lounges outside for example. There are many different combinations and not a single one of them is necessarily better or worse, when you commit to something like this you have to make a long-term change or many of them and it looks as though you already have. Keep it up and keep adjusting.

Good luck to you! If you want to add me as a friend I would be honored to help support and motivate you!

MinnieInMaine · October 2013

Ha! I like your tl;dr

Are you using any other ways to measure your success? If you haven't started taking body measurements and/or progress pics, I would strongly encourage you to start that now. I went through a period where I was losing weight very slowly but thanks to body measurement check ins every couple of months, I found out in that time that I also lost about 10 inches off my waist! Sometimes the progress just doesn't show up on the scale but it will in other ways. Maybe you've noticed certain pairs of pants are looser?

Are you weighing and measuring your food?

Anything else changed recently like maybe you've increased the intensity (time, pace, amount of weight, etc) with your exercises? If so, you could be retaining water as part of the natural healing process for the muscle tissue.

I looked back in your diary and it looks like you may actually come out as undereating on average over the week. You tend to have one overage on the weekend but only by a few hundred calories and then 2 or 3 days durign the week where you don't eat back 300-500 calories from your exercise. It's possible this is creating too much of a deficit.

Which leads me to my next point. If you're following the TDEE-% method, at least in the way I understand it, this technically should include your exercise so you wouldn't eat those calories back - but you're still tracking your exercise calories so maybe you set it up with just a sedentary TDEE?

MIght help to provide your numbers (height, weight, age) and activity level (about how many hours per week) and maybe someone else could help confirm your BMR/TDEE number for you?

But yeah, ultimately it may just be a matter of patience. We all go through these lulls... They suck but, this too shall pass.

Lizzy622 · October 2013

Try getting a handle on your macros. I upper my protein to 25% and decreased my carbs to 45% and it has made a difference. I don't do TDEE because I would not exercise the way I should. By not getting the calories until I exercise it keeps me honest.

viglet · October 2013

Ha! I like your tl;dr

Are you using any other ways to measure your success? If you haven't started taking body measurements and/or progress pics, I would strongly encourage you to start that now. I went through a period where I was losing weight very slowly but thanks to body measurement check ins every couple of months, I found out in that time that I also lost about 10 inches off my waist! Sometimes the progress just doesn't show up on the scale but it will in other ways. Maybe you've noticed certain pairs of pants are looser?

Are you weighing and measuring your food?

Anything else changed recently like maybe you've increased the intensity (time, pace, amount of weight, etc) with your exercises? If so, you could be retaining water as part of the natural healing process for the muscle tissue.

I looked back in your diary and it looks like you may actually come out as undereating on average over the week. You tend to have one overage on the weekend but only by a few hundred calories and then 2 or 3 days durign the week where you don't eat back 300-500 calories from your exercise. It's possible this is creating too much of a deficit.

Which leads me to my next point. If you're following the TDEE-% method, at least in the way I understand it, this technically should include your exercise so you wouldn't eat those calories back - but you're still tracking your exercise calories so maybe you set it up with just a sedentary TDEE?

MIght help to provide your numbers (height, weight, age) and activity level (about how many hours per week) and maybe someone else could help confirm your BMR/TDEE number for you?

But yeah, ultimately it may just be a matter of patience. We all go through these lulls... They suck but, this too shall pass.

Thanks for your reply. I do weight and measure my food about 90% of the time. I even keep measuring cups at work so I don't slip up there either.

And the only difficulty I find with the tdee method is that my workouts change weekly. Some weeks I will do 6 hours and others I will only do 4 hours. I used this spread sheet I found on the forums > https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Amt7QBR9-c6MdGVTbGswLUUzUHNVVUlNSW9wZWloeUE

I put that I work out 4 hours just to be safe.

And I did take measurements at the begining of the month so I am hoping to re-measure this Friday. I just feel that being so far away from my goal, it is hard to look at only measurements.

Hopeless Loser

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