3rd month of a plateau

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  • brimin101
    brimin101 Posts: 31 Member
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    I personally would recommend eating more for a few weeks and see if that helps.
    Find out your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) add calories burned from exercise and you'll have pretty close to your maintenance level. Adjust your macros too: your protein seems extremely low (.75-1g per pound body weight), at least 30% of total calories should come from fat, and the rest can be carbs.
    Once you have that number try and hit it daily for a few weeks, convince your body it's not starving. If you maintain weight or go up after a few weeks at that level try taking away about 100cals for a couple weeks. Aim to lose .5-1 lb of weight per week. 2-4 lbs a month.
    Also, don't forget to give your body cheat days/meals every 5-10 days where you go over your calories again to convince the body not to store calories and instead use them.
    You don't want to adjust calories and gym time to break your plateau because then you won't know what actually started the loss again. That's my two cents
  • Wilhellmina
    Wilhellmina Posts: 757 Member
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    I had a plateau as well for quite a long time. What helped me breaking through is eating between 8 AM and 5 PM, eating from a smaller plate, chewing my food properly, so I feel when I am full and know when to stop eating, adding fish oil to my diet, eating most of my carbs in the morning around my workouts, increasing the proteins. Not really rocket science, but it worked for me.

    I eat between 1400 and 1600 by the way. To me 1200 looks quite low.
  • Phaedra2014
    Phaedra2014 Posts: 1,254 Member
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    Increase your intake by 200 cals bringing your net up to 1400 - 1450. Do it every day for 2 weeks and collect data.
  • LMatherly1968
    LMatherly1968 Posts: 1
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    Maybe try some floor work for exercise, basic sit ups, lunges, etc even yoga. The change in exercises uses different muscles and can help break out of the 'routine'. I have also found that having a cheat day maybe once per week is helpful, too. And by cheating, I am simply adding 500-750 calories with healthy choices like hummus and chips, cheese, organic stuff.

    Don't give up! Just change what you are doing, work different muscles, and enjoy a healthy snack! Keep up the great work!
  • STrooper
    STrooper Posts: 659 Member
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    Although I am a much older male, I shared some of the similarities you discuss (though my calorie intake was much higher than yours, my eventual target loss was one pound per week). Now to be clear I didn't monitor food intake precisely (that came later), so all my loss was slight changes in food intake (I gave up sugar carbonated drinks, downsized some of my meals slightly, etc.)and mostly exercise. Ultimately, I dropped from 250 to 190. But once I got there, getting down to my target weight of 175 seemed impossible. I basically stayed between 186 and 190 for a year.

    Now, the good news is that for the year, my measurements changed fairly dramatically. My waist, hips and chest all shrunk by about 4 inches each.

    After a year at the same weight, I finally did a step change in my activity level as well as really accurate calorie count. I did eat back my exercise calories to keep the 1 pound per week drop. It went more slowly than that. But, 11 months later I reached my ultimate target weight and switched to maintenance. Even then my weight continued to fall to a low of 165. Since I've taken on marathon training (and have already run my first marathon, preparing for my second), my weight has stayed very steady between 167-170 (running 3-4 days a week).

    Hang in there and know that measurements sometimes are more important than weight simply because the muscle and fat structures can and will change pretty dramatically with the sort of levels of weight change we are talking about.
  • snowflake954
    snowflake954 Posts: 8,399 Member
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    1 hour of breaststroke gives me 760 calories burned---how do you get as high as 900?
  • WrenTheCoffeeAddict
    WrenTheCoffeeAddict Posts: 148 Member
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    Hi Snowflake;
    Sometimes I do an hour and a half, sorry, should have been more precise. :)
  • TwelveSticks
    TwelveSticks Posts: 288 Member
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    Most of the good advice has already been given, but I'll reiterate...

    If you're happy that you're counting / logging accurately, then a big plateau like this can only mean one of two things - you're either eating too much, or you're eating too little (this is the surprising one to most people).

    Given what you've said, I agree that what you need to do is diligently eat back (some of) your exercise calories. Your base of around 1200 may be too low as well.

    Last year, my weight loss was slowing week on week and I realised it was because I was gradually exercising more and more, yet I wasn't eating back my exercise calories. I started eating them back (2/3rds of them anyway - to allow for over-estimates), and my weight loss resumed.

    I'd suggest that you definitely eat back 2/3rds of your exercise calories as a starting point. I'd be inclined to up your base daily goal to more like 1400-1500 as well, to be honest, but that will depend on your level of confidence! Try it for a couple of weeks - be strict - and see if it starts to move in the right direction again for you...
  • chani8
    chani8 Posts: 946 Member
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    When i hit a plateau, I dropped my calories to BMR for a few weeks and that kicked it loose.

    Did you know you need to recalculate your calorie deficit after every 10 pounds you lose? You've lost a lot already, so it could be that for your current height/weight ratio, you're not longer eating at a deficit when you eat 1250 cals. I am short 5'2" and 44yo and there were times that I had to eat as low as 1050 to get a good deficit. So maybe recalculate your numbers.

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