seem to have hit a wall........

caseyayer wrote: »

Actually, you may want to eat more. It sounds silly, but as you lose, you have to re-evaluate your BMR. Your body burns calories more easily and you may be at a stall because you aren't eating enough and your body feels starved. I always stall at around 140 and I up my calories to 1400-1500 and lose the last bit. I am starting over now because I let life and emotions make me fat again. Good luck! You are doing great!

NO

OP Tighten your logging belt and start weighing and measuring your food again. The less you have to go, the lower that deficit is, the harder it gets. WTG on your loss!

There could be a few reasons.

I strongly disagree with the suggestion that you're over consuming. If anything, you are under consuming! I am 130-ish lbs and I eat well over 2000 cals per day, sometimes more than 3000, and I'm still losing weight and leaning out. Calorie counting is far less important than knowing what types of foods to eat and when to eat them. Maybe read a few of those "why a calories isn't a calorie" articles that are all over the internet now.

Don't forget that whatever you are eating when you get to your goal weight is pretty much how you will have to eat for the rest of your life in order to keep the weight off. If you are eating very little food you will either have to stay like that or accept that you'll gain all the weight back when you start eating like a normal person.

How long have you been eating so little? It could be that your body has adapted to compensate for that.

You say you're doing cardio too. Cardio tends to lead to fitness, fitness is the layman's term for metabolic efficiency. It could be that you are now really well adapted to carry out all your activities with very little energy expenditure (i.e. you're fit).

A combination of the two is actually most likely.

I agree that it gets harder to lose fat the closer you get to goal. It could be that you are also approaching what your body believes is it's natural set point or ideal weight.

First thing I would do is reset my hormones and metabolism by going ultra low carb (under 30g per day) for 2 weeks while eating as much protein and fat as my body asked for (I would still log everything I ate in order to watch my macros - 60-70% fat, 30-40% protein, but I wouldn't bother over calories at all), then going back to a healthy way of eating while also moving all carbs to that post workout window to maximise recovery and muscle gains after a weight session.

Get your insulin, thyroid hormones, leptin and testosterone working properly again.

I'd also focus on weights since they'll help to undo the damage that cardio does to your metabolism and your ability to "waste" energy. Muscles need lots of feeding. The better you get at weights, the more energy you burn. The better you get at cardio, the less energy you burn.

You also burn 17% more fat if you do cardio AFTER a weight session so you might want to restructure your workouts a bit if you haven't already.

Don't forget that as women our hormones can sometimes mess with the numbers on the scales and it can sometimes be best to evaluate progress on a monthly rather than weekly basis.

And lastly, plateau's aren't always a bad thing. Sometimes your body just needs a few weeks to adjust to a new composition and weight and accept that as it's new set point.

I hope you find what works for you.