Muscle Building or Plateau?

Not really, almost certainly your calories in and out are nearly identical. Have you revised your calorie burn estimates for being 20lbs lighter? You will burn fewer calories per unit of work since you are bolo get hauling that extra weight around. And your margins will be smaller when it comes to counting your calories in and out, I suggest a thorough review of your procedures and identify some areas where you might tighten up the math.

Oh, and congrats on the loss the looks and feeling great! Whatever number you do or don't hit those things matter.

Yes, if you've lost 20 pounds (yay) you've also unfortunately lowered the number of calories your body needs, which means you should eat less than you did when you were 20 pounds heavier (boo.)

You've maybe built some muscle, but probably not enough to really interfere with your weight loss. I'd suggest adjusting your calorie limit and making sure you're logging accurately. Also, if you're eating back your exercise calories and you're using the MFP burn estimates, you may be eating back more than you burn. Also, since you're pretty small, the MFP estimates of how much you burn from exercise could be pretty far off. I'd re-evaluate my daily calorie goal, logging accuracy and exercise calories and see how my body responds.

Best of luck!

"Should have lost at least a pound or so". That's your answer there. Your body from time to time retains water due to differences in carbohydrate intake, post workout inflammation, post dehydration episode, excess sodium, relative lack of pottassium plus a bazillion other reasons. At times my body retains 7 pounds of water, even more after drinking alcohol, which means that if I was losing fat at your rate of 1 pound per 3 weeks, then theoretically the scales should show a "plateau" for 21 weeks even when the weight loss is constant!

Ever look at the "plateau busting" strategies? Things such as fasting, drinking tonnes of water or doing a massive endurance session seem to be common themes. Why? Because they are ways to release the retained water.

Sometimes I go up to 3 weeks showing no loss on the scale when I am in fact losing 3.3 pounds a week of fat, week in, week out. Then all of a sudden I wake up one morning, cannot help visiting the bathroom all day, and I am 10 pounds lighter by the next morning! When tracked on a graph and averaged it is perfect linear fat loss, just with many peaks and troughs.

Look, I don't know that this is exactly your problem, but I'd wager it is. Keep going, and don't stress or get demotivated if you don't lose for a while or even gain some, eventually you'll wake up one day and your body will dump the retained water.

My belief is that retained water is the culprit in most dieting regimes "plateauing" and the dieter losing focus and belief and giving up altogether. Just give it time, it could take over a month.

thefabulousone89 wrote: »

Is it possible that my weight is plateauing from gaining some muscle just from just doing yoga / plates / the elliptical for 6 months?

No.

ndj1979 wrote: »

arditarose wrote: »

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10111267/it-is-probably-not-muscle/p1

you reping me???

Yeah brah

Focus on the fact your showing up doing whatever everyday.... Your already way ahead of the curve. Rejoice in what you've achieved, pay less attention to the scale. Keep changing it up and watch your body sculpt itself before your eyes. Your problem is a good problem to have.