Is Weight loss plateau just human miscalculation or cheating?
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Bshmerlie
Posts: 1,026 Member
Or is there any actual science behind it? I've read a lot of posts on here and people talk about reaching a plateau during their weight loss journey and that weight loss isn't linear. But if it is just about the math and CICO then shouldn't it be? Well not necessarily a line but actually a curve with a constant downward trend. The less we weigh the slower we would lose the weight as we get closer to the maintenance calorie line for whatever weight your goal is set at. But people talk about ups and downs and plateaus for several months at a time during their journey.....is there any truth to that? Or did they just miscalculate the deficit required for whatever weight they got stuck at? Now I'm not talking about the normal daily fluctuations that you see on the scale due to water retention. Or a women during certain times of the month depending upon where she is at in her cycle. We all know weight loss is going to get slower as we get lighter but taking out human error it should never stop at any point correct? Assuming we always maintain an ample deficit.
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Sometimes a plateau is caused by complacency in logging/eating/exercising.
Although CICO is the general rule there are metabolic and hormonal adaptations that take place when we enter into a calorie deficit. There is science behind that.
http://www.jissn.com/content/11/1/7
https://clinicaltrials.gov/show/NCT000991510 -
I have been losing weight for 9 months. 3 times I have hit plateaus that last 3+weeks. I know it isnt a miscalculation as I been eating at ~1000 calorie deficit and eat pretty much the same 5 recipes.. When my plateau ends I will all of a sudden lose 5+lbs in a couple days. Look up "whoosh" effect. Essentially it all has to do with water retention. So while you do lose fat, you may not lose weight until your body decides to flush the water out.
Of course it can be not logging properly as well though.0 -
Pretty much this. Whenever I've stalled in the last year or so, it will be followed by greater than expected losses which bring the overall rate of loss so close to my predicted amount of loss that it could easily be explained by rounding error on the scale, normal variance from nutritional labeling, and the fact that not every cow, pig, or strawberry is exactly like every other one.I have been losing weight for 9 months. 3 times I have hit plateaus that last 3+weeks. I know it isnt a miscalculation as I been eating at ~1000 calorie deficit and eat pretty much the same 5 recipes.. When my plateau ends I will all of a sudden lose 5+lbs in a couple days. Look up "whoosh" effect. Essentially it all has to do with water retention. So while you do lose fat, you may not lose weight until your body decides to flush the water out.
Of course it can be not logging properly as well though.
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I have been losing weight for 9 months. 3 times I have hit plateaus that last 3+weeks. I know it isnt a miscalculation as I been eating at ~1000 calorie deficit and eat pretty much the same 5 recipes.. When my plateau ends I will all of a sudden lose 5+lbs in a couple days. Look up "whoosh" effect. Essentially it all has to do with water retention. So while you do lose fat, you may not lose weight until your body decides to flush the water out.
Of course it can be not logging properly as well though.
It's not always water retention. That can play a factor for some people, but other times it is a hormonal issue that a refeed or increase in calories can fix.0 -
Eh, I stalled for three weeks. Didn't change anything during it. I was logging accurately, weighing everything precisely. Boom. It ended. Nothing changed. I wasn't feeling particularly well during that time and thought that might have been it. Then again, I wasn't feeling particularly well for a while after it ended either.
I do believe some stalls happen because of hormones and the need for refeeds, depending on the amount of time someone has been eating at a deficit, because metabolic adaptation.0 -
I think it is the long term consequences of possible errors in logging. In the beginning there is usually more of a margin of error, but as time goes on...there is maybe some more lax and there is less or a margin of a deficit.
It catches up to you and then a plateau happens. It's not hormones. There is no need for a reset or a refeed. It's looking at where you might be logging that isn't right...and fixing it on your log and boom...plateau is over.
That's how I see it.
I wonder why I fogot how to log correctly during those two weeks or so and then suddenly remembered.
I wonder if I'm logging incorrectly again. This is three days in a row at the same weight despite eating at a deficit, which usually indicates a flat part of the curve coming up.
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I think it is the long term consequences of possible errors in logging. In the beginning there is usually more of a margin of error, but as time goes on...there is maybe some more lax and there is less or a margin of a deficit.
It catches up to you and then a plateau happens. It's not hormones. There is no need for a reset or a refeed. It's looking at where you might be logging that isn't right...and fixing it on your log and boom...plateau is over.
That's how I see it.
During competition prep my calorie intake was very spot on. There were no errors and there was no getting relaxed. My weight loss stalled until my trainer added in calorie spike/leptin refeed days.0 -
I think there are exceptions that prove every rule, but I still see most people make a tweaks and changes during plateaus and then those tweaks are what make things start moving again.
I also confront the mentality that everyone experiences plateaus and it is just a part of the process. I have never experienced one in all my weight loss endeavors and I don't believe I am a special snowflake.
Not everyone experiences a plateau. People warn others of them because they can happen and that's when many people give up. A plateau is not necessarily because someone is not logging accurately and assuming that's the only reason someone stalls could cause them more frustration than necessary.
When someone stalls we should look at how long they have been dieting, how strict they have been, how accurate their logging is and what their activity is like (NEAT, exercise and recovery). Sometimes it's a matter of logging accurately and sometimes it's a matter of eating more.0 -
Nice graph Tex but if you were to exclude the center part where it raised and went to the very last point you could pretty much draw a diagonal line downward. So it could have been water retention or waterever...correct? I know as a women there is a time of month for about a week and a half period that I remain flat and then woosh...but again I could still draw downward line like in your graph. So is weight loss linear excluding human error?0
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That's why I wrote, "Whenever I've stalled in the last year or so, it will be followed by greater than expected losses which bring the overall rate of loss so close to my predicted amount of loss that it could easily be explained by rounding error on the scale, normal variance from nutritional labeling, and the fact that not every cow, pig, or strawberry is exactly like every other one."Nice graph Tex but if you were to exclude the center part where it raised and went to the very last point you could pretty much draw a diagonal line downward.
Well, when people say "not linear" they typically mean you can't draw a straight line exactly because of things like that center part of my graph.So is weight loss linear excluding human error?
IMO, over a sufficient period of time, a constant caloric deficit, accurately recorded and maintained, will look very linear if you zoom out far enough, but still look very irregular on a day-to-day, or even week-to-week, basis. Mine certainly does.
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I've stalled.. Just going to grind it out..0
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How long have you been stalled?0
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