Plateau or what? I need suggestions
whatthehellamidoing
Posts: 22 Member
Hi guys how are you?
Im 5.3 ft 26 yr old female. and I weighed 101 kilos at the start of May, 2015. Till the end of May 2015 I just ate the regular 1200 cals + no exercise ( i weigh each and every ingredient of my meal) and i got down to 96 kilos (Might have been water weight) . After that I upped my intake to 1400- 1600 after joining this group as it made sense and tbh i really felt that i need to eat more because i wasnt able to exercise only on 1200 cals. I started working out 4-6 days a week, mostly dvd workout. I used heybales famous sheet to calculate my numbers. Since June 1, I am juggling between 96 and 95 kilos of weight. Now It seems like i have hit a plateau, but so soon? I mean i still have loads to lose, is it okay? Also, since june 19 its the month of ramadan and I am fasting but i try and eat 1400 cals in usually 3 meals. Also, reading through web i found out that my body may be retaining water since its really hot here and i do exercise during fast, so i tried losing this water weight by consuming more than 2 litres of my usual intake. But I still dint see any loss weight wise. Any ideas? and any tips on breaking plateaus and what worked for you? I do take measurements monthly and per measurements i have lost around almost 10 inches overall till 21 June.
Thanks alot for you time guys
Im 5.3 ft 26 yr old female. and I weighed 101 kilos at the start of May, 2015. Till the end of May 2015 I just ate the regular 1200 cals + no exercise ( i weigh each and every ingredient of my meal) and i got down to 96 kilos (Might have been water weight) . After that I upped my intake to 1400- 1600 after joining this group as it made sense and tbh i really felt that i need to eat more because i wasnt able to exercise only on 1200 cals. I started working out 4-6 days a week, mostly dvd workout. I used heybales famous sheet to calculate my numbers. Since June 1, I am juggling between 96 and 95 kilos of weight. Now It seems like i have hit a plateau, but so soon? I mean i still have loads to lose, is it okay? Also, since june 19 its the month of ramadan and I am fasting but i try and eat 1400 cals in usually 3 meals. Also, reading through web i found out that my body may be retaining water since its really hot here and i do exercise during fast, so i tried losing this water weight by consuming more than 2 litres of my usual intake. But I still dint see any loss weight wise. Any ideas? and any tips on breaking plateaus and what worked for you? I do take measurements monthly and per measurements i have lost around almost 10 inches overall till 21 June.
Thanks alot for you time guys
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Replies
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As a woman, you need a month at minimum to discern what may actually be going on, as your metabolism does indeed change through 4 weeks.
So doing Intermittent Fasting (IF) just in the evening hours, not too bad.
But what intensity of exercise in that fasted state during the day when it's hot?
That easily could be additional stress you don't need for now.
So was the Weight Loss spreadsheet the one for estimating your TDEE?
And where you honest with daily time activities over and above a sedentary desk job?
There is another spreadsheet I did for this group specifically, that makes it a tad easier to include non-exercise daily life, though not as many choices for exercise levels.
Did you use that one perhaps - Just my TDEE and deficit please?
Have your workouts increased in intensity despite outside in heat?
You can't lose that water weight - the body wants it in response to your workouts.
That's not the kind of weight you want to lose anyway.
That's false weight loss - not fat weight loss.
False weight loss may look good on the scale - but the minute you eat more it's back.
If you enjoy mind trips that are discouraging, my all means rely on false weight loss - but most are tired of them and recognize them for what they are - meaningless.
Same as water weight gains.0 -
As a woman, you need a month at minimum to discern what may actually be going on, as your metabolism does indeed change through 4 weeks.
So doing Intermittent Fasting (IF) just in the evening hours, not too bad.
But what intensity of exercise in that fasted state during the day when it's hot?
That easily could be additional stress you don't need for now.
So was the Weight Loss spreadsheet the one for estimating your TDEE?
And where you honest with daily time activities over and above a sedentary desk job?
There is another spreadsheet I did for this group specifically, that makes it a tad easier to include non-exercise daily life, though not as many choices for exercise levels.
Did you use that one perhaps - Just my TDEE and deficit please?
Have your workouts increased in intensity despite outside in heat?
You can't lose that water weight - the body wants it in response to your workouts.
That's not the kind of weight you want to lose anyway.
That's false weight loss - not fat weight loss.
False weight loss may look good on the scale - but the minute you eat more it's back.
If you enjoy mind trips that are discouraging, my all means rely on false weight loss - but most are tired of them and recognize them for what they are - meaningless.
Same as water weight gains.
hey @heybales im sorry im replying so late. Its been a month, and i havent lost a single pound.
About fasting, i have to keep fasts for next 15 days as well.
Exercise, oo i was pushing hard...i mean for a person who was a couch potato, i was very active (okay not so much). I was doing house cleaning like proper cleaning for an hour and it did get me sweating a lot. After that I did zumba or circuit training for minimum 30 mins and max 40 min. Then i rested. In the evening after breaking the fast, I did exercise for an hour again, 2 days vigorous, rest just long normal paced walks. The reason im using past tense is because i havent done any kind of physical activity after last post. I have also eaten in moderation but without counting cals, and there has been no change in weight. Its making me very frustrated. As the pressure im dealing with here because of my weight. I dont get any support at all from my family. They want that i eat nothing and i exercise all day. Thats just impossible...i cant possibly be active completely dehydrated. And i do need to eat atleast enough.. Anyways..
Yes i use the sheet to calculate my weightloss goals and macros. the first one.
I did play around with it a little, i calculated bmr for no activity, then for my supposed activity of 14 hours per week, 7 strenous, 7 non strenous. it gave me the almost the same bmr. and I am focusing on eating 50ish calories more than my bmr.
Its making me frustrated day by day.. Also this isnt the first time this has happened to me, I have been trying to lose weight since 2013. I always lose first few pounds very quickly and then i wait for months for magic to happen eventually losing hope and gaining more weight than before.
This time when i started EM2WL, I hadnt been on any diet for past 6 months as i was out of station for job purpose and I had gained 10 kilos. Of which i have lost 5 kilos, i think of it as water weight and now its a month and i am stuck at 96-95 kilos...
Can you also guide me if there are any medical conditions that might be causing my weight loss difficult? My father is diabetic, it apparently runs in the family. My mother had thyroid issue. But last year i got myself checked for both these and the results were okay. Also my HB was good.
Thanks so much for your time.
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So it's really impossible to know if you should or should not be gaining or losing weight when you don't log how much you eat - you obviously were eating at maintenance, with reduced activity, at whatever eating level you were at.
Moderation doesn't mean eating less than you burn to cause weight loss - that's totally subjective.
As to the sheet.
BMR is based on gender, age, weight, height - so it actually should be exactly the same BMR no matter how much you change the activity around. That is correct.
That's why under Your Results it say "BMR _______ based on weight & height" or "based on bodyfat %".
Also - not sure which sheet you used, but I know you used it wrong.
Neither the simple TDEE calc or the bigger Weight Loss Calculator have strenuous and non-strenuous categories.
But since you said hours, I think you mean the Weight Loss Calculator and your daily work time.
And those 2 lines dealing with hours is when you do NOT have a desk job - you are trying to apply them to exercise - totally wrong use.
If your work job is standing on your feet for 8 hrs x 5 days a week - then enter 40 hrs in the Service trades line. If you are working in a warehouse for 5 hrs x 4 days a week, then enter 20 hrs in the labor trades line.
Right under that is the section for exercise minutes and type you do. That's where you put in your walking and workout times.
So you are way underestimating your TDEE, and way undereating too.
50 cal above BMR with all the activity you do, like waking up and moving around - not a good idea.
So it appears your body may adjust to stress very fast by slowing down. So you'll want a good TDEE estimate from the calculator there, and take 15% off.
And you'll need to log your food to confirm you are really eating at that level.
And you may want to reset because you have no idea what eating level you are at.
So the fact you haven't lost weight is not surprising to me - the fact you maintained not that much either.
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Thanks Alot @heybales there are some confusions though, i mistakenly wrote BMR instead of TDEG and I did use minutes of workout.
Let me write it all again
I have a BF% of 50 using US Navy formula, Im 5.3ft and 26 year old. This gives me BMR+TDEG as 1400 ish.
Now if i add activity of 60 min*7 days a week of walking below 3mph + I add 30 min*6 days a week of Zumba/Circuit Training (I have lots of dvd workouts so i switch them up). My TDEG still stays the same and TDEE went up to 2300ish.
About eating carefully, that was only for 3-4 days and i know i wasnt eating more that max 1500 because
1) I m fasting
2) I was eyeballing for the same portions of food as i was eating previously.
But i have started weighing each adn everything again, I'm focusing on only 500 cals a day loss. I still dont understand the stall though0 -
So that recommended TDEG is only for healthy bodies - yours isn't right now.
It's based on failsafes from several studies - where the participants started the study with NO weight loss attempts in prior 6-12 months, so eating at maintenance with little to no exercise usually.
Yes the deficit goes up as your TDEE goes up, because with a healthy body and a lot to lose, you can take bigger deficits. You were just discovering how big it might have gone by increasing the TDEE.
But the cutoff is BMR.
The stall is because you stressed your body out, either gaining water weight that masked fat loss while the scale stayed the same - or body adapted and slowed down and you had barely if any actual deficit to cause weight loss.
Probably combo, because adapted body is stressed too.
It's exactly how people claim they eat 1200 only no matter their workouts - and gain weight.
Yep - water weight - from stress.
So you need a healthy body back before you could take that recommended TDEG.
That means reading many of the other topics here - several just today and yesterday - on ones increasing their eating even higher yet - and no weight gain.
Read their stories - realize what you need to do.
And either you can waste time at a plateau of no weight loss and keeping body stressed out.
Or you can purposely have no weight loss while you get a healthy body back.
Oh, the Body Fat Calc gives 2 formula results - where they both close to 50%, or a big difference?
I'd still suggest you take the average that is given, and enter that in the cell asking for BF%.
It'll auto-correct as fat is lost and the 2 results come closer.0
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