Help! Plateau!

1. If it's been less than 3 weeks or so, don't sweat it! Normal fluctuations happen and unfortunately sometimes we stall for a week or two even when we're doing everything right. Give your body some time to catch up with the changes you're making.

2. If you aren't already, be sure that you're logging everything. Sometimes people forget about things like veggies, drinks, cooking oils, and condiments. For some people these can add up to enough to halt your weight loss progress.

3. Consider buying a food scale if you don't already have one. They're about $10-$20 dollars in the US and easily found at places like Amazon, Target, and Walmart. Measuring cups and spoons are great, but they do come with some degree of inaccuracy. A food scale will be more accurate, and for some people it makes a big difference.

4. Logging accurately also means choosing accurate entries in the database. There are a lot of user-entered entries that are off. Double-check that you're using good entries and/or using the recipe builder instead of someone else's homemade entries.

5. Recalculate your goals if you haven't lately. As you lose weight your body requires fewer calories to run. Be sure you update your goals every ten pounds or so.

6. If you're eating back your exercise calories and you're relying on gym machine readouts or MFP's estimates, it might be best to eat back just 50-75% of those. Certain activities tend to be overestimated. If you're using an HRM or activity tracker, it might be a good idea to look into their accuracy and be sure that yours is calibrated properly.

7. If you're taking any cheat days that go over your calorie limits, it might be best to cut them out for a few weeks and see what happens. Some people go way over their calorie needs without realizing it when they don't track.

8. If you weigh yourself frequently, consider using a program like trendweight to even out the fluctuations. You could be losing weight but just don't see it because of the daily ups and downs.

9. Some people just burn fewer calories than the calculators predict. If you continue to have problems after 4-6 weeks, then it might be worth a trip to the doctor or a registered dietitian who can give you more specific advice.

How are you measuring your intake? If you aren't losing, then you're likely eating more than 1200.

Androoke wrote: »

Well beachbody has the 21 day fix program which specifically lays out your intake for you. You follow according to the containers

Okay, well that doesn't seem to be working for you. A lot of people have found the containers don't work very well for them. If you want, you can stick with it and see if that changes eventually. That's up to you.

You don't seem very open to ideas here. I think I'm out.

I think I can help you out a bit here. I'm 5'3" as well and I started at 139 pounds; I'm 110 pounds now. The problem with the containers that come with Beachbody programs are that they weren't really designed with you in mind; the containers work best for those who have a lot of weight to lose. One of their mottos for the containers are "If it fits, you can eat it!" which becomes a problem when you're 121 pounds and 5'3". You may be the type to loosely put 1/2 a cup of rice into the carb container or maybe you're the type who will pack that rice into the container until you can barely close the lid. The difference between the two can easily be 50 calories. Add that up during the day and you're unintentionally going over your goal by hundreds of calories. The margin of error is negligible for someone with a lot of calories to play with, but in your case it's not.

To get where I am now, I weighed and measured everything aside from whenever I went out to eat, obviously. If I hadn't, I'd be on these boards with the same issue as you. For example, I used to love Quest protein bars. The nutritional facts are based on a 60 gram bar and most of my bars weighed in at 68 to 71 grams which added on an extra 30 to 50 calories. When you're losing vanity pounds, every calorie matters and there isn't much wiggle room unfortunately. A food scale is inexpensive and will get you the precision you need to reach your goals. You don't need the containers to be successful, but weighing your foods while using them will give you a great idea of what you're actually eating.

When I first started out, I did the 21 Day Fix workouts and got the container measurements from Pinterest just to see what the intake would be like. I'm glad I already had a food scale because I would have been consuming around 900 calories per day if I followed the containers and that's ridiculous. So my suggestion to you, like others have already suggested, is to ditch the containers and get a food scale. Everything will start to make more sense from there.

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