Plateaued and base calories?

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What do you do when you feel like you plateaued? I hit 30lbs down June 7th started dieting and working out in January. I always walk about 2 1/2 -3 miles on my lunch break at work. I've always done at least a 20 min work out in the evening. Now I have started about a week and half ago I added a short morning workout. I'm a on low carb diet and follow my fitness pal. Except the base calorie total never changes unless I'm adding exercise calories. Also drink lemon water every day. Any thoughts or suggestions?

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  • chad0066
    chad0066 Posts: 1 Member
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    In my experience, the trick to overcoming the feeling or reality of having plateaued is to make small calculated changes to your current regimen. This could be as simple as adding more protein to your diet, or intensifying your workouts ( level of difficulty, not time spent). Because you are already trying to make the right decisions, I wouldn't make any drastic changes that might be hard for you to stick with.
  • CMB1979
    CMB1979 Posts: 588 Member
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    Recalculate your needed calories every 7-10 lbs or so. Lower your calories slowly until you start losing again - maybe 50-100 less per day, hold at that for a week, then lower again if you're still not losing. Also check for anything new you may have added to your diet recently in case the nutrition info isn't correct.
  • rileysowner
    rileysowner Posts: 8,239 Member
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    First of all, a couple of weeks is not technically a plateau.

    Second, are you using anything other than weight to measure your progress. There can be periods of time where weight loss is masked by things like water retention while measurements of your body are still going down.

    Third, how carefully are you measuring your food. When one has a lot to lose, there is a lot of wiggle room and estimating will work well, but when you have less to lose that wiggle room is gone and you have to measure what you are eating more carefully so you can be sure the calories you think you are eating are the actual calories you are eating.

    Fourth, what is you calorie goal and what is your weekly weight loss goal?
  • malibu927
    malibu927 Posts: 17,565 Member
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    CMB1979 wrote: »
    Recalculate your needed calories every 7-10 lbs or so. Lower your calories slowly until you start losing again - maybe 50-100 less per day, hold at that for a week, then lower again if you're still not losing. Also check for anything new you may have added to your diet recently in case the nutrition info isn't correct.

    To go with this, if you're at 1200 calories MFP will not adjust you any lower. It's only been two weeks and you said you added some more exercise, so it's likely your body is retaining water to repair your muscles. If it doesn't drop in another week, then it's time to see where you can tighten up your logging.
  • purprincess33
    purprincess33 Posts: 26 Member
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    Myfitnesspal is at 1200 calories. That explains why it doesn't go any lower. it seems like the last 10lbs of my goal is the toughest. Anything after the 10
    I'm considering a bonus.
  • purprincess33
    purprincess33 Posts: 26 Member
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    Thanks every one for the suggestions!