Can my metabolism really be THAT low?

Options
Kolohe71
Kolohe71 Posts: 613 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I have been fighting a plateau for about the last two months, and I received two suggestions for breaking it:

1) Change your exercise routine because your body is use to what you are doing. So 5 weeks ago I completely revised my workout. I went from pure cardio work to a mix of weight training and cardio, but nothing changed.
2) Up your calories because you are probably going into starvation mode. So 3 weeks ago I upped my calories from 1300 to 1500 with no change, and then last week I upped it again to 1800 and ADDED weight.

My home scale gives my body fat % and this has not gone down, so I know I'm not losing fat and gaining muscle at the same rate for a net 0.

When I was losing rather consistantly (1-1.5 lbs a week) I had my goals set at a sedentary lifestyle with a goal of Lose 2 lbs a week and I was constantly under my daily goal by ~300.

Am I doing something completely wrong here, or can my metabolism really be so low that a daily defecit of 1300 is what is required for me to lose weight?

Replies

  • dragonflydi
    dragonflydi Posts: 665 Member
    Options
    Your food diary isn't visible, but part of it could be what you are eating, even though you remained under your calorie goal? High sodium content will affect how much water you retain, etc.
  • aj_rock
    aj_rock Posts: 390 Member
    Options
    First piece of advice you were given is bunk. Switching up your exercise routine only helps with muscle strength plateaus. A 20 minute run will burn x calories at a given body weight no matter how in shape you are.

    My guess is that yes, you may have been starving yourself slightly, but getting out of the range probably brought you back to the right place. Put your calorie balance back down to 1500 and see if that helps.

    Using a basic online BMR calculator puts you at about 1900 a day to maintain. A pound lost a week puts you at 1400, and being 300 cals below that regularly will slow you down considerably.

    Don't ever expect 2 lbs a week at your level. I'm guessing you've gotten into fairly decent shape now, and to reaaaally get the body fat down it takes smaller margins of deficit and more patience.
  • dragonflydi
    dragonflydi Posts: 665 Member
    Options
    A 20 minute run will burn x calories at a given body weight no matter how in shape you are.

    I disagree. The more fit you are, the more efficiently your body uses it's fuel and therefore, you burn less calories.

    For example, I am in a Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred challenge. We did level 1 for 10 days straight before moving onto level 2. My weight has stayed essentially the same. Day 1, for the 27 minute workout, giving it my all, I burned 235 calories (I wear my HRM every time I do it). By day 10 however, still giving it my all and working the same 27 minutes doing the same things, my body had adapted and used my fuel/oxygen more efficiently, and I was down to burning only 185-190 calories for the same workout. Then we went to level 2, totally different moves and I went back up to 235 calorie burn ... and 5 days in, I am now down to 225 ... by day 10, I will probably be lucky to burn 200.

    That is why so many trainers use muscle confusion as one way to kick their clents out of a plateau.

    Stick with it Kolohe71 ... persistence is everything!
  • VickiMitkins
    VickiMitkins Posts: 249 Member
    Options
    You only have 12lbs to go. Your rate of loss is likely to slow down a bit. Increasing exercize intensity may help. I also think it will help that you bumped calories up and once you go down again, you will start seeing a loss. Like others say, watch your salt intake. I would also consider reducing my expectations for loss, considering you are closer to your goal. Maybe try for 0.5 - 1 lb a week instead of 1.5-2. One thing that has helped me is to play with my calorie intake a bit. I don't zig zag on a daily basis, but I sometimes do it on a weekly basis. One week I will try for 1400 net a day and the next week I will try for 1250 net a day. The thing that has helped me the most is light exercize every morning. Try adding a 30 min walk, yoga, etc, first thing in the morning and then your regular workout in the afternoon. Keep the morning work out light and don't eat before. Drink 16 oz of water and take that walk. When done drink 16 more oz of water, take a shower and then have brekfast. It will boost the matabolism.
  • Grettles
    Grettles Posts: 18 Member
    Options
    If you haven't ever had your thyroid function tested, you really should.
  • Kolohe71
    Kolohe71 Posts: 613 Member
    Options
    I did expect things to slow down as I got closer to my goal, but I have lost nothing over the last 8-9 weeks. I would be thrilled with 0.5 a week right now.

    Plus my goal weight is at least 10 lbs over what would be considered my healthy weight. At this point I'm still almost 25 lbs overweight so 1.0-1.5 should be reasonable.
  • dragonflydi
    dragonflydi Posts: 665 Member
    Options
    Kolohe, how tall are you?? Plateaus can be VERY frustrating :( I had one that lasted nearly 4 months. It wasn't until I mixed up my workouts and changed around my eating that I started seeing a difference ... also, how much water are you drinking?
  • Kolohe71
    Kolohe71 Posts: 613 Member
    Options
    I'm 5-11 and on a slow day I'll drink about 80oz of water.
  • Rae6503
    Rae6503 Posts: 6,294 Member
    Options
    I think you should stay at 1500 (maybe more) and keep trying! 1300 is really low for someone your size. You probably had a little bit of a starvation mode going on. Now that you're suddenly eating more at first your body is going to want to store it, but when it gets used to the new level, hopefully it will realize that it's no longer starving and start letting go.
  • Kolohe71
    Kolohe71 Posts: 613 Member
    Options
    OK, I just reset my goal to 1800 calories. I'll stick to that for another few weeks to see what happens. Thanks for the help.
  • dragonflydi
    dragonflydi Posts: 665 Member
    Options
    I am sending you a private message since you opened your food dairy ... your food is a BIG part of this issue. Not the number of calories you are consuming or have your goals set at, but rather the types of foods you are choosing. Stay tuned ...
  • aj_rock
    aj_rock Posts: 390 Member
    Options

    I disagree. The more fit you are, the more efficiently your body uses it's fuel and therefore, you burn less calories.

    For example, I am in a Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred challenge. We did level 1 for 10 days straight before moving onto level 2. My weight has stayed essentially the same. Day 1, for the 27 minute workout, giving it my all, I burned 235 calories (I wear my HRM every time I do it). By day 10 however, still giving it my all and working the same 27 minutes doing the same things, my body had adapted and used my fuel/oxygen more efficiently, and I was down to burning only 185-190 calories for the same workout. Then we went to level 2, totally different moves and I went back up to 235 calorie burn ... and 5 days in, I am now down to 225 ... by day 10, I will probably be lucky to burn 200.

    That is why so many trainers use muscle confusion as one way to kick their clents out of a plateau.

    Stick with it Kolohe71 ... persistence is everything!

    It's been said many many times you can't always trust your HRM... Yes your VO2 max will increase, leading to a lower heartrate, but you're still doing the same amount of WORK.

    The body is actually very very inefficient at using energy. The best of us convert maybe 30% of every calorie to useful work. Getting in better shape and changing from 25% to 25.1% isn't going to make that big of a difference.

Categories