Platueing at the worst time of year and losing motivation

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Ne0Indigo
Ne0Indigo Posts: 17 Member
in Motivation and Support
Hello all!

I've been on my healthy eating journey for almost three months now and have lost over 8kg! However last week I didn't lose anything and I went and visited my brother a state away this week for his 30th with family so decided to just let myself eat what I wanted. I didn't go stupid. While the rest ate whole pizza I was eating little meatballs. Instead of having two slices of cake I had one. Instead of having three cans of soft drink like I used to I had one little one (89cals).

I weighed myself when I got back I was super worried but as seems to be the trend from the last week my weight hadn't budged, possibly gone up about 0.1kg or 0.2kg (i wasn't using my usual scales at my gym as I had work - my homescales are about 0.5kg off my gym).

I suspected I would gain a little and just as quickly lose it once I got back into my routine but I'm worried that since I did this when I've started platueing and Christmas is next week (again going to eat what I want but within reason) that my weight won't budge this week again especially since I have to work more days at my second job and need to catch up on loss sleep so will lose about 2 hours in total of my usual gym routine. Last week because I was platueing I made my work outs more intense which didn't seem to work and now if I do less I definately won't lose :(

I'm not worried I'll start binge eating. Im worried I'll lose motivation exercising especially since when platueing your supposed to change your routine right? I've come so far with my weight but I feel looking at photos I'm still that short ugly fat girl I was three months ago. I look no different :(

Has this happened to anyone else? Did you eventually get over platueing? What did you do? Did you have to make drastic changes? Has anyone lost weight without doing intense crazy exercises? I don't understand as my eating habits have not changed aside from allowing bread more frequently. I still eat between 1100-1200 cals.

Replies

  • benevempress
    benevempress Posts: 136 Member
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    A plateau is no weight loss after six weeks of eating your deficit calories. Three weeks or less is technically not a plateau, it is either a normal fluctuation due to TOM or a change in routine or water retention or more food in your colon, etc OR you ate enough extra calories/burned less calories to erase your deficit for the week and are just maintaining.

    You can't realistically expect to lose weight in weeks that you are eating more than your calorie goal and exercising less than normal. Perhaps give yourself permission to think of the next two weeks as weeks to just "maintain" without going crazy on calories and then pick up your normal exercise and calorie deficit after the holidays.
  • Sira125
    Sira125 Posts: 152 Member
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    Most people gain weight (around 5 lbs) during this time of year. If you maintain your weight for the next few weeks I would count that as a win.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,874 Member
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    1) a week isn't a plateau.
    2) maintaining during the holidays is actually a win
  • TR0berts
    TR0berts Posts: 7,739 Member
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    You may find this thread worthwhile: http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10481830/the-diet-break#latest

    It essentially talks about purposefully maintaining for a while, so that while you end up in the same place, you're not down about not having made progress.

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