HELP! How do I get over a weight loss plateau?!
StephLinden
Posts: 3 Member
I’ve lost approx 40lbs in 5-6months and have hit the dreaded plateau. I work out 45-50mins 6 days a week. All cardio no weight training (addicted to cardio). I must say I’ve been lax on calorie tracking and need to start again. I’m also a camel and hate drinking water! So I know more water is a must as well. Any tips or tricks would be greatly appreciated. A month with no weight loss so discouraging.
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Replies
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Start tracking your calories... Simple!10
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livingleanlivingclean wrote: »Start tracking your calories... Simple!
Ayup.2 -
livingleanlivingclean wrote: »Start tracking your calories... Simple!
thirded1 -
you answered your own question4
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You've identified your problem. And because of it, it's NOT a plateau.HoodRat0201 wrote: »I’ve lost approx 40lbs in 5-6months and have hit the dreaded plateau. I work out 45-50mins 6 days a week. All cardio no weight training (addicted to cardio). I must say I’ve been lax on calories tracking and need to start again. I’m also a camel and hate drinking water! So I know more water is a must as well. Any tips or tricks would be greatly appreciated. A month with no weight loss so discouraging.
Also, just doing cardio (without enough protein consumption) can lead to reduction in muscle tissue which LOWERS metabolic rate. And if it's the same cardio for that time, your body has likely gotten adapted to the workout and is more efficient with calorie burning, meaning you're burning less calories for the exercise week in and week out.
Increasing the intensity will help, but you should do some weight resistance training to keep what muscle you have.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
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Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
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They are all right of course. After a long time of counting calories people think they have the portion thing down and can stop. And occasionally they can, but some people may need to just jump back into it on a short term basis to realign portions. Also if you are down 40 pounds (awesome by the way!) then you need less calories than you did when you started. Recalculate your caloric needs for your new smaller body and track your calories for a month. I bet the weight starts moving again
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StephLinden wrote: »I’ve lost approx 40lbs in 5-6months and have hit the dreaded plateau. I work out 45-50mins 6 days a week. All cardio no weight training (addicted to cardio). I must say I’ve been lax on calorie tracking and need to start again. I’m also a camel and hate drinking water! So I know more water is a must as well. Any tips or tricks would be greatly appreciated. A month with no weight loss so discouraging.
what tip or trick do you want short of 'count and log your calories' ??1 -
Start logging accurately. Every bite that goes in your mouth weighed, every liquid measured. Database entries checked and verified. If you're still not seeing progress in a month, report back.
I would also suggest cutting back on the cardio and adding some resistance training. And make sure you're eating enough protein (0.6-0.8g per lb of ideal weight).5 -
Have you been recalculating your calorie needs/goals as you have lost weight, too? Seems simple, but people do forget to do it.2
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I guess it just requires going back to basics!2
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StephLinden wrote: »Muscleflex79 wrote: »StephLinden wrote: »I’ve lost approx 40lbs in 5-6months and have hit the dreaded plateau. I work out 45-50mins 6 days a week. All cardio no weight training (addicted to cardio). I must say I’ve been lax on calorie tracking and need to start again. I’m also a camel and hate drinking water! So I know more water is a must as well. Any tips or tricks would be greatly appreciated. A month with no weight loss so discouraging.
what tip or trick do you want short of 'count and log your calories' ??
It was a general question towards those who may have gotten over a plateau. There is more tip aside from counting calories. Refer to previous responses.
On that note, after a certain point of weight loss (started just a little under morbidly obese, this was around juuuust higher than overweight), I began to lose my weight once a month. I would plateau, then my period would come, and woosh.
During weight loss, if you have a pattern... Expect that the pattern may change. Just hold out and see how it goes sometimes.4 -
StephLinden wrote: »I guess it just requires going back to basics!
There's really nothing else we can say until it's confirmed that you're actually eating at a deficit. If you were logging accurately, we'd have other suggestions, but that's the first thing to try.2 -
Have you been recalculating your calorie needs/goals as you have lost weight, too? Seems simple, but people do forget to do it.
I have but I never tracked my recalculated calories. BUT, when I started I put my activity as sedentary. I upped it to “lightly active” and it’s about the same. So I don’t know what to follow!0 -
Is it recommending 1200 calories? MFP won't go lower than that (safety), so that may be why. Even if someone wants an aggressive goal for their weight loss (2lbs/week), sometimes it just cannot be done safely. Have to make sure you are still eating properly.StephLinden wrote: »Have you been recalculating your calorie needs/goals as you have lost weight, too? Seems simple, but people do forget to do it.
I have but I never tracked my recalculated calories. BUT, when I started I put my activity as sedentary. I upped it to “lightly active” and it’s about the same. So I don’t know what to follow!
What is your height/weight, if I may please ask?0 -
StephLinden wrote: »Have you been recalculating your calorie needs/goals as you have lost weight, too? Seems simple, but people do forget to do it.
I have but I never tracked my recalculated calories. BUT, when I started I put my activity as sedentary. I upped it to “lightly active” and it’s about the same. So I don’t know what to follow!
I agree...that is hard.
I am always on my feet, walking, cleaning, carrying grocery but I still had my settings to sedentary. But that only gave me 1300 calories per day. My fitbit tracker avarages 15000 steps a day. So I changed it to light active and half a pound a week. Now I get 1700 calories. I weigh everything.0 -
I’ve been on MFP for 22 months and have lost almost 110lbs. I religiously measure everything with three exceptions - when I eat out (rarely), my daily wrap (no idea why I don’t record the weight as I do measure) and low cal jelly (only 2-7 calories per pot).
I’ve never had a plateau. I’ve lost some weeks, gained some weeks (hello ovulation!) and stayed the same some weeks but never had a proper plateau. And I attribute that to my obsession with measuring.
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GrumpyHeadmistress wrote: »I’ve been on MFP for 22 months and have lost almost 110lbs. I religiously measure everything with three exceptions - when I eat out (rarely), my daily wrap (no idea why I don’t record the weight as I do measure) and low cal jelly (only 2-7 calories per pot).
I’ve never had a plateau. I’ve lost some weeks, gained some weeks (hello ovulation!) and stayed the same some weeks but never had a proper plateau. And I attribute that to my obsession with measuring.
This calls for a new thread. What do people consider plateau? To me a plateau is when you stay the same weight for more than a couple of weeks.0 -
karintalley wrote: »GrumpyHeadmistress wrote: »I’ve been on MFP for 22 months and have lost almost 110lbs. I religiously measure everything with three exceptions - when I eat out (rarely), my daily wrap (no idea why I don’t record the weight as I do measure) and low cal jelly (only 2-7 calories per pot).
I’ve never had a plateau. I’ve lost some weeks, gained some weeks (hello ovulation!) and stayed the same some weeks but never had a proper plateau. And I attribute that to my obsession with measuring.
This calls for a new thread. What do people consider plateau? To me a plateau is when you stay the same weight for more than a couple of weeks.
Ditto. I’d say at least 3-4 weeks.1 -
I'd say just over a month as well, considering what I put above for what my pattern changed to.0
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karintalley wrote: »GrumpyHeadmistress wrote: »I’ve been on MFP for 22 months and have lost almost 110lbs. I religiously measure everything with three exceptions - when I eat out (rarely), my daily wrap (no idea why I don’t record the weight as I do measure) and low cal jelly (only 2-7 calories per pot).
I’ve never had a plateau. I’ve lost some weeks, gained some weeks (hello ovulation!) and stayed the same some weeks but never had a proper plateau. And I attribute that to my obsession with measuring.
This calls for a new thread. What do people consider plateau? To me a plateau is when you stay the same weight for more than a couple of weeks.
I've gone up to 8 weeks to really see the downward trend/a proper properly because I'll bounce around the same few pounds then a little whoosh. All averages out. At the moment I'm largely seeing the scale move once every 4 weeks. Again, not a plateau, I'm still losing, it's just not showing on the scale yet due to natural fluctuations.1 -
I think before calling anything a plateau, you need to be sure that you're accurately tracking, that you have MFP properly adjusted to your current stats, that you understand the various factors that can impact scale weight and not necessarily fat loss, and that you are accounting for all of these variables with full knowledge and in spite of knowing what you should be trending things aren't progressing properly for a couple of months.
If you don't meet all of those criteria, you're likely missing a piece of the information puzzle, not experiencing a plateau.8 -
As for what number to trust. MFP activity settings are to be chosen based on normal day to day life outside of purposeful exercise. So an office job/2500 steps per day would be sedentary and 2500 increments up form there. Your exercise should be logged separately being cautious with the numbers until you've worked out the accuracy of the numbers.2
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GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »I think before calling anything a plateau, you need to be sure that you're accurately tracking, that you have MFP properly adjusted to your current stats, that you understand the various factors that can impact scale weight and not necessarily fat loss, and that you are accounting for all of these variables with full knowledge and in spite of knowing what you should be trending things aren't progressing properly for a couple of months.
If you don't meet all of those criteria, you're likely missing a piece of the information puzzle, not experiencing a plateau.
Perfectly said!
A stall in scale weight and a stall in fat loss are not remotely the same thing. The first is completely normal (especially if you're female and pre-menopausal), and stressing about it is only going to compound things (cos raised cortisol = water retention).0 -
VintageFeline wrote: »karintalley wrote: »GrumpyHeadmistress wrote: »I’ve been on MFP for 22 months and have lost almost 110lbs. I religiously measure everything with three exceptions - when I eat out (rarely), my daily wrap (no idea why I don’t record the weight as I do measure) and low cal jelly (only 2-7 calories per pot).
I’ve never had a plateau. I’ve lost some weeks, gained some weeks (hello ovulation!) and stayed the same some weeks but never had a proper plateau. And I attribute that to my obsession with measuring.
This calls for a new thread. What do people consider plateau? To me a plateau is when you stay the same weight for more than a couple of weeks.
I've gone up to 8 weeks to really see the downward trend/a proper properly because I'll bounce around the same few pounds then a little whoosh. All averages out. At the moment I'm largely seeing the scale move once every 4 weeks. Again, not a plateau, I'm still losing, it's just not showing on the scale yet due to natural fluctuations.
But that's what a plateau is....weight not going down on the scale itself? What else would it be?
4-8 weeks between any change on the scale, why is that? Water?1 -
Some light reading pertaining to this:
https://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/adjusting-the-diet.html/ - and because no one bothers to read links, the pertinent part of that article:A Quick Note about Water Balance
Before I get into the meat of the article, there is one topic I want to bring up first. Many people have an expectation of fat loss being this nice weekly linear thing that occurs in a predictable fashion. And certainly, for some people this can be the case. However, for an equally large number of people (and I’d probably tend to argue that these folks are in the majority), fat loss does not occur in a predictable linear fashion.
Rather, there are often stops and starts or, as it’s often referred to on the Internets, stalls and whooshes. I discussed this topic in some seriousness in The Stubborn Fat Solution and excerpted that bit in the article Of Whooshes and Squishy Fat. The main culprit here is almost always water retention which can mask fat true fat loss and make it look as if a diet that is otherwise set up perfectly (and working just fine) actually isn’t.
People vary in how predisposed they are to this occurring. Some folks seem to retain water like crazy, especially if they try to combine hard deficits with excessive and or too intensive of activity. Women of course have an additional factor of shifts in water balance throughout the menstrual cycle. Even that is massively variable, some women gain little to no water weight throughout the month, others can hold an extra 5-10 pounds (2.5-5kg or so) easily.
Coupled with a generally slower rate of fat loss in the first place, women can go nuts trying to figure out if their diet is working or not. Put differently, let’s say a woman is on a moderate deficit diet and should be losing right around 1 pound of fat per week. If she is holding an extra 5-10 pounds of water, it could take 5-10 weeks before she actually sees that her diet is working.
Of course, if the water retention is related to menstrual cycle stuff, what she should see if times of the month when her weight/fat is down (below where she started) and other times when it’s not. Plotting weight or some attempt to measure body composition on a monthly basis to see what the overall trend is is probably going to be more beneficial than looking at it on a week to week basis.
My point in bringing this up is actually not just to depress people. Rather, I’m pointing out that what I’m going to discuss in this article in terms of adjusting the diet can be done too often. For folks who have issues with water retention (who may see big drops every couple of weeks rather than smaller drops weekly), trying to gauge true weekly fat loss and adjust the diet is usually a losing proposition.
Rather, those folks may have to only look at what’s happening every 2 weeks to decide when and if to adjust their diet. Women with major menstrual cycle swings may even have to chart their monthly trends to see what’s happening and only make adjustments every 4 weeks.
Yes, I know this is a pain but at this point there’s really no solution for it. All of the methods that we have to measure body composition are too inaccurate to get around this and the point I want everybody to really take home is that expecting predictable weekly fat loss may not be realistic depending on individual propensity to hold water or not.
And this (just read it, it's short): https://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/of-whooshes-and-squishy-fat.html3 -
karintalley wrote: »VintageFeline wrote: »karintalley wrote: »GrumpyHeadmistress wrote: »I’ve been on MFP for 22 months and have lost almost 110lbs. I religiously measure everything with three exceptions - when I eat out (rarely), my daily wrap (no idea why I don’t record the weight as I do measure) and low cal jelly (only 2-7 calories per pot).
I’ve never had a plateau. I’ve lost some weeks, gained some weeks (hello ovulation!) and stayed the same some weeks but never had a proper plateau. And I attribute that to my obsession with measuring.
This calls for a new thread. What do people consider plateau? To me a plateau is when you stay the same weight for more than a couple of weeks.
I've gone up to 8 weeks to really see the downward trend/a proper properly because I'll bounce around the same few pounds then a little whoosh. All averages out. At the moment I'm largely seeing the scale move once every 4 weeks. Again, not a plateau, I'm still losing, it's just not showing on the scale yet due to natural fluctuations.
But that's what a plateau is....weight not going down on the scale itself? What else would it be?
4-8 weeks between any change on the scale, why is that? Water?
Potentially. I never moved more than .2lbs for a full month, would get my period... Down 3-4lbs. And it would stay there until next one.2 -
karintalley wrote: »VintageFeline wrote: »karintalley wrote: »GrumpyHeadmistress wrote: »I’ve been on MFP for 22 months and have lost almost 110lbs. I religiously measure everything with three exceptions - when I eat out (rarely), my daily wrap (no idea why I don’t record the weight as I do measure) and low cal jelly (only 2-7 calories per pot).
I’ve never had a plateau. I’ve lost some weeks, gained some weeks (hello ovulation!) and stayed the same some weeks but never had a proper plateau. And I attribute that to my obsession with measuring.
This calls for a new thread. What do people consider plateau? To me a plateau is when you stay the same weight for more than a couple of weeks.
I've gone up to 8 weeks to really see the downward trend/a proper properly because I'll bounce around the same few pounds then a little whoosh. All averages out. At the moment I'm largely seeing the scale move once every 4 weeks. Again, not a plateau, I'm still losing, it's just not showing on the scale yet due to natural fluctuations.
But that's what a plateau is....weight not going down on the scale itself? What else would it be?
4-8 weeks between any change on the scale, why is that? Water?
Yes, water. Or waste or whatever. Not a plateau, I am losing fat but scales are imperfect, they don't know what is water, fat, poop etc. If I whoosh off 4 lbs in one week clearly I wasn't plateauing it just wasn't showing on the scale. I also take my measurements and usually those are changing as well.
A plateau would be going 8 weeks and absolutely nothing happens and nothing continues to happen for another 8 weeks. But even then, it's not a plateau, it's time to reassess, my numbers, my logging, how long I've been in a deficit etc.
Mind you, I don't think I'd apply plateau, it's not a term I love, at any point. Either you're losing or not, on the scale or tape measure. If nothing is happening with either something somewhere is off that needs fixed.2 -
VintageFeline wrote: »karintalley wrote: »VintageFeline wrote: »karintalley wrote: »GrumpyHeadmistress wrote: »I’ve been on MFP for 22 months and have lost almost 110lbs. I religiously measure everything with three exceptions - when I eat out (rarely), my daily wrap (no idea why I don’t record the weight as I do measure) and low cal jelly (only 2-7 calories per pot).
I’ve never had a plateau. I’ve lost some weeks, gained some weeks (hello ovulation!) and stayed the same some weeks but never had a proper plateau. And I attribute that to my obsession with measuring.
This calls for a new thread. What do people consider plateau? To me a plateau is when you stay the same weight for more than a couple of weeks.
I've gone up to 8 weeks to really see the downward trend/a proper properly because I'll bounce around the same few pounds then a little whoosh. All averages out. At the moment I'm largely seeing the scale move once every 4 weeks. Again, not a plateau, I'm still losing, it's just not showing on the scale yet due to natural fluctuations.
But that's what a plateau is....weight not going down on the scale itself? What else would it be?
4-8 weeks between any change on the scale, why is that? Water?
Yes, water. Or waste or whatever. Not a plateau, I am losing fat but scales are imperfect, they don't know what is water, fat, poop etc. If I whoosh off 4 lbs in one week clearly I wasn't plateauing it just wasn't showing on the scale. I also take my measurements and usually those are changing as well.
A plateau would be going 8 weeks and absolutely nothing happens and nothing continues to happen for another 8 weeks. But even then, it's not a plateau, it's time to reassess, my numbers, my logging, how long I've been in a deficit etc.
Mind you, I don't think I'd apply plateau, it's not a term I love, at any point. Either you're losing or not, on the scale or tape measure. If nothing is happening with either something somewhere is off that needs fixed.
^This This This This This
Now, saying that. There was a male... YES.... A MALE.... on here, a few years back, who was just stuck. The scale wasn't moving. Now it wasn't hormones (obviously), he wasn't new at training, he went over his tracking with a fine tooth comb... nothing. He was just stuck. For four months, IIRC. Then whoosh.
THAT was a plateau. He was stressing, there was likely some cortisol hijinks involved, and possibly some factors from his training coming into play since he was on a progressive lifting program.
He was an outlier, though.
Most times, most of us need to reassess, and note that he did that, and then he relaxed and decided to just go with the flow, focus on training and staying on point, and he finally saw progress.4
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