Why am I plateauing?
candistyx
Posts: 547 Member
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Ok, the first couple of weeks I was eating 2100-1800kcal a day and had some nice loss, ok probably mostly water but still. Third week I challenge myself to stick strictly to 1600 or below for the whole week, and I am successful, things slow down but ok, finished with the water losses, still going down right, just much slower. Fourth week I start doing OMAD (not permanently, just for Holy Week), day one I ate 1200kcal, yesterday I ate 900kcal. Weight still not going down.
I don't understand. Surely it should be decreasing by now? There is no way I am not at a deficit. I am 113.5kg and 5'5", 31 year old woman.
I know my calories could be off due to water content levels in my food (if I cook a pan on lentils and eat it over 2 days it has more water in it on day one than on day two so the weight to calorie ratio of the food is different, and unknowable unless you could calculate all the factors that aid absorption and evaporation, each day), but even if they were somehow double, which I don't think is realistic, they would have been 1800kcal yesterday, same as I was eating in the first couple of weeks when I was losing weight fine. I have been pre-tracking all my food and only eating what is in my plan so I know there is nothing I missed.
Ok, the first couple of weeks I was eating 2100-1800kcal a day and had some nice loss, ok probably mostly water but still. Third week I challenge myself to stick strictly to 1600 or below for the whole week, and I am successful, things slow down but ok, finished with the water losses, still going down right, just much slower. Fourth week I start doing OMAD (not permanently, just for Holy Week), day one I ate 1200kcal, yesterday I ate 900kcal. Weight still not going down.
I don't understand. Surely it should be decreasing by now? There is no way I am not at a deficit. I am 113.5kg and 5'5", 31 year old woman.
I know my calories could be off due to water content levels in my food (if I cook a pan on lentils and eat it over 2 days it has more water in it on day one than on day two so the weight to calorie ratio of the food is different, and unknowable unless you could calculate all the factors that aid absorption and evaporation, each day), but even if they were somehow double, which I don't think is realistic, they would have been 1800kcal yesterday, same as I was eating in the first couple of weeks when I was losing weight fine. I have been pre-tracking all my food and only eating what is in my plan so I know there is nothing I missed.
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Replies
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Do you mean it's been 2 days without losing weight?
Patience. You won't lose every day, or maybe even every week, but if you maintain a deficit you will lose over time.12 -
You had losses (if I'm understanding right) weeks 1-3. Not having a loss immediately on week 4 isn't a plateau, weight loss isn't linear which is why it's important to look at the overall trend. That being said, if you're concerned about your losses first step is to look at logging. Using a food scale?2
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Redordeadhead wrote: »Do you mean it's been 2 days without losing weight?
Patience. You won't lose every day, or maybe even every week, but if you maintain a deficit you will lose over time.
I'm basically the same weight I was a week ago and the same thing happened last week as well.2 -
MichelleSilverleaf wrote: »You had losses (if I'm understanding right) weeks 1-3. Not having a loss immediately on week 4 isn't a plateau, weight loss isn't linear which is why it's important to look at the overall trend. That being said, if you're concerned about your losses first step is to look at logging. Using a food scale?
Yeah I am using a scale, although I do feel like it's not going to be accurate because I am eating a lot of rice and lentils and both will contain more water on the first day that I cook them than on the second day. If I weigh them dry, ok, the first day I can weigh the whole batch cooked, then calculate the proportion of the whole mass of dry lentils in my share - but then by the second day the "whole batch" is minus whatever I and anyone else ate the day before and minus water losses, I can reweigh and recalculate for the loss of my portion but no-one else bothers to weigh their portions and honestly it's getting to be a faff at this point.
If I weigh wet to start with who knows how accurate it is considering the different water contents it could have.6 -
It's not a plateau. It's a real-life demonstration of the fact that weight loss is not a linear process and will not proceed in an orderly, predictable manner.6
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It is normal to plateau here and there, if you are logging accurately then at some point it will come off, give it at least 6 weeks and then re-evaluate. You seem a bit hung up on your lentils and rice issue which is really the wrong thing to be concentrating on, but I can see it's bothering you so... I would advise to weigh the rice dry, say it was 200g, then you know accurately how many calories are in the whole lot and that was say (wild guess here because I can't be bothered to look up calories of rice) 1000 calories.. Then weigh the whole lot cooked. Say it now weighs 500g. That would mean each gram of cooked rice is 2 calories. Now you weigh your portion, say 100g of cooked rice and voila, your portion is 200cals. The amount of water that disappears between day one and day two of cooked rice has to be utterly negligible unless you leave it in a open bowl on the work surface. But in a covered pan or bowl in the fridge, really not going to make a difference.4
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The amount of water that disappears between day one and day two of cooked rice has to be utterly negligible unless you leave it in a open bowl on the work surface. But in a covered pan or bowl in the fridge, really not going to make a difference.
Honestly I do often leave it out on the hob, plus I'll reboil it next day to heat it.2 -
The amount of water that disappears between day one and day two of cooked rice has to be utterly negligible unless you leave it in a open bowl on the work surface. But in a covered pan or bowl in the fridge, really not going to make a difference.
Honestly I do often leave it out on the hob, plus I'll reboil it next day to heat it.
Seriously, don't do that!!!! https://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/can-reheating-rice-cause-food-poisoning.aspx?CategoryID=51
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OMAD raises stress hormones. With that, the body tends to retain water. If you've introduced a new activity, that can cause you to retain water. If you're around ovulation or the week before period, your body can retain water. Just weigh yourself daily if that's an option and assess your trend weight on the same day of your period every month and you should have an idea of how much you're losing on average monthly. Everyone's weight fluctuates up to several weeks sometimes, more so for women. If you're logging accurately and you've been consistently losing in the past, you should be okay. All you need is patience.4
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Dearest @candistyx:
You have lost IN A TRENDING WEIGHT APP (glad to see you're using one)
THIRTEEN AND A HALF POUNDS IN ONE MONTH. (maybe even 14 as it looks closer to 6.5kg than 6.2kg)
This is a rate of MORE than 3lbs a week.
This exceeds a loss of 1% of your bodyweight per week.
EAT MORE. Lose a little bit slower. Make it more sustainable. CHILL. You're doing great and there are many many reasons why your weight can fluctuate.
Some additional notes:
The info above on how to weigh your rice is spot on. And no it shouldn't be left out overnight. In any case you COULD weigh the rice before putting it away and then the next day after heating and that would give you an additional "extra water lost" datapoint.
If rice is a staple I would do that a couple of times to see how big of a difference we're talking. My personal opinion, frankly, is that there exist more satiating foods than rice... for example plain boiled potatoes... but that's another story and obviously highly individualised.10 -
Oh yeah, I meant the lentils. We always refrigerate/freeze the rice after the end of the keep warm function on our rice-cooker.The amount of water that disappears between day one and day two of cooked rice has to be utterly negligible unless you leave it in a open bowl on the work surface. But in a covered pan or bowl in the fridge, really not going to make a difference.
Honestly I do often leave it out on the hob, plus I'll reboil it next day to heat it.
Seriously, don't do that!!!! https://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/can-reheating-rice-cause-food-poisoning.aspx?CategoryID=51
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Dearest @candistyx:
You have lost IN A TRENDING WEIGHT APP (glad to see you're using one)
THIRTEEN AND A HALF POUNDS IN ONE MONTH. (maybe even 14 as it looks closer to 6.5kg than 6.2kg)
This is a rate of MORE than 3lbs a week.
This exceeds a loss of 1% of your bodyweight per week.
EAT MORE. Lose a little bit slower. Make it more sustainable. CHILL. You're doing great and there are many many reasons why your weight can fluctuate.
Some additional notes:
The info above on how to weigh your rice is spot on. And no it shouldn't be left out overnight. In any case you COULD weigh the rice before putting it away and then the next day after heating and that would give you an additional "extra water lost" datapoint.
If rice is a staple I would do that a couple of times to see how big of a difference we're talking. My personal opinion, frankly, is that there exist more satiating foods than rice... for example plain boiled potatoes... but that's another story and obviously highly individualised.
At the moment I am eating a bit weird because it's still lent for me (till Saturday night).
Easter day I plan to eat 2500kcal, then 2000kcal for Easter week and then back to 1600kcal until advent lol (not sure what I will do during advent). I reckon it will take me 2 years to lose all the weight assuming it follows the plan I made (each 12 weeks try and lose 5% of my current bodyweight). Obviously so far I have lost far more than my plan allows for but I am assuming it slows down massively over time so I am expecting faster now and a real snails pace during the second year.
I haven't felt unsatisfied honestly. On 1600kcal I have only felt hungry in the hour or so before a meal. Doing OMAD I *have* felt hungry during the day waiting for my meal but then I have felt if anything too full after it, still have to work on that, probably will end up eating even less if I focus on eating more mindfully during my meal. But it's only till Saturday I'm doing that anyway (although now I know it's achievable I might do it on days when I want to eat something very high calorie, like going out to a restaurant or something).
1600kcal seems totally achievable (and it would be my sedentary TDEE when I am at my goal weight so I hope it would be), just means I can't have "treats" every single day and have to be careful about what I eat rather than just eating whatever I feel like whenever. It doesn't seem to involve massive amounts of hunger as long as I eat things with fiber in them and some (not even a lot) of protein though.2 -
Last week I didn't lose weight but I did monitor my calorie intake and ensured there was deficit. But I noticed that my waistline decreased by an inch.1
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I personally **LIKE** your idea of shooting for sedentary NET calories at your "target" weight within the normal BMI range.
That's assuming you ARE sedentary. Because if you're turning out to be more active at the very least you would then be shooting for a similar activity level at your target weight.
In other words 1600 is NET calories and your activity level during the day makes a big difference to your actual deficit.
While obese try to keep your deficit to NO MORE than 25% of TDEE.
And it is OK to have a smaller deficit if doing so increases long term compliance.
Then lower the deficit to no more than 20% of TDEE when overweight and probably to no more than 10 to 15% of TDEE when you get into the normal weight range.
You say you're targetting 5% every 12 weeks (in other words 0.4167% per week). I wouldn't have been yelling if you had actually been achieving that. You are going at a rate that is 6x faster than your stated target.
In other words your extra reduction in calories when you went to "strict 1600" had no place. You will have plenty of time to reduce calories in the future when things slow down.
At a future time you may want to play with the body weight planner too (don't forget to try the expert mode!) https://niddk.nih.gov/health-information/weight-management/body-weight-planner
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STOP Weighing yourself! Loosing weight isn't always about weighing yourself. I have been training for over 20 years now and sometime I can go months without it changing. The most important thing for you to take on-board is how your clothes fit in my opinion. Loosing weight is different with everyone so don't worry about it. Set a healthy calorie goal per day and sticking to it will help but don't under eat as you need the calories just to get buy. If your training and eating healthy that's just as important as loosing the weight and the long term picture will be weight loss trust me. Good luck and don't feel disheartening about how it's going. It's better to lose a little every now and then than to not lose any at all.19
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STOP Weighing yourself! Loosing weight isn't always about weighing yourself. I have been training for over 20 years now and sometime I can go months without it changing. The most important thing for you to take on-board is how your clothes fit in my opinion. Loosing weight is different with everyone so don't worry about it. Set a healthy calorie goal per day and sticking to it will help but don't under eat as you need the calories just to get buy. If your training and eating healthy that's just as important as loosing the weight and the long term picture will be weight loss trust me. Good luck and don't feel disheartening about how it's going. It's better to lose a little every now and then than to not lose any at all.
Or OP could just accept that it's normal for weight to fluctuate. The scale is a perfectly good tool for weight loss if you understand what exactly it is doing and look at the trend rather than the day-to-day variations.10 -
tinkerbellang83 wrote: »STOP Weighing yourself! Loosing weight isn't always about weighing yourself. I have been training for over 20 years now and sometime I can go months without it changing. The most important thing for you to take on-board is how your clothes fit in my opinion. Loosing weight is different with everyone so don't worry about it. Set a healthy calorie goal per day and sticking to it will help but don't under eat as you need the calories just to get buy. If your training and eating healthy that's just as important as loosing the weight and the long term picture will be weight loss trust me. Good luck and don't feel disheartening about how it's going. It's better to lose a little every now and then than to not lose any at all.
Or OP could just accept that it's normal for weight to fluctuate. The scale is a perfectly good tool for weight loss if you understand what exactly it is doing and look at the trend rather than the day-to-day variations.
I guess I just assumed I'd see one day below the trend line, one day above, not a solid week of increasingly above the line weights.3 -
tinkerbellang83 wrote: »STOP Weighing yourself! Loosing weight isn't always about weighing yourself. I have been training for over 20 years now and sometime I can go months without it changing. The most important thing for you to take on-board is how your clothes fit in my opinion. Loosing weight is different with everyone so don't worry about it. Set a healthy calorie goal per day and sticking to it will help but don't under eat as you need the calories just to get buy. If your training and eating healthy that's just as important as loosing the weight and the long term picture will be weight loss trust me. Good luck and don't feel disheartening about how it's going. It's better to lose a little every now and then than to not lose any at all.
Or OP could just accept that it's normal for weight to fluctuate. The scale is a perfectly good tool for weight loss if you understand what exactly it is doing and look at the trend rather than the day-to-day variations.
I guess I just assumed I'd see one day below the trend line, one day above, not a solid week of increasingly above the line weights.
Here is what 6 months might look like (I started around the same weight):
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Personally I would weigh the rice/lentils dry anyway as you have no idea how much water they absorbed during the cooking. Weigh the total cooked then work out the percentage of the total for your serving size.2
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Your trendline started out too steep.
Let's repeat it again. You're on track to lose 6.5 kg in 30 days.
That is 1.5kg a week or 3.31lbs a week over the past month.
Your target is 0.5kg a week (5% of body weight in 12 weeks), or 1.09lbs a week.
How are you going to meet your target if the curve does not flatten out?
Obviously you can't and if you are secretely not wanting to then you're changing the target mid stream and you ARE trying to lose faster than you were planning to.
And given that the rate you're trying for far exceeds 1% per week... it ain't a great idea.
The most common reason women retain water has to do with their monthly hormonal cycle. Additionaly sodium and new, different, or more intense activity or exercise, and air travel all affect daily weigh ins.4 -
Your trendline started out too steep.
Let's repeat it again. You're on track to lose 6.5 kg in 30 days.
That is 1.5kg a week or 3.31lbs a week over the past month.
Your target is 0.5kg a week (5% of body weight in 12 weeks), or 1.09lbs a week.
How are you going to meet your target if the curve does not flatten out?
Obviously you can't and if you are secretely not wanting to then you're changing the target mid stream and you ARE trying to lose faster than you were planning to.
And given that the rate you're trying for far exceeds 1% per week... it ain't a great idea.
The most common reason women retain water has to do with their monthly hormonal cycle. Additionaly sodium and new, different, or more intense activity or exercise, and air travel all affect daily weigh ins.
Yeah I suppose you're right, it's just jarring to see it visually like that I guess.2 -
tinkerbellang83 wrote: »STOP Weighing yourself! Loosing weight isn't always about weighing yourself. I have been training for over 20 years now and sometime I can go months without it changing. The most important thing for you to take on-board is how your clothes fit in my opinion. Loosing weight is different with everyone so don't worry about it. Set a healthy calorie goal per day and sticking to it will help but don't under eat as you need the calories just to get buy. If your training and eating healthy that's just as important as loosing the weight and the long term picture will be weight loss trust me. Good luck and don't feel disheartening about how it's going. It's better to lose a little every now and then than to not lose any at all.
Or OP could just accept that it's normal for weight to fluctuate. The scale is a perfectly good tool for weight loss if you understand what exactly it is doing and look at the trend rather than the day-to-day variations.
I guess I just assumed I'd see one day below the trend line, one day above, not a solid week of increasingly above the line weights.
I did, too, but it hasn’t happened that way. I tend to lose a few pounds in a few days, “bounce back” by up to a pound, then spend the next two weeks trying to lose that one “extra” pound.
I stay pretty close to the same deficit every day, and it doesn’t seem to matter which days I eat a little over or a little under. I just don’t really lose weight, until I suddenly do again. 2-3 pounds over 4-7 days, then I can expect absolutely nothing again for a while.
If I only weighed myself once a month, though, I would think I was seeing pretty steady weight loss that was right in line with the goal I’ve set. Imagine if you’d only weighed yourself at the beginning and today—that’d be a pretty satisfying loss, wouldn’t it?
You’re not doing anything wrong. You just need to pull back and look at the big picture.1 -
I've fluctuated between the same 8lbs for 4 months. It can be frustrating, but you have to be patient, maintain meticulous logging (which I slacked on over the holidays), and don't sweat the numbers. The scale is merely a tool.0
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Oh yeah, I meant the lentils. We always refrigerate/freeze the rice after the end of the keep warm function on our rice-cooker.The amount of water that disappears between day one and day two of cooked rice has to be utterly negligible unless you leave it in a open bowl on the work surface. But in a covered pan or bowl in the fridge, really not going to make a difference.
Honestly I do often leave it out on the hob, plus I'll reboil it next day to heat it.
Seriously, don't do that!!!! https://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/can-reheating-rice-cause-food-poisoning.aspx?CategoryID=51
No, don't do it with lentils either..!
No cooked food should be left out as they ALL breed bacteria at room temperature! As soon as they have cooled down they need to go into the fridge or freezer. 2 -
No, don't do it with lentils either..! No cooked food should be left out as they ALL breed bacteria at room temperature! As soon as they have cooled down they need to go into the fridge or freezer.
If I was going to feed it to someone immunocompromised I would be more worried, but I've been doing this for years, and eating food cooked and reheated like this by my parents for years, and really the worst thing that's likely to happen is some icky guts for a bit. Is it really a big deal? I wouldn't feed my son this because he's still too little and his immune system might not be up to scratch and I wouldn't feed an elderly person or someone on immunosuppressant drugs food cooked this way - but a normal healthy person should be able to handle it surely?6 -
No, don't do it with lentils either..! No cooked food should be left out as they ALL breed bacteria at room temperature! As soon as they have cooled down they need to go into the fridge or freezer.
If I was going to feed it to someone immunocompromised I would be more worried, but I've been doing this for years, and eating food cooked and reheated like this by my parents for years, and really the worst thing that's likely to happen is some icky guts for a bit. Is it really a big deal? I wouldn't feed my son this because he's still too little and his immune system might not be up to scratch and I wouldn't feed an elderly person or someone on immunosuppressant drugs food cooked this way - but a normal healthy person should be able to handle it surely?
Having had proper food poisoning before, no, it's not just a case of icky guts, a normal healthy person would not be able to handle it. It can cause extreme dehydration and have you bed bound for a week, even with treatment. No perishable food should be left out at room temperature for more than a couple of hours.4 -
Unless you give up now, you'll be on this long enough to convince yourself that what you're experiencing is how it is going to be all the time. You're just new and expect it to work linearly which it will not.
The scale measures total body weight. Not fat weight. You are eating on a deficit therefore you are losing fat. In fact your deficit is so big that you are also losing a lot of muscle.
I've been counting since Feb 2016. My weight drops on the scale twice a month only - after period and after ovulation. It still can account for all the deficit I've made during the month. This is how it works sometimes, like it or not.
Like I said, you will see and get used to it. Unless you give up now.
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No, I have no intention of giving up.gebeziseva wrote: »Unless you give up now, you'll be on this long enough to convince yourself that what you're experiencing is how it is going to be all the time. You're just new and expect it to work linearly which it will not.
The scale measures total body weight. Not fat weight. You are eating on a deficit therefore you are losing fat. In fact your deficit is so big that you are also losing a lot of muscle.
I've been counting since Feb 2016. My weight drops on the scale twice a month only - after period and after ovulation. It still can account for all the deficit I've made during the month. This is how it works sometimes, like it or not.
Like I said, you will see and get used to it. Unless you give up now.1 -
No, don't do it with lentils either..! No cooked food should be left out as they ALL breed bacteria at room temperature! As soon as they have cooled down they need to go into the fridge or freezer.
If I was going to feed it to someone immunocompromised I would be more worried, but I've been doing this for years, and eating food cooked and reheated like this by my parents for years, and really the worst thing that's likely to happen is some icky guts for a bit. Is it really a big deal? I wouldn't feed my son this because he's still too little and his immune system might not be up to scratch and I wouldn't feed an elderly person or someone on immunosuppressant drugs food cooked this way - but a normal healthy person should be able to handle it surely?
No, no, no!!!! You have just been very lucky... And if you had ever had food poisoning, I can assure you it's quite a bit more than "icky guts". Why would you even risk it?5
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