5 Month Weight Loss Plateau!! Advice is Appreciated!

PickleDog38
PickleDog38 Posts: 22 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hi. I just need some advice from anyone who has experienced a really bad weight loss plateau or anyone who knows how to overcome one. I have already lost 45 lbs. I worked out on my elliptical every other day and stuck to 1,200 calories. I don’t even know how long that took me, but it has now been at least 4-5 months since I lost weight. My weight has not budged AT ALL. I didn’t change anything. I then read that maybe you should lower your caloric intake, but I also read that you should not go below 1,200 calories, which is what I’m still eating, so I didn’t lower my intake. I don’t do hard core tracking because I’m still eating what I did when I lost the weight. I tried to switch my elliptical routine, and I also upped my caloric intake, but that didn’t work. I tried more protein.. that didn’t work either! So now I’m just back to 1,200 calories and I’m doing either weight loss course or cross training course on the elliptical every day for 35-45 minutes, but nothing is working!! I really want to try cardio, weight lifting, or HIIT, but I don’t know where to start and I don’t have access to weights or gym equipment. I also can’t do outdoor exercise because it’s freezing cold and my parents don’t want me to run on the road alone, which I understand. Any advice?? It would be much appreciated!!

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  • TavistockToad
    TavistockToad Posts: 35,719 Member
    PickleDog38 wrote: »
    I tried to eat more protein for about a month, to no avail. I also tried to eat bigger meals, but that didn’t last long because I always ended up eating something small. I can’t force myself to eat a meal that looks “big” to me. I don’t know why. So currently I’m trying to stick to more filling meals with protein, but also stay within 1,200 calories. I feel like I should be eating more calories though. I just can’t figure out how much I should increase my intake. I was thinking maybe 1,600? Or maybe even higher than that. I’ve been on 1,200 calories pretty much consistently since I started losing weight, other than when I hit the plateau and tried to switch up my intake.

    what are your stats? what weight loss goal do you have MFP set to? how much weight do you have left to lose?
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  • TavistockToad
    TavistockToad Posts: 35,719 Member
    PickleDog38 wrote: »
    I’ve never been 100% sure of what weight I’m supposed to be, so my plan was to just keep losing weight until I’m happy with how I look and feel. Based on my height, age, and being female, I should be 154, which seems high to me. Especially considering I’m only 15 lbs away from 154 and I don’t even look or feel remotely close to how I want to. So I guess if I had a goal weight, it would be around 120-130. So I have about 38-48 more pounds to lose.

    how tall are you......?
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  • kiwiroz
    kiwiroz Posts: 57 Member
    edited October 2018
    I have found when I was heavier I had more wiggle room. I didn't need to track 100% accurately to still be able to loose at a good rate. Once you get closer to your goal that wiggle room disappears. If you are maintaining on what you are guestimating to be 1200 plus exercising you are most likely eating way more than you think. It can be little things that add up as well. Track accurately for a week to start with it may just blow your mind. I also find it good to refresh my motivation and understanding every couple of months to re-read the sticky posts just to make sure i haven't been slacking off in any easy to correct issues. You don't want to feel like you are slogging away on 1200 calories when the reality is you might be eating 2000 or more. Good luck

    Also in terms of exercise i brought a £7
    4 Week bodyweight programme from fitness blender.com (obviously lots of other options out there) they also have individual videos free on YouTube. 30-40mins 6 days a week at home no equipment. It's hard for me to find an excuse not to do it x
  • Seffell
    Seffell Posts: 2,244 Member
    1200 is very little food. If you were truly eating that much you would've been here screaming that you haven't lost anything after a week. Not after 5 months.

    Like the above advice: either start weighing all your food and tracking catefully or just start eating less.
  • somethingsoright
    somethingsoright Posts: 99 Member
    5 months is a very long time to go with no weight loss while eating 1,200 calories a day. I'd be a raging bull on so little calories. One thing to make sure of is if your logging is accurate. Are you weighing all your food? Once I started weighing even the packaged food I eat, it was a HUGE eye-opener. So much of the packaged food I was eating really had larger portions that what the label said. I had been unwittingly eating more calories than I thought by not weighing ALL my food.
  • ejg1010
    ejg1010 Posts: 48 Member
    Congratulations on losing 45 lbs! Well done at mastering maintenance without even trying!

    The heavier you are, the easier it is to create a calorie deficit. As you lose weight, you burn fewer calories to live/move and so to maintain the same deficit you need to eat less and/or move more. It really is that simple.

    If you aren't weighing and tracking every morsel you can't possibly know that you are only eating 1,200 calories per day. To repeat other posters, weigh absolutely everything. Log everything. Eat back half of your exercise calories as you'll need that extra energy but be careful not to overestimate your burn. If you really want this, you need to put in that extra little bit of time and effort as the last pounds are the hardest.

    Good luck!
  • lexington88
    lexington88 Posts: 29 Member
    What I find works for me and got me out of my latest plateau (admittedly, it was only a month, not five like you) is to have a weekend where I eat what I want. I don't track, I don't weigh, I don't obsess, I literally take the weekend off as though I'm on a holiday from dieting and don't have to worry about what I eat. I don't do it often, but the last two times I've plateaued (I try to give it at least a month before I consider it a plateau), it's triggered a whoosh when I go back to eating at my usual deficit - I went down a kilo or just under both times (2.2lb).

    I mean, take it with a grain of salt, because it's purely anecdotal and I don't think there's any science behind it, and the whooshes could have been entirely coincidental, but in my experience the act of physically deciding not to stress myself out about the scales not shifting helps. Actually thinking about what I ate on my off weekend probably wasn't massively over what I usually eat, so I'm not suggesting you binge on junk food, just don't obsess so much about everything you put in your mouth.

    When you go back to eating at a deficit, I agree with the posters above that it is so important to accurately track your calorie intake, especially as you're at 1200 calories - from experience, if I don't weigh and measure I find my portion sizes increasing ever so slightly, until it's two months later and I'm putting more food on my plate than my boyfriends, when it used to be closer to a 30/70 split the other way around!
  • puffbrat
    puffbrat Posts: 2,806 Member
    Deviette wrote: »
    PickleDog38 wrote: »
    Hi. I just need some advice from anyone who has experienced a really bad weight loss plateau or anyone who knows how to overcome one. I have already lost 45 lbs. I worked out on my elliptical every other day and stuck to 1,200 calories. I don’t even know how long that took me, but it has now been at least 4-5 months since I lost weight. My weight has not budged AT ALL. I didn’t change anything. I then read that maybe you should lower your caloric intake, but I also read that you should not go below 1,200 calories, which is what I’m still eating, so I didn’t lower my intake. I don’t do hard core tracking because I’m still eating what I did when I lost the weight. I tried to switch my elliptical routine, and I also upped my caloric intake, but that didn’t work. I tried more protein.. that didn’t work either! So now I’m just back to 1,200 calories and I’m doing either weight loss course or cross training course on the elliptical every day for 35-45 minutes, but nothing is working!! I really want to try cardio, weight lifting, or HIIT, but I don’t know where to start and I don’t have access to weights or gym equipment. I also can’t do outdoor exercise because it’s freezing cold and my parents don’t want me to run on the road alone, which I understand. Any advice?? It would be much appreciated!!

    So here's your problem. You're not actually eating 1200kcals. You're eating more than that, but you're not properly tracking it.

    Chances are, either you've plateued because you're still eating exactly the same number of calories that you were when you were 45lbs higher, and you've not adjusted that because you've lost weight, you body needs less calories to maintain.
    Or, more likely, your calorie intake has been slowly increasing, cancelling out the deficit, but so slowly that you've not really noticed.

    Do yourself a favour, tighten up your logging.

    This right here!
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  • bigbandjohn
    bigbandjohn Posts: 769 Member
    Hate to say it, but maybe you should bring a scale with you to weigh things if you eat out. Also, don't go by what packages say is in it. Weigh it. Someone in another thread brought up that the healthy choice dinner they had a heavier meal. In total, it was around 100 calories more than it stated on the box when they weighed and measured everything.

    I'm hitting a plateau right now. I seem to lose 3-5 lbs, then stall for a couple weeks.

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