My First Plateau. Comments welcome.

UPDATE TIME!! Woo.

Man oh man have I been doing it wrong. So, a couple of things: 1) I stopping thinking of "1 week" as a plateau. Thank you all for the guidance!; 2) sadly, I think I'm on an actual plateau now as I've been floating along for the past couple weeks with no perceived progress (but one of my own making); and 3) I've made some significant changes, which I'll outline below.

First, for my size and weight, MFP says I should be eating ~1,800 cals/day in order to lose 1.5lbs/week. The intake is getting progressively lower as I lose weight which is to be expected. The big change so far is that I'm finally able to start exercising again, which is very exciting. I told y'all how I broke my foot on Thanksgiving. Welp, I've finally taken the boot off and I started by hitting my stationary bike. Beginning back in mid-January, I try to go at least 30 min 4x-5x/week at a moderate pace (say, 12mph). MFP tells me this burns +/-400 cals. I've been eating my exercise cals back. Oops -- more on this later.

I'm told that "being healed" is different than "being 100%." Story checks out, as my poor little tootsies on the broken foot were aching some when I first started the bike. I'm not trying to re-injure myself, so I made sure not to push it too hard. After a week of biking, I tried to incorporate walking the Pup to the park and back (~2mi round trip). Every single step was painful, but strangely, my foot felt better halfway through the walk. I realized that the pain I experience is due to compensating for the broken side by placing the weight towards the outside of my foot and thus not putting weight on the broken side. Halfway through the walk, I started correcting my walking back to "normal" and this helped the pain a ton! So I kept walking and biking for a couple weeks and my foot starting feeling way better. Still not fully healed though. The funny part for me was realizing that the residual hurt wasn't from the break, but from trying not to aggravate the break.

Fast forward to now, and I've just begun lifting again too (this is barely week two of lifting, and going into week four of working out again). I was scared to start the lifting because of the foot, but I eased into it. Here's the new plan: lift 3x/week and do cardio 2x, with two rest days. Nothing fancy on the cardio - still keeping it to a 30~35min bike ride, or walking the Pup. The lifting is starting off with high-reps HIIT but I'll eventually progress towards more classic squat/dead/bench stuff. (As an aside, I DO NOT know how to dead. I really need to get a trainer to show me how to do that cuz I'm gonna injure myself real fast messing that up I feel). A few strange things have started happening... I feel WAY better now that I'm exercising again; shocker. Now that I'm down 20lbs my clothes are fitting better; double-shocker, I know. The lifting is stupid hard at the moment and I swear it makes my cardio on the off days harder too. I feel like a pipsqueak because the weights are embarrassingly light. But I don't care, because it's literally week two of lifting... This is gonna take some time.

So, back to that plateau. I think the real reason I've not seen any losses is that I wasn't thinking about this situation logically. It seems obvious now and I feel like an idiot when I admit it, but I've been eating back my exercise cals and expecting the weight loss to continue. Here's where I went wrong -- MFP asked me how active I am in calculating my goals. I'm not active. At all. I sit at a desk all day. But I thought to myself "if I start working out, surely I should be using 'lightly active,' right!?" So that's what I did. I realize now that means that my goal already includes the fact that I'm working out and by eating back my exercise cals I'm just back to maintenance, even possibly gain. Sure enough, the scale confirms that because I've been floating at 201~203 for these past couple weeks unable to dip below that magic number. Sigh. Full disclosure, I had a couple cheat days in there too and that can't have helped.

Spoiler alert - that's not a plateau. That's me not sciencing this situation/just plain doing it wrong. So now I've resolved to try and hit my goal of 1,800/day for the next couple while also working out as planned. I expect the weight will start coming off again and I hope my next update to you will be because I'm below that magic number (and that much closer to the end goal). I plan on tweaking the numbers a bit if I find I'm too hungry to sustain the momentum. Say, up it to 1,900/day or even 2,000 and see if I can't sustain. I also figure that the actual -2.0 lbs/week I was getting at first probably means 1,900~2,000/day is gonna be just fine but I'm definitely going to start by trying to keep it to 1,800 and see how I feel.

The current lifting plan I'm on calls for an off-week once every 8 weeks or so. I believe I'll coincide that off-week with the necessary

JeromeBarry1 wrote: »

"diet break"

I should be including too. If I'm thinking about this correctly, then that week will be not lifting AND eating maintenance cals (but not over-eating, obvi)!? That sounds like a holiday.

Cheers,

- JB

PAV8888 wrote: »

Very few people are truly sedentary while making an effort to move around. I WAS truly sedentary at some point of time. I would have days with LESS than 1000 steps. But, most people with a job and activities that take them out of the house qualify for lightly active given that the entry point is at about 35 minutes of non sitting activity in a day.

So, if you spend at least 35 minutes to an hour walking around doing stuff... you probably qualify for lightly active.

But, but, but I gain weight when I am setup as lightly active. <-- whether you are lightly active or very active or sedentary doesn't matter one whit. These are all *estimates* of your caloric needs. Your logging prowess and consistency affects your calculations, and so does how closely your body tracks to "average". So, yes, the only thing that matters is your weight trend over time and whether the information you've been collecting about calories in and out is sufficient to give you guidance on how you should compensate in order to reach your goals.

And to the crux: YOU have started a new weight lifting program. YOU have started walking after a long period of time sidelined. You also had a "cheat" day or two (your term) (did you log them by the way? why not? how do you know how much or how little you consumed if you didn't? Did you at least take pictures so you can 'guestimate' after the fact?) <-- let's all sing together "a ton of water weight". Let us also sing together that some of the water weight will stay with you for as long as you keep exercising. And some, especially the sodium stuff and any extra superbowl food in transit through your body... will be leaving shortly.

So. Some final thoughts for you

Get a weight trend application and look at your weight trend over 3 to 6 week time periods (males can get away with two or three weeks, females with a monthly cycle should include at least one complete cycle when considering their weight trend)

if you truly need to only eat 1800 Calories to create a 750 Calorie deficit, that deficit may be the wrong goal for you. If your energy reserves are such that you are correctly categorized as normal weight or overweight you should probably limit yourself to 20% deficits. If your energy reserves are such that you would be correctly categorized as obese then 25% deficits are probably sustainable.

My experience tracks with your commentary 1:1. MFP's *estimate* of lightly active makes me gain weight. I probably walk ~2,500 steps/day average if you don't count my new workout routine so I doubt I'm truly sedentary but that's the only other option.

Regarding my cheat days, yeah, I logged everything to the best of my ability. Some of those days were WAY above where I wanted. But the world didn't end, I didn't gain all my lost weight back, and I was able to continue with the plan afterwards. My brother-in-law also uses MFP and he says he now looks at his weekly totals vs. daily like I do. Obviously you can access both with a button click or two, but weekly is kind of nice to get a snapshot of how you're doing overall as a day or two of higher cals isn't gonna ruin the plan.

I'm confused by your last paragraph though. I put in "lose 1.5 lbs/week" as my goal, does that mean MFP is trying to create a 750 cal daily deficit? That seems like a lot. If my maths are correct, that also means I'm looking at a 29% deficit as opposed to your suggested 20% eh? (Which, by the way, would give me a ~2,050 cal daily budget. Also, when I first started this attempt 11 weeks ago, I was technically obese. Yikes. Thankfully that is no longer the case.). I think my energy is pretty good for now but I have found I need to spread my cals out better throughout the day. Currently I'm eating +/- 400 cals each for brekkie and lunch. I feel great all the way to lunch, and I'm fine until the afternoon as well. That leaves me with 1,000 cals for dinner and snacks, but it also leaves me ravenous and grumpy come 4:00pm. I end up coming home and snacking more than I'd like. What's worse is I don't see the sense in snacking so heavily about an hour or two before dinner...

I've consciously started having a smaller snack at 4:00pm at work. Even bought a second food scale to hide in my desk and track more accurately. This helps a ton. It's so amazing what all this data is able to tell me if I pay attention!

The real reason I'm writing is that I promised an update once I broke that made-up barrier. Ladies and gentlemen, as of this writing I'm back under 200lbs and at 199.4 I just surpassed my second-best attempt which means this time is my new second best! Feels great. You know what I call that now? A real good start.

Cheers,

JB

Good Morning Everyone!

Another quick update. Down 25lbs according to the most recent movement on the scale. 106-day MFP streak and counting, and 58 days since beginning working out again after breaking my foot.

This week marks my first diet break where I eat at maintenance for the entire week. I've coincided it with my workout routine (Book of Muscle, Beginner Program) which is a 6-month program broken into 4 stages. Upon completion of each 6-week stage, it recommends a full week of rest from lifting. Stage 1 is an anatomical adaptation stage that's mostly a HIIT style routine designed to get you back into lifting and correct imbalances. I've tried this program before and could never finish the full 6-months. If memory serves, I stopped halfway into Stage 2, or a little over 2 months in. Stage 2 is hypertrophy, and the workouts get much harder. I feel very confident this time around because I feel great physically but I'd be lying if I didn't say I'm nervous to start these hard ones next week!

I don't intend to become sedentary this week--instead I'll still be doing my bike rides for cardio. It'll be interesting to see what happens after a week of maintenance while still eating my exercise cals back (albeit very conservatively: I try to only eat back half of the cals being reported into MFP). I'm expecting to gain a little, but that happens naturally day-to-day anyways. I'll really be shocked if eating maintenance works and I just **maintain**. So far my experience has always been that when my intake increases, those first 5lbs pop right back on. Full disclosure: I never once tried to track for maintenance. I probably gorged myself once I lost all MFP accountability so it's funny to say "I'll be shocked" when in reality I was probably waaaay over maintenance cals. Oops.

But I tell you what - if I can float around +/- 198~200 for a week, I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. My last post was one month ago, and I'm down 4 lbs from then. Sure enough, after changing my settings to "lightly active, lose 1lb/week" it appears that I'm tracking right where I should be! I want to lose another 25~30lbs, so if I continue the trend I'm hoping to hit goal around September/October. I've sorta augmented my thinking on that goal however. I think it's more important to me that I lose pure fat, and not just pounds. So I have a new primary goal: completing Book of Muscle Beginner Program while still in deficit/periodic breaks at maintenance. If I'm gaining muscle, but that process slows my weight loss, well, I think that's okay as long as I'm still moving in the right direction. More importantly, I should be losing body fat % even if the scale isn't showing it.

So now I've started to incorporate more data. I'm beginning to track body fat %. Still haven't gotten up the courage to bust out the tape measure and start tracking all my dimensions, but I sorta figure why not add that too? I've been using one of those little hand-held sensors to track body fat %. It seems wildly inaccurate because that thing fluctuates worse than my scale does... However, you all have helped change my thought process and now I think about the trend "over a sufficiently long period of time" instead of day-to-day. Since I just started tracking, it'll take a while before I can see the trend in that data set.

For those wondering - my Beginner Program should end right around the beginning of August.

Ahh, life is good.

Cheers,

JB