Am I hitting a plateau? Or is my body just done losing?

remotebutterfly · February 2020

Hi guys, long time lurker first time poster. I’d love some advice

I’m a 25 year old woman, and I’m 5’4. My SW last September was 155ish (this was after losing 15 more pounds a few years back—my highest ever weight was 170! Anyway since September I’ve lost 22 lbs, and am now hovering around 132.5. My initial goal was 135 but I feel a bit chubby still, and am between pants sizes 6 and 4. I wanna get down to a 4 so shopping is easier, and have set my new goal as 125.

For some reason though I’m not losing weight anymore. I eat 1200- 1400 calories a day and do 30 minutes to an hour of intense cardio 5-6 days a week. I also have lately started adding more resistance training, using weight lifting machines and doing push ups and stuff too (so maybe I’m gaining muscle??) At this rate I was losing 1-2 pounds a week before...but for the past four weeks, I’ve only lost like 2-3 pounds total!

I have struggled with eating disorders in the past, and am proud of myself for doing it the healthy way this time. Things like intermittent fasting, even though they’re a great option for some, don’t feel safe for me because of my history. So I feel like if what I’m doing doesn’t work I’m out of options.

I know I’m technically at a healthy weight (first time in my adult life I’ve not been overweight, yay!). If I’m doing all I can and not losing much is my body just trying to tell me to stop losing?

lynn_glenmont · February 2020

Your problem is one of expectations. You're still losing weight at an appropriate rate for someone who is already a healthy weight.

Nony_Mouse · February 2020

At your size, 2-3 lbs in four weeks is about perfect. You don't have the same fat reserves to draw on now, and aiming for more aggressive weight loss is going to see you losing muscle mass.

Additionally, if this slow down coincides with the increased resistance training, you're likely holding on to some extra water for muscle repair.

Your calorie intake is also very low for an active person. Are you eating your exercise calories in addition to what MFP gives you as baseline?

remotebutterfly · February 2020

Nony_Mouse wrote: »

Your calorie intake is also very low for an active person. Are you eating your exercise calories in addition to what MFP gives you as baseline?

Hmm hadn’t thought that would impact anything! I’m not eating back the exercise calories — early on in my weight loss I did that but I found that it meant I wasn’t losing as much—my metabolism sucked when I started losing weight, and my body wanted to cling to all the extra calories it could.

Would that be different now that I’m a healthy weight? I could go up in calories, just really don’t want to sabotage my hard work, especially because honestly at 1,400 calories I’m never hungry.

PAV8888 · February 2020

STOP.

You're already at a healthy weight.
You've lost, actually, quite fast.
You've got a history of ED.
You are restricting to a significant degree given your current weight and exercise level.

If you don't take it slower you are significantly increasing your risk of falling back to an ED mindset as such is often triggered by intense restriction not to mention duration of such.

Your apparent weight level may have stalled due to resistance training. This does not mean that your caloric needs and the need to fuel the exercise are not there.

Change your expectations as you're already in too rapid of a weight loss path given your individual circumstances and rapidly moving away from what you have succeeded in doing so far, i.e. losing at a not too fast / restrictive /triggering pace.

As to what your body/feelings are telling you about the quantity of food you should eat... yeah. Let's skip that for now given how many people on MFP have a habit of not necessarily interpreting various signals correctly, and even if they DO interpret them correctly, being in the habit of overriding such signals with different interpretations that better suit the mood of their brain hamsters at the time! <myself included, of course> [Sanity check: you're losing weight, ergo you're eating at less than maintenance, ergo not feeling hungry right now is not exactly a correct feeling that you should believe...]

Second sanity check: you've been losing at the level you're eating now. You've increased your exercise. How exactly would eating at the maintenance level that could be extrapolated by your PRIOR losses sabotage your hard work? Maintenance eating is the default... isn't it?

DancingMoosie · February 2020

I had similar height and weight as you when losing, and I ended up needing to increase calories to sustain exercise. My doctor recommended 1800, as I was still losing on 1600, and was having bradycardia and low bp. You are still losing and are in a healthy weight range. Try increasing calories by 50-100 or so a day for a week and see what happens and how you feel.

xxzenabxx · February 2020

I’ve got similar stats to you: F, 5’ 4”, 26 yrs and 156lbs. I’m eating 2000 calories to lose weight since I have a history of ED too, I’m losing weight slowly- around 0.5 lbs a week. I exercise around 5 days week and focus more on weights. You need to eat more. You mind is thinking I’m terms of restriction because you also mentioned Intermittent Fasting. You want to restrict more and more and more. I’ve stopped IF, low carb and any other ‘rules’ that I had. My advice is to increase your calories slowly and then do a recomposition. You will still weigh the same but slowly replace the fat with muscle and look much slimmer.

Am I hitting a plateau? Or is my body just done losing?

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