Not losing any more weight - suggestions?
NerwenLoth
Posts: 5 Member
Hi all, need advice as I am not sure how to move forward.
Last year I started a 1200 kcal diet with meal replacement shakes. I know it's not the best but I needed to lose weight fast for my wedding or my dress wouldn't fit! I continued for 6-7 months as it was working well. I didn't exercise much (about 15-30 minutes 3-4 times a week and light exercises). I lost 26.5 lbs.
In March with lockdown I decided to change and I upped my kcal to 1500 with a bit more exercise (a lot of walks and yoga). I then took a break from my diet for over a month while I went back to my home country on "holidays". When I came back and gyms reopen I decided to join and started exercise more seriously. Since August, I am doing 1550 kcal and 3-5 weight lift sessions of about 1.5 hours each and some yoga as well. I forgot to mention that I try to follow my macros and that I also have a cheat day per week where I eat what I want (seems to work well for me).
I haven't lost any weight since April... I am now 125.5 lbs per 5"3 which is absolutely normal weight but I would like to lose more.
Any suggestions is appreciated as I am not sure what to do or change 🤷🏻♀️
Last year I started a 1200 kcal diet with meal replacement shakes. I know it's not the best but I needed to lose weight fast for my wedding or my dress wouldn't fit! I continued for 6-7 months as it was working well. I didn't exercise much (about 15-30 minutes 3-4 times a week and light exercises). I lost 26.5 lbs.
In March with lockdown I decided to change and I upped my kcal to 1500 with a bit more exercise (a lot of walks and yoga). I then took a break from my diet for over a month while I went back to my home country on "holidays". When I came back and gyms reopen I decided to join and started exercise more seriously. Since August, I am doing 1550 kcal and 3-5 weight lift sessions of about 1.5 hours each and some yoga as well. I forgot to mention that I try to follow my macros and that I also have a cheat day per week where I eat what I want (seems to work well for me).
I haven't lost any weight since April... I am now 125.5 lbs per 5"3 which is absolutely normal weight but I would like to lose more.
Any suggestions is appreciated as I am not sure what to do or change 🤷🏻♀️
0
Replies
-
Do you use a food scale?0
-
-
In your shoes I would cut out the "cheat" day.11
-
In your shoes I would cut out the "cheat" day.
I can try. I mean I think that's the thing that keeps me sane, because I love eating and otherwise I never eat what I want... But I could try to have only a cheat meal once a week instead of a full day. I will try that and see how it goes!0 -
With a BMI of 22, any further weight loss is going to be slow and low unless your calorie deficit is on point most of the time.
Up to you of course but you may do better to focus on body recomp (rather than scale weight loss) where your body shape is likely to change as well as looking smaller but weigh the same or even a little more.11 -
I'm betting on the cheat day cancelling some or all of your loses for the rest of the week.8
-
Are you logging the cheat day? If not, start. Then see where you are.6
-
i would stop the cheat day and do just a "treat" or "cheat meal" because if you average out what calories youre spending on the cheat meal then it could bring your daily average out of your calorie deficit causing a stall or even a gain if you keep it up. maybe do a cheat meal instead of day, or do the cheat day less frequently like once every two or three weeks until your weight loss picks up. also, you could vary you calories per day to kind of trick you metabolism up so it doesn't expect the same calories each day- this helps when you plateau.2
-
Are you logging the cheat day? If not, start. Then see where you are.
Yes, this is important. Your cheat day might be cancelling out a lot of your weekly deficit. If you haven't lost weight since April, you are eating at maintenance.
Be aware as well that weightlifting doesn't burn many calories unfortunately, so if you swapped some walks for weights you may be burning less now.6 -
NerwenLoth wrote: »....I also have a cheat day per week where I eat what I want (seems to work well for me).....
It isn't working, though. With your calorie and exercise numbers, and the fact that you're logging accurately to the best of your knowledge, the odds are so very high that the cheat day is the culprit that you really should drill into that. Either kill the cheat days, or at least measure them precisely so you know what's involved, calorically speaking.
It's very easy to reverse an entire week of dieting with a cheat day. I've done it many times. I didn't start really losing weight until I eliminated cheat days.
If you bake in 100 calories a day for "treats", special, fun things you don't think of as diet food, so that you're getting a little treat everyday, then you'll likely feel much less need for a cheat day.
7 -
On a cheat day, I'll easily eat 1000 - 2000 over my allowance (so total of 2500 - 3000 calories for the day). I don't do those often for obvious reasons.
When your deficit is only 250 calories for a day, or 1750 for a week, to lose half a lb a week which is where you should be at, you can see how one cheat day can completely wipe that out.
Track your cheat days.2 -
Thank you all!
I haven't thought about the cheat days at all, as they were working... But I guess I was having a lower caloric intake and didn't take that into account!
I am also focusing more on body recomp as someone mentioned (hence the weight lifting), but I would still like to lose 7-8 lbs.
I will only do 1 free meal per week and I will log it, and see how it goes!3 -
NerwenLoth wrote: »Thank you all!
I haven't thought about the cheat days at all, as they were working... But I guess I was having a lower caloric intake and didn't take that into account!
I am also focusing more on body recomp as someone mentioned (hence the weight lifting), but I would still like to lose 7-8 lbs.
I will only do 1 free meal per week and I will log it, and see how it goes!
Definitely log the cheat day. It is so easy to undo a whole week with one day. Especially as time goes on, the body realizes you will be eating a lot one day a week and you may subconsciously be eating more and more on that "cheat" to make up for the deficit.3 -
Since you are already at a healthy weight I wouldn't focus on the number on the scale too much and work on body comp as another poster said, you can weigh more but look slimmer.2
-
Try cutting back on the "cheat day" to one cheat meal every two weeks. When I started tracking every single thing I ate I noticed that my cheat days added up almost to the amount of calories I had saved over the week. Then I stopped doing the cheat days and just started having a meal with extra calories every couple of weeks. No need to work so hard just to undo everything at the end of the week.1
This discussion has been closed.
Categories
- All Categories
- 1.4M Health, Wellness and Goals
- 393.6K Introduce Yourself
- 43.8K Getting Started
- 260.3K Health and Weight Loss
- 176K Food and Nutrition
- 47.5K Recipes
- 232.6K Fitness and Exercise
- 431 Sleep, Mindfulness and Overall Wellness
- 6.5K Goal: Maintaining Weight
- 8.6K Goal: Gaining Weight and Body Building
- 153K Motivation and Support
- 8K Challenges
- 1.3K Debate Club
- 96.3K Chit-Chat
- 2.5K Fun and Games
- 3.8K MyFitnessPal Information
- 24 News and Announcements
- 1.1K Feature Suggestions and Ideas
- 2.6K MyFitnessPal Tech Support Questions