Is this plateau normal?

oakster69
oakster69 Posts: 78 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I am 52 years old and I am taking on a large weight loss journey. The first 3 months were pretty easy. I lost 50 pounds over that time, with most of it coming the first two months. Since that point, I have gone approximately 1 month without losing anything? I have actually gained a pound. I understand that plateaus are common and everyone has them, but to be on a 1000 calorie a day deficit for an entire month without losing any weight seems impossible to me. I have consumed more diet soda this month than previous which I would expect to cause a little water retention. I started this journey at 432 pounds and am down to 382 pounds. My goal weight is 250 pounds. I am 6'4" tall and have a desk job which I am at for about 10 hours a day. My questions are....
  • Is this normal.... or even possible
  • Does this mean I am incorrectly counting calories somehow, or my 2300/2400 a day calorie goal is incorrect?
  • How do you break out of a plateau? It blows me away to think I have just hovered at the same weight for a month.

Replies

  • age_is_just_a_number
    age_is_just_a_number Posts: 631 Member
    Congratulations on your first 50!
    Hang in there. Plateaus are normal. You also need to ensure you are being accurate with your intake recording.
    Good luck!
  • Xellercin
    Xellercin Posts: 924 Member
    I recorded my weight daily for 4 years while I was losing and regularly had what appeared to be plateaus for upwards of 6-8 weeks. Looking at the graph over the longterm though, as long as my behaviour was consistent, so was my weight loss when seen over a longer scale of time.

    Perhaps that's not your case, but I know that for me, consistently over several years, my weight only actually plateaued if I ate more, like over Christmas or around my summer holidays.

    My body could hold onto water for a loooooong time, but at the end of the day, the scale ultimately followed the diet predictably for years.
  • Jthanmyfitnesspal
    Jthanmyfitnesspal Posts: 3,522 Member
    Yeah, stay with it. It's pretty hard to lose more than a pound a week for very long periods. Your great results up front are probably leading to a little re-distribution.
  • earlnabby
    earlnabby Posts: 8,171 Member
    Yes, a plateau is normal. If you find yourself in one, it is a good time to do a couple of things:

    1) Go into your goals on MFP and make sure your calorie target is the right one for your new weight. If you find you need to make changes in your macro settings, this is a good time to do that too

    2) Look into your logging. It is easy to loosen up a bit after months of success so check to see if you have loosened up a bit too much. Make sure you are weighing, measuring, and logging everything.

    If everything is good, this is the time to learn patience. You know what you are doing, otherwise you wouldn't have lost that first 50 lb. Trust the process.

    Oh, and diet soda does not cause water retention unless you have a sensitivity to artificial sweeteners. You ingest the same amount of sodium from drinking softened tap water than you do from sodas.
  • oakster69
    oakster69 Posts: 78 Member
    Where did you begin on research for the macros. I have mine set where the app puts them. Adjusting macros is an area where I could use some research to understand what I am doing.
  • goal06082021
    goal06082021 Posts: 2,130 Member
    oakster69 wrote: »
    Where did you begin on research for the macros. I have mine set where the app puts them. Adjusting macros is an area where I could use some research to understand what I am doing.

    I'm not OP, but here's a quick and dirty intro to macros.

    "Macros" are macronutrients: carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. All food is made up of some combination of these three things and a healthy diet includes a good mix of all three for most people. Carbohydrates and proteins provide about 4 calories' worth of energy per gram; fats provide about 9 calories' worth of energy per gram. The way your body metabolizes that energy also varies. Carbs are turned into energy by your body more quickly than fats or proteins. This is why carbs are important when you need energy quickly, but also why you may feel hungry sooner after eating a carb-heavy meal.

    A 40/30/30 carb:protein:fat macro split, meaning 40% of your daily calories come from carbs and 30% each from protein and fat, is fine for most people. If you have a medical reason to limit or focus on any one of those macronutrients, follow the advice of your doctor and consider working with a registered dietitian as well. If you don't have a medical condition that requires you to pay attention to macros like that, you still may find that your personal human body feels better and you're better able to stick to your calorie budget and meet your diet and fitness goals by tweaking those percentages. How to do that really depends on you. Are you better able to meet your goals if you limit carbs and try to get more fat or protein? Do you need a large physical volume of food in your belly to feel "full"? The only way to figure it out is to, as the kids say, eff around and find out. Track your food as best you can and pay attention to trends. Pay extra close attention to the macros on the entries you pick, to make sure those are accurate - there are a lot of entries in the database with only calories and no macro data because it wasn't always required to report that when adding a food to the database.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,257 Member
    edited November 2021
    oakster69 wrote: »
    Where did you begin on research for the macros. I have mine set where the app puts them. Adjusting macros is an area where I could use some research to understand what I am doing.

    The MFP default macros are fine for most people, though a too-aggressive weight loss rate can make that not true.

    Also, it's 100% true IMO and experience that calorie balance determines body weight/fat level, and nutrition (of which macros are a key piece) is for health, body composition, satiation, and that sort of thing.

    f you want to go more into macro settings, here are some things you can *consider* as a different way of looking at macro goals:

    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/819055-setting-your-calorie-and-macro-targets

    For protein specifically, which is very important (one of the two essential macronutrients, along with fats), here are some links from a site that is evidence based and generally regarded as neutral (e.g., they don't sell supplements or the like):

    https://examine.com/nutrition/protein-intake-calculator/
    https://examine.com/guides/protein-intake/

    For weight, though, calories are crucial. A thing to be aware of is that long or very aggressive calorie restriction can be counter-productive.

    For one, fast or lengthy weight loss can reduce calorie expenditure, basically through subtle fatigue. A technical term for this is "adaptive thermogenesis". This will not stop weight loss (at ultra-low calories), but it may make it slower than one would expect. The fatigue might not even be explicitly noticed, but involves things like less spontaneous movement (think fidgeting, which can burn low hundreds of calories per day!), a little lower average body temperature, maybe losing interest in one's more movement-oriented hobbies, putting off complicated chores as just seeming like a lot of work, etc.

    For two, the hormonal response to the stress of fast or lengthy loss can cause increased water retention that sort of creeps on, masking ongoing fat loss on the scale. Water isn't fat, so in one sense isn't worth worrying over, but it can be a cause of what look like stalls or plateaus.

    There's some good info about calorie restriction effects in this thread:

    http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10604863/of-refeeds-and-diet-breaks/p1

    Losing any meaningful total amount of fat weight is inherently a long term project: Weeks, months, perhaps even years. That puts a priority on using sustainable methods, to stay off the lose fast/regain merry-go-round. Some of us around here (I'm one) think that it's a good plan to target losing no more than 0.5-1% of current body weight weekly, unless under very close medical supervision for deficiencies or complications. People who have a very large amount to lose - as it sounds like you do - can be in a position to lose for a while at the higher end of that range.

    Your loss, assuming 3 months is around 12 weeks, has averaged a bit over 4 pounds a week. At 432 pounds, that was a rate around the 1%. Now that you're at 382, that loss rate would be getting pretty aggressive, especially since you're a taller guy to start with. You might consider taking your foot off the accelerator a bit, in terms of daily intake and deficit, maybe even take a break at maintenance calories for a couple of weeks.

    IMO, if someone's at a true calorie deficit on average over time, a stall or plateau will break. The strategies people use to break them may just be a way to pass the time, feeling as if one's doing *something*, until it happens when it's gonna happen. (If there's water retention, some strategies can perhaps encourage that to drop off, but that's about scale weight, not about fat loss, eh?)
    oakster69 wrote: »
    I am 52 years old and I am taking on a large weight loss journey. The first 3 months were pretty easy. I lost 50 pounds over that time, with most of it coming the first two months. Since that point, I have gone approximately 1 month without losing anything? I have actually gained a pound. I understand that plateaus are common and everyone has them, but to be on a 1000 calorie a day deficit for an entire month without losing any weight seems impossible to me. I have consumed more diet soda this month than previous which I would expect to cause a little water retention. I started this journey at 432 pounds and am down to 382 pounds. My goal weight is 250 pounds. I am 6'4" tall and have a desk job which I am at for about 10 hours a day. My questions are....
    • Is this normal.... or even possible
    • Does this mean I am incorrectly counting calories somehow, or my 2300/2400 a day calorie goal is incorrect?
    • How do you break out of a plateau? It blows me away to think I have just hovered at the same weight for a month.

    So:
    * Normal, and possible.
    * Not necessarily counting incorrectly, and probably aren't if you were losing at a good clip and stopped pretty suddenly, vs. loss gradually tapering off. (I eat 2300-2400 a lot of the time to maintain my weight. That's a lot of calories for a 65-year old 5'5" mid-120s pounds woman like me, but it's really, really not a lot of calories for a 52-year-old, 6'4", 382 pound man. Your BMR - the number of calories you'd expect to burn in a coma - would be estimated at 2600-3000 or so, and you're sedentary, not comatose.)
    * To break a plateau, IMO:

    1. Make sure your calorie counting is accurate, including any "cheat days"/slips (most everyone has 'em), bites/licks/tastes, etc. If you open your diary, some of the MFP old hands could take a look, see if they spot any areas where you may be able to improve accuracy. This is not a dig: Calorie counting is a skill, and it takes all of us some time to learn. Experienced people can help speed up the learning.
    2. Consider a diet break or refeed, based on research-based info in the thread about that that I linked above.
    3. Hang in there, patiently.

    Wishing you long term success!

  • Arc2Arc
    Arc2Arc Posts: 484 Member
    edited November 2021
    I’ve never lost in the neighborhood of 50 pounds, my max has been 25. This is my third tour of duty, this time I’m looking at losing 16 pounds.

    While I’ve consistently been successful using MFP and losing weight at my targeted rate, it’s never steady. Last week I lost 6 pounds. This week so far .1 pounds. The causes are likely water retention/loss, intestinal variations, varying sodium levels, fairly intense resistance training and who knows what else.

    Today I trained hard with weights and will be surprised if I don’t see a gain on the scale tomorrow despite meeting in fact coming under calorie goals. It drives me crazy but that’s the way it is.

    Keep at it, adjust if necessary and good luck.

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