Can you plateau at the start?
Dobbythefreelef
Posts: 33 Member
I have been on infinite failed attempts trying to lose weight. And most of the times i failed was because my weight wouldn't go down from 79kg. I don't remember the last time i saw 78kg on the scale. (I always start from 82kg). Its like i have been stuck at 79-82kg for years now. I won't go up (thankfully) but won't go down either (ugh). Now i have been doing really well these past couple of weeks. Got down at 79kg. Was really excited that was finally going to see the number 78kg by the end of this week, but got on the scale (expecting just a 0.2 or 0.3 kg loss) but I'm back at 80.5kg. This is frustrating beyong belief. And yes I know that weight fluctuates during the week, and that I haven't given it much time but I'm sick of never seeing 78kg. Now these past few years i was guilty of not counting calories perfectly, didnt have a food scale so it made sense that my weight wouldn't go down. But i'm doing everything right this time and don't want to see a gain. I wouldn't mind plateuing after losing a little but plateuing at the very start is very demotivating 
Would it be worth a shot to consume really low calories (800) for 3-4 days just to see the number 78kg or would it be unhealthy and i would jump back to 80kg after i return to my 1400kcal usual (which is still a deficit). I just really want to get below 79kg and i realize i might have an unhealthy relationship with the scale, but i believe it wouldn't be that way if i was just to go down below 78kg.
Would it be worth a shot to consume really low calories (800) for 3-4 days just to see the number 78kg or would it be unhealthy and i would jump back to 80kg after i return to my 1400kcal usual (which is still a deficit). I just really want to get below 79kg and i realize i might have an unhealthy relationship with the scale, but i believe it wouldn't be that way if i was just to go down below 78kg.
4
Replies
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It would be unhealthy to cut to 800 calories, and it might cause stress-related water retention and therefore still not even drop the scale weight. How demotivating would that be?
How long have you been at it, this time? Is it only 2 weeks? Are you adult and premenopausal? Generally, anything shorter than a full menstrual cycle isn't going to give you a fair assessment of results, and it might require two. If menopausal, go 4-6 weeks at least. (Your profile says female; I'm assuming that's true.)
If you're not in menopause yet, there are some women who only see a new low weight once a month, because of water weight weirdness with their hormonal cycles. That isn't a usual pattern, but it's a possible one. If you're giving up faster - or swapping up tactics faster - one side effect is that you never get to figure out what your personal patterns are.
I get that it's frustrating. I do.
I used to weigh around 83kg +/-, but never very far from that, for literally decades. Now I'm around 58kg, and have been in that neighborhood for 6+ years. Patient experimentation is really, really helpful, IMO, IME.10 -
It would be unhealthy to cut to 800 calories, and it might cause stress-related water retention and therefore still not even drop the scale weight. How demotivating would that be?
How long have you been at it, this time? Is it only 2 weeks? Are you adult and premenopausal? Generally, anything shorter than a full menstrual cycle isn't going to give you a fair assessment of results, and it might require two. If menopausal, go 4-6 weeks at least. (Your profile says female; I'm assuming that's true.)
If you're not in menopause yet, there are some women who only see a new low weight once a month, because of water weight weirdness with their hormonal cycles. That isn't a usual pattern, but it's a possible one. If you're giving up faster - or swapping up tactics faster - one side effect is that you never get to figure out what your personal patterns are.
I get that it's frustrating. I do.
I used to weigh around 83kg +/-, but never very far from that, for literally decades. Now I'm around 58kg, and have been in that neighborhood for 6+ years. Patient experimentation is really, really helpful, IMO, IME.
Thankyou so much for commenting! Being at 58kg is a dream of mine!
I'm 22 so definitely not premenopausal, but you're right. I havent given it one complete cycle and its hardly been 2.5 weeks. I know I havent given it enough time, but its frustrating that doing everything right is leading me to gain weight and seeing the number 78kg is seeming very distant eventhough I am SO close!
But you're right. I need to be patient. Someone suggested I try intermittent fasting. I think I will start IF from 1 day a week and keep a healthy deficit the rest of the days.
I'm not going to check the scale until the end of this menstrual cycle period, for which i have almost 2 weeks left.
Thankyou for replying again! Would it be alright for me to add you?1 -
Dobbythefreelef wrote: »It would be unhealthy to cut to 800 calories, and it might cause stress-related water retention and therefore still not even drop the scale weight. How demotivating would that be?
How long have you been at it, this time? Is it only 2 weeks? Are you adult and premenopausal? Generally, anything shorter than a full menstrual cycle isn't going to give you a fair assessment of results, and it might require two. If menopausal, go 4-6 weeks at least. (Your profile says female; I'm assuming that's true.)
If you're not in menopause yet, there are some women who only see a new low weight once a month, because of water weight weirdness with their hormonal cycles. That isn't a usual pattern, but it's a possible one. If you're giving up faster - or swapping up tactics faster - one side effect is that you never get to figure out what your personal patterns are.
I get that it's frustrating. I do.
I used to weigh around 83kg +/-, but never very far from that, for literally decades. Now I'm around 58kg, and have been in that neighborhood for 6+ years. Patient experimentation is really, really helpful, IMO, IME.
Thankyou so much for commenting! Being at 58kg is a dream of mine!
I'm 22 so definitely not premenopausal, but you're right. I havent given it one complete cycle and its hardly been 2.5 weeks. I know I havent given it enough time, but its frustrating that doing everything right is leading me to gain weight and seeing the number 78kg is seeming very distant eventhough I am SO close!
But you're right. I need to be patient. Someone suggested I try intermittent fasting. I think I will start IF from 1 day a week and keep a healthy deficit the rest of the days.
I'm not going to check the scale until the end of this menstrual cycle period, for which i have almost 2 weeks left.
Thankyou for replying again! Would it be alright for me to add you?
Sure, it's fine to add me. I'm kind of a sub-par MFP friend in that part of the app (more of a Community forum gal, I guess), but I do accept friend requests from any reasonable person with some Community history, like yourself.
Intermittent fasting (IF) will be helpful if it helps you manage hunger cues (some people find they're not hungry outside their eating window, loosely, or that strict rules help them stick with reduced calories). It's very trendy right now, but the idea that it has extra-special powers hasn't held up well, so far, in the research I've seen. But sure, try it, see if it makes things easier or harder for you. Experiments are good!
Keep in mind, as you monitor your weight, that bodies are made up of multiple things: Bones, muscle, fat, miscellaneous other useful tissues, and water. We can be 60%+ water! On top of that, our scale weight includes the weight of recent food/drink consumed, on its way to becoming waste; pus several pounds of gut microbes that we need, but that aren't even genetically "us".
Mostly, what we want, when we say "lose weight" is to lose fat. But that's a thing that happens pretty gradually, a fraction of a pound per day (if we want to stay healthy while it happens). Alongside that gradual creep-down of fat loss, the water content of our bodies, and the food in transit, are shifting by multiple pounds through the course of a day or few. That will hide fat loss on the scale, or at least play peek-a-boo with it, for a surprisingly long time.
The water and digestive contents are just part of how a healthy body stays healthy, not something to fret about. Personally, I like to weigh myself every morning and just calmly watch the patterns: Even when I was losing fat at a good rate, my daily weight would jump up and down by several pounds from one day to the next, but the gradual course was downward, as those gradual fat losses accumulated. And I was seeing those multi-pound ups and downs post-menopause: It can be more extreme in a woman, before that.
You have a meaningful amount of weight to lose, according to what you write. Losing a meaningful amount of fat weight (in a healthy manner) inherently takes quite a long time: Months, doubtless. Working on making it relatively easy and sustainable is a really good idea, and patience will be a very necessary tool in your toolkit. Learning how not to stress about the normal fluctuations is part of the picture: Months of emotional upheaval and frustration wouldn't be very pleasant!
You can do this - give your methods a realistic think, make it easier on yourself.6 -
@Dobbythefreelef (did I mention that I love the screen name including that you're a "lef"
)
You do have a memorable name. And I checked and noticed that you had flirted with MFP before. You will benefit greatly if you can manage to accept what *IS*. Sort of a zen thing. Weight is. You record it in the morning after washroom before eating or drinking (hopefully). It goes straight into your weight trend app. That's it. It is not a verdict on you. It is not something that you deserve to see moving one way or another just because you did or did not do something. LONG TERM choices you make WILL INFLUENCE the weight. But short term the localized gravitational anomalies near your scale will just yield variable results.
IF you expect reward for doing things... it will be a tough road. Sometimes we do all things right just for the sake of doing all the things right. You can brush your teeth every day and STILL get a cavity. Doesn't mean you stop brushing your teeth!
Unlike Ann I will NOT encourage you to change what you've been doing. keep doing the same thing 4-6 weeks and collecting valuable data so that you can actually form a real and informed opinion as to what is or is not working.
If you keep changing everything at once to see fast results... you will NOT have the option of ever truly knowing whether something worked or didn't work.
And try to embed in your thinking that the PROCESS is valuable. The process itself; not just the result.
You don't just want to get a fish on your plate and who cares about the details!
You DO want to know how to fish and how to clean and dress the fish and how to cook it and how to plate it and how to enjoy it! Because if you know all that you will have a much higher chance of being able to manage your fish over the next 80 and a bit years
5 -
Dobbythefreelef wrote: »It would be unhealthy to cut to 800 calories, and it might cause stress-related water retention and therefore still not even drop the scale weight. How demotivating would that be?
How long have you been at it, this time? Is it only 2 weeks? Are you adult and premenopausal? Generally, anything shorter than a full menstrual cycle isn't going to give you a fair assessment of results, and it might require two. If menopausal, go 4-6 weeks at least. (Your profile says female; I'm assuming that's true.)
If you're not in menopause yet, there are some women who only see a new low weight once a month, because of water weight weirdness with their hormonal cycles. That isn't a usual pattern, but it's a possible one. If you're giving up faster - or swapping up tactics faster - one side effect is that you never get to figure out what your personal patterns are.
I get that it's frustrating. I do.
I used to weigh around 83kg +/-, but never very far from that, for literally decades. Now I'm around 58kg, and have been in that neighborhood for 6+ years. Patient experimentation is really, really helpful, IMO, IME.
Thankyou so much for commenting! Being at 58kg is a dream of mine!
I'm 22 so definitely not premenopausal, but you're right. I havent given it one complete cycle and its hardly been 2.5 weeks. I know I havent given it enough time, but its frustrating that doing everything right is leading me to gain weight and seeing the number 78kg is seeming very distant eventhough I am SO close!
But you're right. I need to be patient. Someone suggested I try intermittent fasting. I think I will start IF from 1 day a week and keep a healthy deficit the rest of the days.
I'm not going to check the scale until the end of this menstrual cycle period, for which i have almost 2 weeks left.
Thankyou for replying again! Would it be alright for me to add you?
Sure, it's fine to add me. I'm kind of a sub-par MFP friend in that part of the app (more of a Community forum gal, I guess), but I do accept friend requests from any reasonable person with some Community history, like yourself.
Intermittent fasting (IF) will be helpful if it helps you manage hunger cues (some people find they're not hungry outside their eating window, loosely, or that strict rules help them stick with reduced calories). It's very trendy right now, but the idea that it has extra-special powers hasn't held up well, so far, in the research I've seen. But sure, try it, see if it makes things easier or harder for you. Experiments are good!
Keep in mind, as you monitor your weight, that bodies are made up of multiple things: Bones, muscle, fat, miscellaneous other useful tissues, and water. We can be 60%+ water! On top of that, our scale weight includes the weight of recent food/drink consumed, on its way to becoming waste; pus several pounds of gut microbes that we need, but that aren't even genetically "us".
Mostly, what we want, when we say "lose weight" is to lose fat. But that's a thing that happens pretty gradually, a fraction of a pound per day (if we want to stay healthy while it happens). Alongside that gradual creep-down of fat loss, the water content of our bodies, and the food in transit, are shifting by multiple pounds through the course of a day or few. That will hide fat loss on the scale, or at least play peek-a-boo with it, for a surprisingly long time.
The water and digestive contents are just part of how a healthy body stays healthy, not something to fret about. Personally, I like to weigh myself every morning and just calmly watch the patterns: Even when I was losing fat at a good rate, my daily weight would jump up and down by several pounds from one day to the next, but the gradual course was downward, as those gradual fat losses accumulated. And I was seeing those multi-pound ups and downs post-menopause: It can be more extreme in a woman, before that.
You have a meaningful amount of weight to lose, according to what you write. Losing a meaningful amount of fat weight (in a healthy manner) inherently takes quite a long time: Months, doubtless. Working on making it relatively easy and sustainable is a really good idea, and patience will be a very necessary tool in your toolkit. Learning how not to stress about the normal fluctuations is part of the picture: Months of emotional upheaval and frustration wouldn't be very pleasant!
You can do this - give your methods a realistic think, make it easier on yourself.
Thankyou for a very insightful reply. You're right, I will have to practice patience, as I have a long journey ahead. I want to lose sustainably so I don't mind even if it takes me a year. This journey will definitely teach me patience.4 -
@Dobbythefreelef (did I mention that I love the screen name including that you're a "lef" )
You do have a memorable name. And I checked and noticed that you had flirted with MFP before. You will benefit greatly if you can manage to accept what *IS*. Sort of a zen thing. Weight is. You record it in the morning after washroom before eating or drinking (hopefully). It goes straight into your weight trend app. That's it. It is not a verdict on you. It is not something that you deserve to see moving one way or another just because you did or did not do something. LONG TERM choices you make WILL INFLUENCE the weight. But short term the localized gravitational anomalies near your scale will just yield variable results.
IF you expect reward for doing things... it will be a tough road. Sometimes we do all things right just for the sake of doing all the things right. You can brush your teeth every day and STILL get a cavity. Doesn't mean you stop brushing your teeth!
Unlike Ann I will NOT encourage you to change what you've been doing. keep doing the same thing 4-6 weeks and collecting valuable data so that you can actually form a real and informed opinion as to what is or is not working.
If you keep changing everything at once to see fast results... you will NOT have the option of ever truly knowing whether something worked or didn't work.
And try to embed in your thinking that the PROCESS is valuable. The process itself; not just the result.
You don't just want to get a fish on your plate and who cares about the details!
You DO want to know how to fish and how to clean and dress the fish and how to cook it and how to plate it and how to enjoy it! Because if you know all that you will have a much higher chance of being able to manage your fish over the next 80 and a bit years
Haha, yes, i made this new account after losing my old one, and was in quiet a rush and misspelled it 🤦🏻♀️🤣
I love Dobby so he was the first one to pop in my mind when I thought of usernames!
Thankyou so much for everything you wrote. You're right. I have to learn to value the process, and do the right things because they are right. Not because I am expecting weight loss.
Loved your brushing teeth analogy, especially because I'm a dental student and have to stress oral hygiene practices to patients all day long.
I think you're quiet right about not jumping between strategies, something I have been guilty of doing before. I am definitely going to continue what I'm doing right now, with a bit of added patience.
Sent you a friend request, hope thats alright!2 -
It's so hard to wait for the ### to drop. We(or at least I) want to get to goal and forget about it all. *sigh* doesn't work like that. It's a lifelong learning experience. Lifelong. Learning. Keep your goals small, don't think of 'lose it in a year' type of thing, think small increments. It doesn't feel so overwhelming and won't give you that defeated feeling. I spent,.....well let's see, I was always the chubby child, then started doing every fad diet imaginable through my teens and early 20's. Then between raising a family, operating an in-home daycare, and being a stress emotional binge eater, I rose to the occasion by gaining 85#. Now, at 68 and retired for almost 3 years and empty-nester, it's taken me 55-60 years to get where I feel much better physically and emotionally. It'll be lots quicker for you if you simply take your time now.
I agree it would be unhealthy to eat 800 calories for a few days. Plus I envision them coming back at you when you bebop back to 1400. If it's only been 2.5 weeks, everybody above is definitely right about being patient, as hard as it is. Keep reading posts because (most)MFP'ers make much sense and touch upon a lot of your concerns.
Good luck!!5 -
Just a quick (who am I kidding!
) note to say that:
--I respond to all non commercial and within appropriate boundaries (per my sole judgment) private messages from BOTH friends and non-friends. MFP has tendency to randomly disallow or allow these from coming through from non friends.
--I respond to posts and sooner or later will glance at @PAV8888 notifications
--I have become an extremely crappy friend the past couple of years because the app has "killed it" for me with the amount of scrolling up and down, plus total amount of posts which make important ones disappear necessitating even more scrolling.
--this is extremely totally ZERO having to do with any individual friend request (I even have the notifications for them turned off)
--I have been hanging out too much in "larger losers" which cuts down on availability!
BUT, I will amplify what @ReenieHJ said! It may appear as if all of us old fogeys (of who I am apparently the "youngest" as I'm still closer to 55 than 60!) are chomping down on poor Dobby!
Just about the worst thing you can continue doing to yourself is making things so difficult and complex and all consuming that you continue to start and stop weight management. The overwhelming majority of the time this will result in continued dissatisfaction and continuing to, over time, gain weight.
Just about the best decision you can make is that you will tackle this. Tackle this does NOT mean doubling down on your deficits. Does NOT mean making food and exercise choices you absolutely do NOT see yourself continuing with in the future.
It does mean looking for things that you can change or do differently. It does mean choosing to manage your weight actively for long enough that it becomes second nature. Whether this is through rules or whether this is through tackling potentially unresolved issues (I would be counseling my 22 yo ME to get counseling as to why I keep on eating when I am agitated/discombobulated -- heck I might still do it when I hit 60, even though I've been maintaining since before I hit 51 ) or whether this is through calorie counting and (various forms) of self management.
But move away from "I need to lose weight (fast)" as the sole arbiter of whether you're doing well in terms of managing your weight. Your goal should be to both lose the weight and to lay foundations as to how you will maintain the weight loss and continue to manage your weight through school, and work, and injuries, and life and all the hopefully way more good than bad stuff that is to come! 5 -
Thankyou. Thankyou. Thankyou.
Every single reply here was very insightful and I learnt alot. I finally dropped down to 78kg, but learnt alot from these replies.
Slow and steady wins the race!7 -
Dobbythefreelef wrote: »Thankyou. Thankyou. Thankyou.
Every single reply here was very insightful and I learnt alot. I finally dropped down to 78kg, but learnt alot from these replies.
Slow and steady wins the race!
Yay, good news! Thanks for coming back to let us know: I always wonder how these things come out. Wishing you continued good progress!2
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