Plateau?

Same age, similar issues. I was told by a trainer that every body has a set point it wants to stay at. This point changes, i.e. when we gain weight, that becomes the new set point. To overcome that we have to trick it. If you walk for exercise, is there a different exercise you could try? Maybe swimming? Or cycling? Or, can you shift your nutrients around, like lower your carbs and increase your protein, while still staying in your calorie range? Those ideas have helped me sometimes. Good luck, I know how frustrating it is to do everything right and to see no results.

Dlekapj wrote: »

I'm a 66 year old woman. 3 months ago I had shoulder replacement surgery and was not terribly active in the months before the surgery or until recently. I want my life style back and started actively recording my food and exercising daily. I stay below 1200 cal, and walk 10,000 or more steps each day. I've lost about 3 lb but have stayed the exact same weight to the ounce for 7 days! I was wondering if there was something wrong with the scale, as this seemed impossible!! But, the scale is fine. I tell myself that soon it HAS to change, but I just can't understand it. Has this happened to anyone else? I could maybe understand if I was a while into my diet, but I've only recently started!

FWIW, I'm also a 66 year old woman, but post-weight loss (50-some pounds at age 59-60), maintaining a healthy weight since.

Seven days is not a plateau, technically. If weight is unchanged for 4+ weeks, that may be a plateau.

If you just started recently with the below 1200 calories and the walking - like less than a month or so - there are a few possibilities:

1. Increased exercise/activity is causing water retention for muscle repair, masking fat loss on the scale. This can happen even if muscles don't feel sore.

2. "Below 1200 calories" may be too low, especially if you're lowballing it hard in pursuit of fast loss. Very low calories are a physical stress, increased exercise is a physical stress (even if potentially a positive one), and stressing about bodyweight or "diet failure" is a psychological stress. Stress is cumulative across all sources, and high stress can also increase water retention (via stress hormones like cortisol). That's speculative, and if this is your first week or two, less likely.

3. Cutting calories too hard can be counter-productive, and the definition of "too hard" involves not only intake but also energy demand (like your 10k+ steps). Oversimplifying, if we go too hard, the body "thinks" it's in a famine, and tries to conserve energy via subtle methods, like reduced spontaneous body movement (fidgeting, plus more), slowed hair/nails growth (thinning happens later), not feeling like doing higher-energy chores or hobbies so putting them off or short-cutting, and that sort of thing.

4. Lots of other things can increase water retention temporarily, masking fat loss on the scale: Hot weather, healing, mild allergy or similar routine health issue, lots more. This is a good read:

https://physiqonomics.com/the-weird-and-highly-annoying-world-of-scale-weight-and-fluctuations

1200 calories may be right for you, I don't know. I'm skeptical, given all of those 10k steps. There's a common myth that all women need to eat below 1200 in order to lose weight, but that's incorrect and can be dangerous. Some do need to eat 1200 or fewer calories. Usually they're petite, inactive, older, maybe not much weight to lose.

Where did you come up with 1200? If you told MFP you want to lose 2 pounds a week, and are sedentary, it will give a lot of women 1200. Not all women should be trying to lose 2 pounds a week: 0.5-1% of current body weight per week is a better rule of thumb for loss rate, with a strong bias toward the lower end of that unless severely obese. Generally, MFP intends that you log exercise and eat that in addition to base calories, if activity level is set (as per MFP instructions) based on daily life activity not including exercise.

Losing weight fast is tempting, but not necessarily a great plan. It can make it harder to get essential nutrition, sap energy, increase potential for muscle loss, and increase other health risks. (This is not a good time to compromise one's immune system, maybe?) I don't know about you, but at 66 I've learned I'm better off if I manage all-source stress a bit more conservatively than when I was 26, because - though healthy and active - I'm slightly less resilient to overdoing. YMMV.

I'm a mysteriously good li'l ol' calorie burner for some reason, but I was able to lose weight at a pretty fast rate (sometimes faster than sensible, by accident!), at 1400-1600 calories plus all carefully-estimated exercise calories, so 1600-2000 calories gross intake most days. I figure that she who loses at a reasonable rate on the highest calories (and nutrition) wins, personally. For some, that's 1200 calories . . . but not everyone.

My advice would be to hang in there, eat to a sensible calorie goal for your activity level (not way below), and stick with it. If some variation of the water weight issue is happening, it'll sort itself out eventually, and fat loss will outpace it on the scale. If you've truly found current maintenance calories - which I doubt, unless your level of logging meticulousness has you eating much more than you believe - your weight would remain stable for 4-6 weeks. I'll bet it won't.

Let us know how it's going in another couple of weeks or so, by coming back and updating this thread, if you feel up to it?

Wishing you success!

FireMonkey wrote: »

Same age, similar issues. I was told by a trainer that every body has a set point it wants to stay at. This point changes, i.e. when we gain weight, that becomes the new set point. To overcome that we have to trick it. If you walk for exercise, is there a different exercise you could try? Maybe swimming? Or cycling? Or, can you shift your nutrients around, like lower your carbs and increase your protein, while still staying in your calorie range? Those ideas have helped me sometimes. Good luck, I know how frustrating it is to do everything right and to see no results.

I 100% agree that it's frustrating to see no results from our efforts. IMO, part of the issue is that things like reality TV and tabloid headlines lead us to expect fast and big results. Hanging out here in the MFP Community for a few years now, it's come to seem to me that successful real-world weight loss is more a matter of gradual ups and downs that trend in the downward direction. Losing any meaningful total amount of weight is going to take multiple weeks, months, and for some (with a good bit to lose) maybe even years. Those factors IMO put a priority on patience, analytical problem-solving, persistence, and sustainability.

"Set point" is a highly debated topic among experts - whether it's a true phenomenon, and what its nature is if it is real. For sure, it can't and won't prevent weight loss at sufficiently low calories. If it could prevent weight loss, people couldn't starve to death, and sadly they do, in large numbers daily, worldwide (and they're skeletally thin when it happens).

In addition, the idea that a given exercise burns fewer calories when we're used to it is technically inaccurate. Doing the same thing at the same intensity at the same bodyweight burns roughly the same number of calories: That's pretty much basic physics. It may feel easier as we get fitter (which is kind of the definition of "fitness", right?) and fitness trackers may even claim it burns fewer calories (because our heart pumps more blood and oxygen per beat when fitter, so we need fewer beats to sustain the same calorie expenditure).

The idea that we have to "confuse our body", simply by switching things, to burn more calories or improve fitness, is a profitable idea for companies/people that sell exercise plans, fitness equipment, diets, etc., so it's become a very widespread idea through their marketing. Obviously, if we want to burn more calories, we need to exercise longer, harder, more frequently, or do a more inherently intense activity. But just getting used to an activity doesn't burn meaningfully fewer. (I've done the same exercise for 20+ years, even when obese. Adjusted for bodyweight change, it burns as many calories as it ever did.)

In a psychological sense, mixing things up absolutely can be productive, if one is getting stale and kind of going through the motions. And different eating routines will work better for different people because of energy level, satiation, and that sort of thing, so indirectly affect weight loss in those ways. Switching things up to a more fun or sustainable routine is a good distraction when the scale stalls, absolutely.

Best wishes!