I have not lost or gained any weight in two weeks and I am frustrated with myself.
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johnnyr860
Posts: 19 Member
Good day to all,
I have lost 30 lbs in two almost three months doing the 30 day shred by Jillian Michaels. I was doing level 1 and when the level stopped being tough I switched the weights from 5 lbs to 15 lbs. Once I switched the weights to 15 lbs I could totally feel the difference in my workouts. I went from losing 2-3 lbs a week to losing 5 lbs a week. Eventually level 1 just wasn't that tough anymore so I switched over to level 2 and it has been about two weeks now. I have not lost a single lb but I also have not gained anything. I am very frustrated. After seeing the scale stay the same today at my weekly weigh-in I have no motivation to go o the gym today.
I keep a container of marbles on my desk at home where I move one marble to the other container for each lbs I lose a week. Well it has been two weeks and I have not been able to move any marbles. How do I get over this weight loss plateau? One week I could understand but two weeks in a row of no weight loss? Also my calorie intake is between 1,200- 2,000 calories a day the same it has always been.
I have lost 30 lbs in two almost three months doing the 30 day shred by Jillian Michaels. I was doing level 1 and when the level stopped being tough I switched the weights from 5 lbs to 15 lbs. Once I switched the weights to 15 lbs I could totally feel the difference in my workouts. I went from losing 2-3 lbs a week to losing 5 lbs a week. Eventually level 1 just wasn't that tough anymore so I switched over to level 2 and it has been about two weeks now. I have not lost a single lb but I also have not gained anything. I am very frustrated. After seeing the scale stay the same today at my weekly weigh-in I have no motivation to go o the gym today.
I keep a container of marbles on my desk at home where I move one marble to the other container for each lbs I lose a week. Well it has been two weeks and I have not been able to move any marbles. How do I get over this weight loss plateau? One week I could understand but two weeks in a row of no weight loss? Also my calorie intake is between 1,200- 2,000 calories a day the same it has always been.
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You're weighing once a week? Two weeks isn't very long at all, and your increase in exercise intensity could be causing water retention, masking fat loss on the scale. And weighing only once a week, you have far less data to go on than if you weight daily. Your weekly weigh-in could have been on a higher day.3
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It’s possible since you’ve upped your weights for your workout you are gaining muscle while losing fat so it is evening out on the scale. Don’t worry about the scale so much. Focus more on how you look and what you notice in the gym as far as how difficult your workouts are.0
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You're weighing once a week? Two weeks isn't very long at all, and your increase in exercise intensity could be causing water retention, masking fat loss on the scale. And weighing only once a week, you have far less data to go on than if you weight daily. Your weekly weigh-in could have been on a higher day.
Unfortunately, the only weigh-in that works for me is doing it on a weekly basis. I can’t do this every day because it drives me nuts and it was affecting my workouts so I had to stop doing it because I had lost all motivation to go to the gym when I did it that way. Doing it on a once a week basis pushes me to work harder so that when I get to that weekly weigh-in I can see the pounds go off the scale. It’s been working great for the 3 months I have been doing it so far. I guess I will just have to give this more time and see what happens.
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Maria_Albina wrote: »It’s possible since you’ve upped your weights for your workout you are gaining muscle while losing fat so it is evening out on the scale. Don’t worry about the scale so much. Focus more on how you look and what you notice in the gym as far as how difficult your workouts are.
Thank you. I guess the thing is I don't want to build muscle at all. I just want to lose weight at the moment. So what is the best way to do this then? If this workout is going to cause me to build muscle I guess the 30 day shred is no longer a good workout to continue doing?0 -
You're not going to turn into Arnold Schwarzenegger, if that's what you're worried about. And you're unlikely to add much muscle mass while losing weight. If anything, you need to workout to make sure you don't lose muscle mass.
You don't need to change anything at the moment, just be more patient.5 -
johnnyr860 wrote: »Thank you. I guess the thing is I don't want to build muscle at all. I just want to lose weight at the moment. So what is the best way to do this then? If this workout is going to cause me to build muscle I guess the 30 day shred is no longer a good workout to continue doing?
OOF. Please don’t think this way! Muscles just sit there all nice and compact, taking up a lot less space than the fat that weighs the same, using up more calories just because they exist. You’re not going to get bodybuilder bulk with 15-pound weights. And you’re almost certainly NOT building muscle if you’re eating at a deficit. As @Lietchi mentioned, it’s probably temporary water retention from increased activity.
Most importantly, you were losing 2-5 pounds per week for a few months? That’s super fast. Bodies have a way of saying, “Nope, not this week” after rapid loss. It’s extremely unlikely that you will achieve more than 2 pounds per week from now on, and even that is aggressive.
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I’m in a plateau myself- looking into changing my diet to a “zigzag” daily calorie plan.0
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clintkarlsen wrote: »I’m in a plateau myself- looking into changing my diet to a “zigzag” daily calorie plan.
That won't do anything. It's overall weekly calories that matter and not daily fluctuations. If you haven't plateaued for 3-4 weeks just keep going if you had been losing.4 -
johnnyr860 wrote: »You're weighing once a week? Two weeks isn't very long at all, and your increase in exercise intensity could be causing water retention, masking fat loss on the scale. And weighing only once a week, you have far less data to go on than if you weight daily. Your weekly weigh-in could have been on a higher day.
Unfortunately, the only weigh-in that works for me is doing it on a weekly basis. I can’t do this every day because it drives me nuts and it was affecting my workouts so I had to stop doing it because I had lost all motivation to go to the gym when I did it that way. Doing it on a once a week basis pushes me to work harder so that when I get to that weekly weigh-in I can see the pounds go off the scale. It’s been working great for the 3 months I have been doing it so far. I guess I will just have to give this more time and see what happens.
Yes for some, those daily fluctuations, especially the upward ones, can be demotivating and cause you to screw up your diet plan. I found if once a week is the game plan then Friday morning first thing after using the bathroom was a good time as during the week you're less likely to have been eating "fun food" which can cause water retention and screw up the scale readings.1 -
“The Zig Zag Diet, also known as calorie shifting, involves staggering a low-calorie diet with high-calorie days. The belief is that if you can keep your body guessing, you can avoid homeostasis. By confusing your body, the hope is that your metabolism will shift into high gear burning calories more effectively.” - Livestrong0
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WhatGetsMeasured wrote: »“The Zig Zag Diet, also known as calorie shifting, involves staggering a low-calorie diet with high-calorie days. The belief is that if you can keep your body guessing, you can avoid homeostasis. By confusing your body, the hope is that your metabolism will shift into high gear burning calories more effectively.” - Livestrong
That diet came out a long time ago and it sounded plausible and sounded good on paper as most diets do so I tried it. It made no difference. People fail to understand that the body doesn't just react that quickly, hence the reason that weigh is based on calories ingested over time.
It reminds me of that video of the guy at the gym getting on the scale then doing the treadmill for 10 minutes then getting back on the scale to see his progress
One positive is that you can have a few days a week that you can eat a bit more at the expense of a couple of low days.6 -
OP, you don't need to worry about gaining too much muscle doing what you're doing at this point. If you'd been losing at a satisfying rate prior to this seeming plateau, then patience is the answer. (It's probably a water weight issue, as others have said.)
I do agree with the "maybe you've been losing faster than ideal" thought, though, and how that can affect energy level, water retention, or both. Losing any meaningful total amount of weight is a long game, even at fastest, so keeping it healthy and sustainable is a good plan.Maria_Albina wrote: »It’s possible since you’ve upped your weights for your workout you are gaining muscle while losing fat so it is evening out on the scale. Don’t worry about the scale so much. Focus more on how you look and what you notice in the gym as far as how difficult your workouts are.
I wish.
Fast muscle mass gain under ideal conditions would be something like 2 pounds per month - half a pound per week. Ideal conditions include a good progressive mass-building weight routine faithfully performed, relative youth, maleness, relative newness to strength training, good overall nutrition (especially but not exclusively adequate protein), favorable genetics, a calorie surplus, and more.
It's not that mass gain can't happen under sub-ideal conditions, but we'd expect it to be slower still.
On the flip side, half a pound a week of fat loss is about the slowest loss rate that most people would consider remotely satisfying, and even that can take multiple weeks to show up on the scale amongst routine daily multi-pound water retention and digestive contents variation.
Inescapable conclusion: No realistic rate of muscle gain is going to outpace any typically-satisfying rate of fat loss on the bodyweight scale.
I wish it were otherwise . . . so, so much.
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Just noting that OP says their “calorie intake is between 1k and 2k a day same as it always has been.” That is quite a daily variation - are you measuring anything or just guessing? If you end up hitting closer to the high end of the estimate daily you might be consuming at your maintenance level.
If you aren’t already doing so, set your goals within MFP to lose at a reasonable rate (maybe 1 lb a week) and measure your food on a digital scale, recording calories for everything you eat and drink, including cooking oils for food prep and other fats like mayo or butter on sandwiches and milk and sugar in your coffee. Don’t forget to count all caloric drinks like alcoholic beverages, sodas, juices, etc.
You have also lost 30 lbs. Have you re-entered your weight in mfp and recalculated what your calorie requirements are at this new weight? The more you lose the less you need to eat to maintain/lose further. (Unfortunately).
Congratulations on the progress so far though! Rather than worrying about plateauing, focus on the progress you have made and how you can recalibrate to meet your next goal. You’ll get there bit by bit.3 -
DON'T SNATCH DEFEAT FROM WITHIN THE JAWS OF VICTORY.
Dude. Take a minute.
You're 30lbs down. WOW. You are able to hold up 15lb weights and do things with them that a short while ago were difficult for you using 5lb weights.
WOW. This an AWESOME START.
Now you've hit a snag. You can troubleshoot, change tack, and continue on. OR you can lose it all by closing your mind and not making any adjustments.
It took me longer than you to get to the point you're at (about 10 months or so into making changes in my life: what can I say I am always slow to start things). But it was at a very similar point in my weight loss that I discovered MFP. A point where I was losing multiple lbs a week in a fully unsustainable fashion... and feeling and realizing that what I was doing was not sustainable--without understanding why.
Exercise is good. Exercise increases caloric burn. Contrary to what's been said or implied, if you are male, untrained, and have good energy reserves you could even build actual muscle while losing. Probably not while losing a lb a day. But while in a more reasonable deficit, you could.
So exercise is good. BUT. Weight will be lost by creating a caloric deficit. It is the food intake that rules.
That said. You're losing your mind because you are not continuing to lose weight at an insane pace.
You're so scale driven you can't face the scale and you're putting yourself in a feedback loop with something that you're not directly controlling yet you're giving it power over you.
We use weight trend apps and try to NOT be driven by the scale because the scale is just one but not the only way we can see success. Achieving the deficit you WANT to aim for, not an arbitrary maximal deficit but the actual deficit you want to keep yourself on to achieve a reasonable and sustainable path is a much better goal to pursue.
Sure, the results of that will follow in their own time. But your focus should be the process that will create the results NOT on the results directly.
Are you currently well above 300lbs? If you're not, you are losing too fast and the size of your deficit is helping create some of this undesired loop
You've got to move away from being driven by the scale and until you start creating more reasonable deficits and accepting a reasonable rate of loss as success you will keep pushing for more and faster till you give up in despair. (What would be a reasonable rate of loss? anywhere from 0.25 to 1% of current body weight per week... with 0.5% being more likely to be adhered to long term than 1%)
--the problem is not that you haven't lost weight. The problem is that you're losing too fast and you're driving yourself into the ground and into the grasp of unreasonable expectations.
--pull back, concentrate on food intakes with a reasonable deficit for the amount of weight you have to lose. 1000 Cal or 750 Cal deficits might well be appropriate. 2000 Cal deficits are not. You could and probably SHOULD be eating in the 2000+ range while still achieving them. (for shorthand we equate a 3500 Cal actual deficit to a lb of scale loss)
--find a process and get to the point where sticking to the process is your reward. A good job is posting the 500 or 750 or whatever deficit you've decided on day in and day out. Week in and week out. What happens to your weight is a nice side effect and of mild interest to observe, except when you're performing your monthly review and deciding on your next month's goals based on your logging and your weight trend over the previous time period.
Take a minute. Pull back. Adjust. And continue on.
CONTINUING FOR MONTHS AND YEARS is much more important that whether you've lost 5, 10 or 15lbs this month. 15*2 = 30. 5*12=60 60 > 30 Twelve is much better than two!
Creating a sustainable process you can ADHERE to is more important that short term speed.11 -
You should consider doing a change up on your menus. Your body figured out what you were doing and it adapted. Try switching macros, switching out old foods and bringing in some new kinds, do 2 days of vegetarian menus, skip dinners for two days, eat one meal a day for a couple days, go carnivore, change your workouts to maybe a couple HIIT workouts or simply a walking only day if the weather cooperates.1
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DebbsSeattle wrote: »You should consider doing a change up on your menus. Your body figured out what you were doing and it adapted. Try switching macros, switching out old foods and bringing in some new kinds, do 2 days of vegetarian menus, skip dinners for two days, eat one meal a day for a couple days, go carnivore, change your workouts to maybe a couple HIIT workouts or simply a walking only day if the weather cooperates.
No, your body doesn't "figure out" what you are doing and makes you stop losing weight. That's not how it works. Same with zigzagging calories, your body will lose weight when you are in a deficit, not because you are "confusing it" by giving it different calories every day.7 -
No. All that is unnecessary and won’t do anything. Your overall weekly calories will determine the outcomeDebbsSeattle wrote: »You should consider doing a change up on your menus. Your body figured out what you were doing and it adapted. Try switching macros, switching out old foods and bringing in some new kinds, do 2 days of vegetarian menus, skip dinners for two days, eat one meal a day for a couple days, go carnivore, change your workouts to maybe a couple HIIT workouts or simply a walking only day if the weather cooperates.
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OP - Have you re-assessed/calculated what your appropriate calorie goal should be in a while? If you've lost 30lbs...it would def help to recalculate it based on your current stats/activity level.1
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