About small deficits, plateaus, weight trends and consistency (and looking for maintenance)
Lietchi
Posts: 6,826 Member
This isn't really a question, but a post that will hopefully help others (although I'm not sure how many people still read these boards and are patient enough to read long posts 😄).
I started my weight loss journey in 2019, losing 70+ lbs over the following years, reaching my goal weight in the summer of 2022. Well, sort of reaching my goal weight, I didn't have a fixed number in my head, but I was down to a weight I had when I was in college 🙂
They always say maintenance is the hard bit, right? I was still active, but my self control food-wise was dismal. (Appetite hormones fighting back after a large loss?) The gain was so subtle, 3 lbs in 9 months or so, that I felt like I was 'getting away with it'.
This is me, creeping up slowly (unit=kg):
I didn't really care about the specific number on the scale, but when my clothes started getting a bit tight (a new wardrobe is expensive!) and feeling I was indulging too much, i decided enough was enough. But my appetite being what it is, I found it hard to reach a significant deficit. It was tiny! Probably on average a deficit of less than 100 calories per day.
That kind of tiny deficit tales a while to show up. As I found out first hand:
I started getting a handle on my food intake at the start of July. You'd never guess it from looking at my weight trendline! This is one of those rarer cases where the individual weigh-ins give more info. My weight fluctuations kept getting smaller: you can see the highs getting progressively lower, but the lows still inching up too. I knew 'something had to give' and it finally happened, after more than two months.
Did I do anything in particular to break this plateau? Nope, just a LOT off patience and a lot of faith in the process, based on knowing my true TDEE from several years of logging. I know how much my fitness tracker is off regarding my TDEE and I knew I was eating less than before, that was what was keeping me steady in my strategy, since all the other data still showed me gaining weight.
Figuring out maintenance is still firmly in the to-do column, but at least I limited the regain and am heading back in the right direction.
TL;DR:
- be consistent, be patient
- weight trending apps are good, but:
* take them with a pinch of salt, they're not crystal balls (especially with small deficits)
* nothing beats having your own personal historic data
I started my weight loss journey in 2019, losing 70+ lbs over the following years, reaching my goal weight in the summer of 2022. Well, sort of reaching my goal weight, I didn't have a fixed number in my head, but I was down to a weight I had when I was in college 🙂
They always say maintenance is the hard bit, right? I was still active, but my self control food-wise was dismal. (Appetite hormones fighting back after a large loss?) The gain was so subtle, 3 lbs in 9 months or so, that I felt like I was 'getting away with it'.
This is me, creeping up slowly (unit=kg):
I didn't really care about the specific number on the scale, but when my clothes started getting a bit tight (a new wardrobe is expensive!) and feeling I was indulging too much, i decided enough was enough. But my appetite being what it is, I found it hard to reach a significant deficit. It was tiny! Probably on average a deficit of less than 100 calories per day.
That kind of tiny deficit tales a while to show up. As I found out first hand:
I started getting a handle on my food intake at the start of July. You'd never guess it from looking at my weight trendline! This is one of those rarer cases where the individual weigh-ins give more info. My weight fluctuations kept getting smaller: you can see the highs getting progressively lower, but the lows still inching up too. I knew 'something had to give' and it finally happened, after more than two months.
Did I do anything in particular to break this plateau? Nope, just a LOT off patience and a lot of faith in the process, based on knowing my true TDEE from several years of logging. I know how much my fitness tracker is off regarding my TDEE and I knew I was eating less than before, that was what was keeping me steady in my strategy, since all the other data still showed me gaining weight.
Figuring out maintenance is still firmly in the to-do column, but at least I limited the regain and am heading back in the right direction.
TL;DR:
- be consistent, be patient
- weight trending apps are good, but:
* take them with a pinch of salt, they're not crystal balls (especially with small deficits)
* nothing beats having your own personal historic data
15
Replies
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I found it an awesome post!
And definitely interesting to see. Well done so far! But you knew that! 
1 -
Thanks for sharing1
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Outstanding post!1
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Yeah.
Know your numbers.
The body doesn't turn on a dime.1 -
Good post!
That's very much consistent with my experience when I decided to run a tiny deficit to creep off 10 pounds or so that had crept on in the first several years of maintenance. That includes finding that my weight trending app could be misleading, in that scenario - for as much as 4-6 weeks, even.
Looking backwards once I reached a more desirable weight, I figured I'd averaged a 100-150 calorie deficit for something over one year.
Success/confidence at this is more probable if one knows their calorie needs well (from logging experience) and trusts their logging methods (also from experience), IMO. In those conditions, for me it turned out to be an almost painless way to lose a small amount of weight.4 -
Very useful post. I especially like your point about trusting the process. One of the most Illuminating aspects of it has been simply the realization that it works - that doing something different (in this case, calorie deficit) actually does produce a different outcome. No-brainer, of course, but I’ve often been in the habit of learning about a new strategy for achieving a goal, thinking, “Yeah, I should do that,” and then . . . doing absolutely nothing. Fundamentally this is due to being a lazy procrastinator. My hope is that taking concrete action is this area will push me to do the same in others. Thanks for the insights.4
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history_grrrl wrote: »Very useful post. I especially like your point about trusting the process. One of the most Illuminating aspects of it has been simply the realization that it works - that doing something different (in this case, calorie deficit) actually does produce a different outcome. No-brainer, of course, but I’ve often been in the habit of learning about a new strategy for achieving a goal, thinking, “Yeah, I should do that,” and then . . . doing absolutely nothing. Fundamentally this is due to being a lazy procrastinator. My hope is that taking concrete action is this area will push me to do the same in others. Thanks for the insights.
Having tried to lose weight a few times before, the attempts failed because I was working blind (changing what I ate, without knowing how many calories)... or choosing unsustainable strategies. But calorie counting saved me. I started out not believing in it, just giving it a go because i was grasping at straws. But after the first few kilos dropped off, I was converted! Perhaps my personality helped me: I'm not particularly impatient, I never aimed for fast weight loss and my daily weight fluctuations never really worried me, especially after losing those first few kilos. It was ridiculously easy really, I regret not discovering it sooner, I might have avoided becoming obese!
I'm a lazy procrastinator myself, one that now exercises a lot. If I can do it, I'm sure you can too 🙂5 -
PS: the trend really has broken, so funny knowing I didn't change anything the last weeks, it really has been 'brewing' since July 🙂
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So interesting. Thanks.1
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Bumping as a reminder (to myself) that it works and that this too shall pass...4
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