SOS! Weight loss plateau!

angiebabi669 wrote: »

I started my weight loss journey in May. I started at 170 and I’m down to 156. I have my calorie intake set to 1500/day but the scale hasn’t moved since August and I’m feeling defeated. I’m only consuming around 70-100g protein a day, I’m also 33 for reference. Not sure what to do to break through. I’ve only lost around 3lbs since August. I changed my calories from 1200 to 1500 at that time. I’m wondering if I should up them more? My ultimate goal would be 140lbs.

Hi,

The closer you get to your goal, the harder it can be sometimes.
First, check through the food log. Make sure everything is tracked correctly. Some foods are easy to miscalculate. Are you heavy on sugar or carbs? Some bodies hang onto carbs/sugar harder than others. Sometimes just reducing the sugar or carbs can push you into that next level.

Second, can you up your activity or exercise?

Third, play with the calories. You may have to go up or down depending on your body needs. For a week, try 1,400 or 1,600 calories.

Fourth--you can try a varied calorie week. Eat your regular 1500 calories on 6 days, on the 7th try eating 1,700 on just that one day. For some people, that will push the body forward.

I know people will disagree or have other strategies. That's okay. You have to find what works for you--so sometimes you have to try a lot of different things. Everyone is different.

L

Raising weekly calories will not cause Fatloss. Sometimes it MAY result in the ability of more activity being added however that added activity would have to increase enough to compensate which is difficult plus more activity usually results in added hunger.

I would eat more vegetables without butter or sauces on them. How is your water? If you've been weight lifting, that will mean you gain weight. However, you can still shrink clothing sizes, about 3 just from weight lifting. Change your exercise routine every 6 weeks. Your body gets adjusted to your routine rather quickly. Do HITT cardio. (Google it)

"HIIT stands for High-Intensity Interval Training. It is a type of cardiovascular exercise that involves short bursts of high-intensity exercise followed by periods of rest or low-intensity exercise. HIIT workouts are designed to increase your heart rate and burn calories in a shorter amount of time than traditional cardio workouts. They can be done with or without equipment and can be customized to fit your fitness level and goals."

This should help you get off your plateau. Good luck.

kiteflyer105 wrote: »

I would eat more vegetables without butter or sauces on them. How is your water? If you've been weight lifting, that will mean you gain weight. However, you can still shrink clothing sizes, about 3 just from weight lifting. Change your exercise routine every 6 weeks. Your body gets adjusted to your routine rather quickly. Do HITT cardio. (Google it)

"HIIT stands for High-Intensity Interval Training. It is a type of cardiovascular exercise that involves short bursts of high-intensity exercise followed by periods of rest or low-intensity exercise. HIIT workouts are designed to increase your heart rate and burn calories in a shorter amount of time than traditional cardio workouts. They can be done with or without equipment and can be customized to fit your fitness level and goals."

This should help you get off your plateau. Good luck.

Color me skeptical.

I've been doing pretty much the same exercise for 20+ years, obese and thin. Other than the slight calorie reduction from doing it at a much lighter body weight, it still burns the number of calories it always did. (It's not HIIT cardio. At least not usually.)

Exercise calorie burn is primarily from the work done, in the physics sense of "work". It feels easier as we get fitter, but the same duration and objective intensity exercise at the same body weight burns about the same number of calories. Efficiency differences (from increased skill) for most activities are a minor factor.

Also, I've definitely lost weight while weight lifting, as have many others.

Weight lifting can trigger a bit of water retention and increase weight that way, but beyond that it only increases total body weight if a person eats in a surplus. Weight training in a calorie deficit will result in little (and slow) muscle mass gain, if any; and if mass gain occurs it can be partly fueled from stored body fat. Strength increases, especially the early stages, don't require adding new muscle mass - neuromuscular adaptation increase strength at first, and usually faster. Someone eating around maintenance calories and strength training in the right ways would be expected to be relatively weight stable, but get smaller because muscle is more compact than fat, pound for pound.

Yeah, people who say they're doing HIIT? I would definitely not call (most of) it HIIT. Intervals, maybe.

And yeah, what Ann and Rodney said, too.

yirara wrote: »

Cats_fitness_journey wrote: »

Increase protein, I eat about 140-160 g a day (I also weight train, which is something I highly recommend if you don’t already do) your body burns 30% of calories from protein just to digest it!

No! The body doesn't need more energy digesting protein than with other food. It also makes no sense from an evolutionary standpoint. Also, just throwing an arbitrary protein number in here is not helpful. That you eat so much doesn't mean TO needs to eat so much. Heck, she started out with 1500 calories/day. 140g of protein would be 1/3 of her calorie intake. Sure, some people like this, some people who do professional strength training probably need it. But not a normal person who possibly moves around a bit. Totally unnecessary. I agree though that weight training is good. Not for weightloss, but for general health.

Actually, it does, whether it makes evolutionary sense or not.

Some of the calories in the food you eat are used to digest, absorb, metabolize, and store the remaining food, and some are burned off as heat. This process is known under various names, notably diet-induced thermogenesis (DIT), specific dynamic action (SDA), and the thermic effect of food (TEF).[1][2]

The TEF represents about 10% of the caloric intake of healthy adults who eat a standard mixed-macronutrient diet,[3] but your actual number will depend on several factors, including your age and the meal timing, and macronutrient composition — carbs, fat, and protein — of your meal. The energy required to digest each macronutrient (its TEF) can be expressed as a percentage of the energy provided by the macronutrient:[4][5]

Fat provides 9 calories per gram, and its TEF is 0–3%.
Carbohydrate provides 4 calories per gram, and its TEF is 5–10%.
Protein provides 4 calories per gram, and its TEF is 20–30%.

That's from https://examine.com/outcomes/thermic-effect-of-food/ , but it's kind of motherhood and apple pie standard information, cited in many places.

It's true, but the effect isn't typically a caloric world-beater in practical numeric terms. There's only so much protein a person is going to eat if they want to be healthy, because nutritional balance matters. (Most of us will want to eat a mixed diet.)

For example, I eat about 120g of protein most days (5'5" woman), so 480 calories of protein, a fairly high protein intake for my demographic. The TEF might be as much as 96-144 calories, compared with 24-48 calories of TEF for 480 calories of carbs, or 0-14 for 480 calories of fats. That's an actual difference, but not really life-changing when it comes to weight management.

Now this is all personal example and will not work for everyone but it can't hurt to try if you're stuck. I have found that when my weight loss stalls out or slows way down. I can typically take a weekend off and by off, I mean eat 250-500 more calories than I normally would. And its typically not "healthy food" I'm taking like go to the bar and get a greasy burger and a mountain of French fries" or something like that. Now initially the next week i will up up in weight 1-4 pounds for a week or so due to water weight, but that starts to fall off pretty quickly and typically it continues to snowball down right on past where i was stuck.

This discussion is so interesting to me. I’m 73, have lost 40 pounds since April, but have stage 3a chronic kidney disease. I’m on a plateau as well but have to limit protein to 60g per day. How do I keep muscle mass as I try to lose 20 more pounds?