Plateau Woes

sorry I’m going to kick your “I don’t want advice” request in the teeth.

I was 125 on my wedding day. When I started losing weight at 56, (5’7” like you, and over 225) I honestly didn’t expect to be successful. I kept blowing through goals. So I thought “wedding day weight will be the perfect goal!”’

I got within a couple of pounds. I was skin and bones, tired, mean, and determined.

It wasn’t until a trusted (and much revered and loved) trainer texted me a photo of myself from behind with the simple comment “stop losing or I’m dropping you” that I realized …

125 at “this” age was waaaaaay different than 125 at “that” age The weight sits on you differently What looked thin back in tha day now looked like a worn out, underfed, nag horse.

In my pursuit of that wedding day goal, I had dropped muscle I had fought to gain. I literally looked like a grandaddy longlegs.

I’m not telling you what to do. if 125 is your goal and you’re “light” and happy there, then so be it but I will say, having weighed in at 148 this morning , I’m wearing the same clothes I did at 127, I’m curvier (nice curves), I've got great muscle, and I’ve got kids young enough to be my grandkids scratching their heads and clearly reading their faces thinking,”did she just do that? Wasn’t she in the class before this, too? Didn’t I just see her in the gym? In the pool?”

Task a trusted spouse, partner, friend, family member, trainer or whatever to take photos of you when you don’t know it. Look at those photos. Evaluate those photos. Be honest with yourself. Is your goal appropriate or is it some number you pulled out of your bottom like I did? Are you on a potential path to an eating disorder and rationalizing it by “feeling lighter”?

Ok will get off my high horse now, but take it from someone your height, unless you’re really young, 125 is probably going to age you instead of the result you’re looking for.

And BTW, my wedding dress swims on me. And I’m 23 pounds higher than on my wedding day.

Well explained. There’s so many people here chasing poor choices, it’s hard to tell sometimes.

I'm starting to feel some skepticism about the overall situation, TBH. You mention "never been overweight a single day of my life" which suggests to me that you may also not have a lot of experience with planned, intentional weight loss, either.

It's the calories. That's what matters. The food calories, mostly, for most of us, much more than the exercise calories. Are you actually consistently logging your food every day?

You say

• You've been "gradually cutting out more than recommended guidelines for added sugar". Added sugar is irrelevant unless eating it takes you over a sensible average calorie level.
• "I am sure I've hit 2000 to 2400 some days". If you were logging, you'd know, or darned close to know it. Are you guessing? Eyeballing?
• You "have never stopped working out". For most of us, exercise makes only a small contribution to weight loss. I get that you were active until injury and medications triggered weight gain. The average person doing average exercise burns about 5% of daily calories via intentional exercise. Heavy exercisers might get 10-15%, but not much more than that alongside a normal life with a job, home chores, etc. (Without the exercise, 5% calories adds up surprisingly fast, though - for me, it'd be around 11 pounds gained in a year.)
• You "wouldn't choose to lose weight without" "belgian waffle, whipped cream, and chocolate of course". That's possible, but if you're truly aiming for 1200, belgian waffle isn't going to be frequent or in large portions, because a single waffle with nothing on it is going to take up to 25% of that day's calories, and not deliver a lot of nutrition from those calories. This is similar to noss's point about the IHOP stack.
• Lowering carbs won't do anything more than reduce water weight, unless lowering carbs means fewer calories.
• What's your TDEE, the maintenance calories you say you're eating at 4 days per week? If you said how old you are, I missed it, but if I guessed 30, your TDEE with daily exercise might be in the 2100-2300 range, and the high end of that would be with quite intense exercise daily. If you're eating 1200 3 days, exactly actual maintenance 4 days, your expected weight loss rate even at a TDEE of 2300 would be under a pound a week with perfect accuracy and compliance. (2300-1200 = 1100 calorie deficit; x 3 is 3300; roughly 3500 calories in a pound). If actual TDEE is less than 2300, slower than that. Slow loss can take weeks to show up in weight loss trend lines, amongst routine daily multi-pound fluctuati2300 ons in water retention and digestive waste in transit.
• Whatever your TDEE estimate is for eating at maintenance, where did that estimate come from? Individuals vary from calculator values, even fitness tracker values. It's rare to vary a lot, but it happens. (Long logging experience tells me that MFP and a good fitness tracker are each around 25-30% off for me.)

Given that you mention eating at maintenance 4 days to avoid negative side effects, I'd feel obligated to point out that "a diet" doesn't need to be 1200. If TDEE is 2300 in reality, you'd burn around 16500 calories per week. You can lose a pound a week on average by cutting about 3500 calories from that week any way that works best: Eat 1133 calories 3 days, 2300 4 days; 1857 7 days; nothing one day, 1100 one day, 2300 5 days . . . any variation on that arithmetic is going to get to about the same place averaged over a period of time. Sure, some are easier than others. It doesn't have to be a pound a week, either. Slower is fine, especially with so little to lose. It'll just take longer to see the results on the scale.

You say you'll "work on being more consistent with diet". That's heading down the right line. If you want to get predictable results, then logging consistently and accurately is a good way to go. It's fine to eat at maintenance some days and a deficit other days if that works best for you, but the actual average calorie level needs to fall below actual TDEE in order for weight loss to occur.

The best way to know actual TDEE is to track carefully for a full menstrual cycle if you have those, or 4-6 weeks if you don't, and use your logs plus the actual average weekly weight change to get a personalized estimate of your TDEE.

I'm not trying to be mean here, I'm trying to be clear and honest. Whatever course you choose is totally your call. If that's approximation, that's OK, as long as you're OK with unpredictable results. Calorie counting isn't for everyone, and that's not a diss.

Best wishes!

I'm also 5'7", but late 40s F. On my wedding day nearly 25 years ago I weighed 147, so that's been my goal these last few years (coming down from an all time high of 238.8 lbs 7 years ago, 217 lbs 13 months ago).

My hubs and other trusted family and friends have taken to saying for the last 6 weeks,"don't lose any more weight." I'm at 155 lbs. They've pointed out, and I can kind of see it too, that I look more fit at 155 now than I did at 147 all those years ago. I train with weights twice a week, run twice, bike three times, swim once (yep, I do triathlons). Back then, I did no weight training and worked out 30 min with an exercise video or jogged 5 days a week.

I 100% get the motivation of reaching a big goal. You may need to hit 125 for the mental boost alone, I don't know. But if you reach it and find yourself angry or crying all the time, with low to no energy, don't be afraid to add a few pounds of muscle back on.