plateau??

I lost 83lbs and i have hit a block a couple times during it....All i did to get over it was..change my workout routine. One week instead of doing cardio, i walked 30min each day..and then the next week i did Hard cardio again for the week and then on the 3rd week i did not workout for 5 days straight...I always stayed within my calories though, and you should always make sure you NET 1200 cals, never ever under that. It worked for me anyways both times....It can take a few weeks for you to get past a plateau. Just keep trying to figure out what works best for you, and never give up! Happens to all of us at some point and the scale will move again!:)

Most people will plateau, sometimes several times. I actually read an article about it today. As you lose weight your body needs fewer calories to maintain your current weight. The article I read suggested using a tool to get an idea what it really takes to lose and maintain weight loss. I just tried it and found it very interesting. I also found it really tracked what I have experienced during the last 18 months. The URL is http://bwsimulator.niddk.nih.gov/ below is the text of the article I read. It was on YAHOO!

Everything you know about dieting is wrong, say US scientists who have devised a new formula for calculating calories and weight loss that they hope will revolutionize the way people tackle obesity.

Obesity rates have doubled worldwide in the past 30 years, coinciding with a growing food surplus, and the ensuing epidemic has sparked a multibillion dollar weight loss industry that has largely failed to curb the problem.

Current standards in the United States, where two thirds of people are overweight or obese, advise people that cutting calories by a certain amount will result in a slow and steady weight loss over time.

But that advice fails to account for how the body changes as it slims down, burning less energy and acquiring a slower metabolism, researchers told the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Vancouver.

The result is a plateau effect that ends up discouraging dieters and sending them back into harmful patterns of overeating.

As an example, researcher Kevin Hall offered up his large vanilla latte, purchased at a popular coffee shop. When he asked, the barista told him it contained about 240 calories.

"The notion was if I drank one of these every day and then I replaced it with just black coffee no sugar, then over the course of a year I should lose about 25 pounds, and that should just keep going," Hall told reporters.

"People have used this sort of rule of thumb to predict how much people should lose for decades now, and it turns out to be completely wrong."

Hall, a scientist with the US National Institutes of Health, said his work aims to "come up with better rules and better predictions of what is going to happen when an individual changes their diet."

He and colleagues said their scientific model is aimed to help doctors and policymakers, while a "back-of-the-envelope calculation" for consumers means cutting small amounts of daily calories, but expecting to cut more over time.

"If I want to lose 10 pounds of weight eventually, I have to cut 100 calories per day out of my diet," Hall explained.

"You'll get halfway there in about a year, and then you will eventually plateau, (reaching the goal) after about three years," he added.

"For folks abroad that works out to about 100 kilojoules per day per kilogram. The contrast is the old rule of thumb predicts twice as much weight loss after a year, and it gets worse after that."

The new model gives dieters one calorie goal for short term weight loss and another for permanent weight loss. Exercise is also calculated in to help set realistic goals.

Tests on small numbers of adults who were fed strictly controlled diets showed the model was accurate, though real-life situations are harder to predict.

Study co-author Carson Chow, also with NIH, said the daily calorie cut needed for weight loss was actually smaller than researchers anticipated.

"It is essentially one cookie different a day, so a 150 calorie cookie leads to a seven kilogram (15 pound) difference in weight. That is huge in my opinion," Chow said.

Their model was first published in The Lancet in August 2011, and a link is available at http://bwsimulator.niddk.nih.gov.

"People can plug in some information about their initial age, their height, their weight, some estimate of their physical activity level," Hall said.

Add in a goal weight and the "model will simulate what changes of diet or exercise that person would have to do to achieve that goal weight, and then even more importantly what they need to do permanently maintain that weight loss."

Since The Lancet article appeared, the notion has not exactly taken the world by storm, in part because it's not primed for public use, but is mainly aimed at doctors and researchers with adult American patients for now.

Also, if a dieter enters an extreme weight goal, the number of calories the model returns may be much too low to be realistic or healthy, so it needs an expert's interpretation.

"It's not particularly user friendly... but it is still relatively informative," said Hall, who maintains hope that some day his message will be heard.

"There is a lot of inertia behind these old rules of thumb," he said, adding that he was heartened by an editorial in December in the journal of the American Dietetic Association that commented on the idea of a weight loss plateau and mentioned the new simulator.

"It's going to take some time to get the public and the professional community aware that there is a new way of doing things, and we actually have some tools that weren't available before."

@yahoonews on Twitter

I hit plateau once during my 15lbs in 1 month loss. Thats when i ate close to 7000cal in one day

http://i.imgur.com/FS0qd.png

as you can see that weight QUICKLY dissapeared

it was all water and poo poo weight.

I hit plateau once during my 15lbs in 1 month loss. Thats when i ate close to 7000cal in one day

http://i.imgur.com/FS0qd.png

as you can see that weight QUICKLY dissapeared

it was all water and poo poo weight.

Out of curiousity, where is the "plateau" in your graph?

Plateau is just before the jump in the middle of the month. I stopped losing weight for couple days. Not sure if its plateau or not. Sorry for confusion , if any

@yevgheniy -- I am sorry there was a misunderstanding> I definitely must have the definition of plateau mixed up. I thought that a plateau was when you are at a standstill for a long time and are having a hard time getting any results.

@Iamkim73 -- That is a good idea. I will have to go in and manually change that in my settings. Thanks!

Actually, that sounds like the definition of "plateau" to me, so I think you're understanding everything just fine.

There's been some good advice in this thread. I know some people are enthusiastic about "calorie cycling" or "zigzagging", wherein you mix high calorie and low calorie days. I tended to do this by accident, as my weekends were usually higher calorie than my weekdays, but it usually evened out to the right deficit (or close to it) over a weeklong period. Perhaps something like that might work for you?

Other than that, I second the strength training suggestion! If you aren't currently into a weight-lifting routine, "The New Rules of Lifting for Women" is a book that was a great resource to me. It's basically geared towards making women more comfortable in the weight room.

Good luck! Hope you get the results you're after!

I am having the same problem. I haven't lost any weight in a month even though I'm exercising and eating less calories. I've lost 21 pounds but only 2 pounds since I joined MFP 35 days ago.