I need help with a plateau!

sending you a message now!!!

how many calories are you eating? how much do you currently weigh? how tall are you?

I don't necessarily know what you are eating, but I have been told that 'abs are made in the kitchen'...meaning food is the most important part of any weight loss!

You might think you are eating healthy but there might actually be something you need to clean up.

Water is also integral as well. Especially when running we need to ensure we are drinking half our body weight in ounces per day! It gives us energy, provides moisture to our joints, and boosts that metabolism!

You are clearly keeping yourself challenged with your exercise, so keep it up! Have patience! It will happen. You will see a big difference and you'll feel better about yourself too.

the same seems to happen to me too! I up my running mileage and I either plateau or gain/loose the same 2 lbs over and over again. what's the deal?

Well, looking at your diary you're literally STARVING yourself. you often eat LESS than 1200 calories AND you're exercising. What you're doing is actually quite dangerous and you're setting yourself up to lose precious lean muscle mass.

I recommend taking a break from "Dieting" and eating at maintenance for a few weeks to restore your leptin levels and reset your metabolism. Then begin eating no less than 1500 calories, more when you have a long run.

Yes, yes, yes! I've only ever pulled myself out of a plateau before by eating MORE. Do that!

I too had hit a plateau but kept doing the right things and now I have melted away 5 lbs in the last week and a half...it's so wierd. i did switch up calories and exercise. Hang tough - it will start coming off again. Good job on the marathon - that's awesome!

Maybe since you're training so hard, you could be losing fat but gaining more muscle? Not sure on this, but just a thought.

Also, are you eating breakfast? I read Prevention magazine sometimes and recently they had an article about plateauing and one of the biggest issues they said was that people should be getting a breakfast anywhere from 350-400 calories and about 14 or 15 g of protein to get their metabolism started on the right track to start the day. A cup of milk and some good whole grain cereals usually does it for me

you NEED to go over on your calories. You cannot run your body into the ground (literally) and give it less than it would need if you were completely inactive and expect to get POSITIVE results. Any weight loss you do see is likely to be lean muscle, causing a reduction in your metabolism and ultimately you'd be left "skinny fat" which is surely not what you want.

You really should just take a step back. Focus on restoring your metabolism and hormone levels and take this slow. you didn't gain weight over night and you don't want to lose weight in a way that sets you up to regain it. What you're currently doing is not sustainable in the long term and although I understand the feeling of urgency, you need to fight that urge.

A small deficit of 500 MAXIMUM is all you need. If you don't want to go to maintenance then don't BUT you still NEED to eat more. Much more. Your TDEE is likely well above 2000 calories so 1700-1800 calories for WEIGHT LOSS would not be unheard of.

I took a look-see at your diary (it's helpful that you opened it when seeking advice, so thank you), and see that your protein is REALLY low. It is my understanding that you should have a gram of protein for each pound of weight as a ceiling. I've also read 1.5 grams per kilogram of current weight as a goal. I do not know which formula is best, but all sites recommend AT LEAST 100 grams protein for adults. Some sites recommmend one gram for each pound of your desired weight goal (in your case 120 grams)

Some days this past week you had half a gram per pound, other days less than that. Feed the muscle that you are working so hard with your marathon training.

Hope this helps... or even brings out information from another MFPer with more knowledge.

I'll have to agree with what others have said before me. You need to eat more calories. Trust me, I know that sounds crazy but your body has more than likely gone into conservation mode. That means your body isn't allowing you to burn anymore fat as it is not getting enough energy intake on a daily basis to burn. Survival mode, if you will.

Also, you really need to try and eat back your exercise calories. I know many believe that if you don't eat back your exercise calories then your body will be forced to burn more fat off the body, yes? This CAN be true if you have a LOT (you're pretty obese) of weight to lose, however, you're more than likely losing muscle mass along with fat.

I'll give you an example. Myself.

I lost from 280 to 175 with no problems. I did minimal exercise, didn't drink much water and had a 1000 calorie deficient. So I basically got to the point where I was also eating 1200 calories a day. 175 comes along and for three weeks, the scale absolutely refuses to budge. It was time to do some research. I read articles online, read some books and finally decided to bite the bullet and eat MORE calories. In fact, I upped my calories to 1730, started doing heavy lifting and do cardio in between. I would guess my heavy lifting + cardio probably takes up about as much time as your running. With exercise calories, I'm eating around 1900 - 2000 calories a day and crazy enough, the scale is moving downward again.

My biggest recommendation is to do research and learn WHY the body needs calories and why less can cause you to stall out. The human body is a truly amazing and complex piece of machinery.

I've been at a plateau for 2 weeks maybe and I've been fluctuating but not at a complete stand still

I have a few comments:

If you're indeed sitting around 1200 calories for intake, this is pretty low and in that regard, I'd agree with the other comments that you could probably up your intake.

But having said that, I don't think two weeks is enough time for your to make an assessment about whether or not you're stuck. This isn't a plateau (yet) and it could be easily masked by water weight fluctuation.

I would expect that "don't change anything" would work in your case, but again, if you're marathon training then 1200 kcals/day is just too low.

It's not going to cause you to GAIN FAT, as that's not how things work when leptin and thyroid hormones downregulate due to low intake, but you're going to have performance issues and probably other issues due to low intake (satiety, micro insufficiencies, etc).


EDIT: I'm typing out more crap so that I'm abundantly clear here: I think you should up your intake for reasons other than plateauing. I do not think enough time has elapsed to conclude anything about a plateau.

I took a look-see at your diary (it's helpful that you opened it when seeking advice, so thank you), and see that your protein is REALLY low. It is my understanding that you should have a gram of protein for each pound of weight as a ceiling. I've also read 1.5 grams per kilogram of current weight as a goal. I do not know which formula is best, but all sites recommend AT LEAST 100 grams protein for adults. Some sites recommmend one gram for each pound of your desired weight goal (in your case 120 grams)

Some days this past week you had half a gram per pound, other days less than that. Feed the muscle that you are working so hard with your marathon training.

Hope this helps... or even brings out information from another MFPer with more knowledge.

I seem to have found myself back to plateau however recently when I was stuck (for months) upping my protein helped. After months of nothing I lost about 5lbs with protein and no other change. Just me- good luck!