Stuck. Lost 30#. I only have about 40 min. to work out, and I work out daily, cardio and weights. I use the My Fitness Pal app. to track intake, but I have been at the same place for a month. Increased my water intake, but seriously stuck. Need a boost!!! Not sure I can eat any less and work out. Help!!
You’ve lost 30 pounds, so that means your body has changed quite a bit from what it was when you started. You could try changing up your workouts. If you’ve been using weight machines, give free weights a try; if you’ve been running, switch to aerobics classes for a few weeks. Similarly, try looking at your diet. If you’ve been eating a minimal amount, you might think about adding a few calories - if your metabolism has gone into starvation mode, you need to eat enough to get it going again.
Above all, try to think of this as a long-term lifestyle change. It might help to begin thinking about your ultimate goal as a healthy way of life rather than as a certain weight. You certainly sound like you’ve made great progress!
I’ve plateaued several times. Evetually I get back to losing. Started at 285, plateaued at 245, then got to 235, then to the low 220s, now 210. Each step was a drop followed by a long stretch of the same weight.
Here’s a tip; Just keep doing what you’re doing and let your body dictate when you should lose more weight. Do not rush the process. If it takes a few years, it takes a few years. Stress does you no good. Get lots of sleep.
" I only have about 40 min. to work out, and I work out daily, cardio and weights. I use the My Fitness Pal app. to track intake"
Well, if you eliminated using that app, you could surely add a couple minutes to workout.
Plus you should change your whole life - if you only have 40 minutes a day in which to do what you want to do, some thing is wrong.
Not a pleasant way to do it, but in a similar situation I got food poisoning from some undercooked wings which I assumed they were precooked, heat and eat, not need to cook, the hot sauce + blue cheese disguised that they were raw, and apparently had something to make me ill.
It was an awful night of feeling just so sick without escape, and with normal digestive upset symptom of vomiting & diarrhea, though when morning came I lost I think 8 lbs then continued my weight loss plan, plateau broken.
Change your diet up. You don’t have to lower your calorie intake, but change the foods you’re eating. Your gut has a brain of its own, literally. The enteric nervous system is a layer of neurons and supporting cells that govern your digestive tract, which is why you don’t starve to death if you suffer a spinal injury that severs the gut from the brain.
Pure speculation on my part: If the enteric nervous system is responsible for determining how to respond to the nutrient load of the food you’ve eaten, it’s capable of adapting as well. So, if you are constantly eating the same foods every day, your body has gotten at least marginally better at extracting calories from it by adapting to the specific mix you’re feeding it.
Pure speculation, but it might help.
If increasing the 40 min window of exercise is not an option, increase the intensity. You are likely getting enough calories, else you’d see your weight continuing to drop. So burn more with a more intense workout. Your muscles and cardio system are very good at adapting to the routine of a workout which does not significantly vary. If you can’t change your entire workout routine, definitely crank up the intensity and reduce or eliminate the rest periods between sets. A little extra caffein half hour before workouts may give you the extra energy to do that. If you are using sports drinks with carbs, during or after - stop. You don’t need them for a short workout.
Good luck.
It means you’re eating too much. You need to eat less.
Stand firm with what you are doing. The goal is not the scale; the goal is health and possibly and less importantly looks. Those goals are served by the behaviors whether the scale reflects that or not.
Plateaus almost always happen. They do not mean you are doing anything wrong or that you need to change things. They do not mean you are eating too much.
The advice about increasing intensity and adding variety is excellent, not because it will get you through the plateau faster, but because it will increase your fitness better. Which matters much more than losing more weight.
This. Excercise is for health. Diet is for weight.
The quotes above are not helpful advice.
I think it is important to know your actual weight and height. There will reach a point where your body won’t want to lose any more weight since you are actually unhealthily thin. If you are 6 feet tall and weigh 140 pounds, the likelihood of losing ten more is slim.
That said, assuming that you are actually overweight or obese, plateaus happen. I find, for me, it is about every ten pounds. You really have two options:
- Power through it by eating less or exercising more.
- Give it some time, it will start up again.
I always use option 2. I really don’t have the time (or money) to go to the gym more (I am in charge of child care during the week). I also eat a very balanced diet and eliminating more food would mean I would lack some essential nutrients and I would be hungry all the time.
I suspect in two weeks if you keep on top of your diet and continue to exercise, you will see the scale start to move again.
I don’t know how germaine this is to the discussion, but I just stumbled on something very interesting.
Really overweight people will lose weight faster than not-as-overweight people. But both will hit their taget weights at about the same time. So if guy A needs to lose 200 pounds and guy B needs to lose 100 pounds, at some point guy A will have lost 50 pounds while guy B lost only 25. When guy A has lost 100, guy B will have lost 50. Guy B won’t “get there” faster than guy A.
This is based on a very unscientific study, done by me just minutes ago, based on about 2000 bariatric patients, broken down by starting BMI.
The last time I was really working out and hit a plateau in my weight loss, I ended up losing more after increasing my calories somewhat. I was running 4-5 days per week and lifting weights about 3 days per week, and taking in about 1500 calories. I felt like I really needed more, so I bumped it up to 1800, and the weight started coming off again.
I’m guessing the plateau wouldn’t have lasted anyway, but I felt better. YMMV, obviously.
This could actually just prolong and worsen the plateau by further depressing the metabolism by fooling the body into thinking it’s being starved (which in a sense it is). What it needs is periodic, scheduled “re-feedings” which serve to boost the metabolism and keep it burning calories at a steady rate.
A full month is long time for a completely non moving plateau if you have been faithful to your diet.
What is your real caloric daily intake? If your metabolism is relatively slow, which is not at all uncommon in people descending from a larger weight, maybe you are at your maintenance weight for those calories.
A good number of overweight people need considerably fewer calories for weight maintenance than most most calorie calculators indicate. Maintenance in heavier people, even if active, is usually around 9-11 calories per lb of body weight per day.
There’s also the possibility that you might actually be slapping on some muscle which could easily plateau your scale weight for a month if your fat loss is fairly gradual.
I’ve heard this sort of thing a lot. Sometimes it seems the plateau is broke through by easing up on the calorie restriction. And I have heard of people who lose an inordinate amount in a short period of time once they break through.
For those cases the only explanation that makes sense is that the physiologic stress (not the exact same as psychological stress) of prolonged significant calorie restriction results in elevated stress hormones (such as cortisol) which leads to fluid retention even as fat loss continues to inch forward. Relaxing the restriction results in reduction of the stress hormone levels and allows for that fluid retention to get urinated out, revealing the real fat loss that had been accruing all along. Certainly it is documented that low calorie dieting increases cortisol.
Of note the average point for a major plateau is at about 11% of body weight lost. If our op fit that typical pattern then he was about 270 to 275 at the start, and is now about 240ish. The current level of weight loss, if sustained with exercise and consistent healthy nutrition habits, has accomplished the vast majority of the health benefits.
Would that I could. I get up a 3:30 am just to steal that 40 minutes for me. 9 hour work days, 2 hour commute, then the 2nd shift at home, maybe 5 hours of sleep. Oh, it would be nice if something or everything wasn’t wrong.
Yes, I have had these plateaus before, I think I will just try to increase the intensity, and eat less, but I am at 1200 calories/day.
Sigh
Thanks for the kind words.
1200 calories a day? That’s a pretty low level. How big are you?
Look at what you are eating.
Refined sugar, wheat and dairy products all cause weight gain, and can be eliminated from a diet without problems.
Unfortunately, doing without them is pretty impossible for me as I’m addicted to them, but if I really want to lose weight…
Last time I went on a diet without them, it took me 3 months to lose 6 kg and 3 inches off my waist without doing any workouts. I’m sure I could have lost more, but pizza and cakes won.
Wrong. If you eat less, and continue eating less, sooner-or-later you *will *lose weight.