Exercising less, losing more?

I'm 15, female, 5'10 and 153 pounds...

...and i appear to have broken my plateau of several months by exercising less: cutting down from exercising 6 or 7 days a week to four days a week. I am exercising at the same intensity.

I haven't changed anything at all in my diet. No different foods, or less food.

Is this possible or must there be another reason for my weight loss?

Were you eating too little?

No, I've been continuously eating the same amount for quite some time.

If you have cut back on the workouts and not changed your diet at all, my guess is that you may not have been getting enough calories with your previous activity level.

sorry, that's what I meant as well. Eating too little, as in your body didn't have enough energy and thought you were starving it, and thus hung on to everything that it could.

If that doesn't sound like you though, I've got some other theories.

1) You are losing some muscle mass? Perhaps? How long have you been cutting back on exercise? I've heard that it takes a good few weeks (3ish?) of not exercising/cutting back to actually lose muscle mass, assuming no calorie deficit I think.

2) I've noticed that when I get sore, I retain water a bit.  Perhaps, because you are giving yourself ample time to recover, your muscles aren't storing up so much water?

Just random theories. I mean, if you're still losing, more power to you!

The same thing happened to me. I was eating less (1200 calories) and working out more (6-7 days per week). I changed it around to eating more (1600 calories), working out less (4 days per wk) and thats when I lost. U just weren't giving your body time to adjust to all that you were doing. I stayed the same weight for nearly 3 weeks then figured it out. I'm so glad that I did too. Good luck to you and congrats on the Weight lost.

SW:178

CW:153.6

GW:139

5'4.5

This is so weird the same thing happens with me as well. I am eating the recommended amount most sites are telling me to for the activity level I do and the such. I found it to be utterly odd, glad I'm not the only one! :)

Same here

I injured my knee so had to stop cardio and still ate great....lost another 10 lbs.

~H~

figure out how many cals you burned in a day with exercise and then figure out how many you ate, the difference should not be greater than 1000, so if you are eating 1200 cals a day and burning 3000, 3000 - 1200 = 1800, then this would be to much, i dont know how you feel if you would rather do less exercise and eat less or do more exercise and eat more. 1200 is just too risky, try upping it to like 1250 - 1300 and then only exercise enogh so that you are burning between 1900- 2300