Grrrr plateau

I am 31 years old, 5' 3.5" and at the beginning of this weight loss I weighed 152 pounds.  I have a lot of belly fat from my second baby, who's currently 14 months old. I have my burn set at lightly active since I do work an office job and my favorite hobby is reading, but I go to the gym 2-3 time a week and exercise very vigorously for an hour, which I log. I also have a 1 year old and 3 year old, so I spend a lot of my day carrying around a 20-35 pound weight or running around and playing with my girls.

When I first started counting calories, I rapidly dropped weight--about 9 pounds in 3 weeks. I was surprised by how quickly it came off, because I wasn't restricting my calories too much--I averaged around 1500 a day (I have tried to do less, but if I drop much below 1500 I am ravenous, and get a little light-headed.

Then, after those nine pound, I just quit losing, and have now been vacillating between 143 and 145 pounds for three weeks.

I tried eating at maintenance for a few days, and then returned to 1500 calories, but nothing. I tried bumping up my exercise to 5 days a week last week, but still nothing.

Any advice? Should I just continue to eat 1500 a day and ignore the scale for a while?

No advice?

Have you taken any measurements? My clothes are fitting better but my scale is mum. Depending on what exercising you are doing, you may be getting results that the scale just won't acknowledge.

Are you doing only cardio, or do you have any strength exercises built in? Do you do any HIIT (High intensity interval training)? Those two will make your body continue to burn cals way after your workout (I am getting great results!)

Also, I went 2 weeks with NO scale budging. Its not a steady loss; it starts and stops somehow.

I'd switch up exercise a little if you're only doing cardio. If not, I'm not really sure - hope someone else will have some input for you.

Good luck! 3 weeks has got to be frustrating! But if you've been sticking to your calories and getting in some exercise, its inevitable that it will pay out eventually. :)

I do a lot of body pump, some pretty intense step aerobics, the elliptical, and weights. There aren't any HIIT classes that I know of, though my Y has something called High Energy Athletic Training--not sure if it's the same thing.

I should probably get out a tape measure, especially since my clothes do seem to be looser. I know I shouldn't worry too much about quantifying, but I love numbers and charts!

yeah me too... my food/exercise excel spreadsheet is up to 7 pages LMAO.

I was afraid to take measurements, but I did 2 days ago and I'll take them again next week, because the scale is not being my friend lately.

Man your exercise seems awesome for your goal (to me, im an amateur tho!)... maybe try zig-zagging calories? a high day, a low day... instead of all about the same? I've heard ppl say that here. I do it but it just kind of happens, I don't really do it on purpose.

Is it possible TTOTM is interfering? could it be a combo of water weight due to more exercise and TTOTM? I just don't know what else! We must be missing something! Where's our gurus??!! =D

Hi! Plateaus suck.  A lot. when I hit 50 lbs of weight loss, I got stuck for almost three weeks.  I even gained in there.  Every day I was diligent about my counting, and my exercise, but nothing.  Man, was I frustrated.  So, I started to get aggressive in my efforts to shake myself up. It ended up working, after those three weeks, in the following three weeks (the past three) I've lost 8 lbs, and now I'm back to losing about a  2-3lbs a week (but, granted, I still have more than 10% of my body weight to lose).  When you have less than 10% left to go, it is MUCH harder to lose.  Here are the things that I did, that finally restarted my body's weight loss:

1.  Eat Fibre!!!!!  I now get 40g of fibre most days.  That's sky high, I know, but the research I did during my plateau indicated that nothing is better than fibre for weight loss.  I started buying foods based on how much fibre they had

2.  Check your analysis every day.  I started looking closely at all things I was eating, because weight loss is not only related to caloric consumption (people will disagree perhaps, but its not.)  I learned that a HUGE problem for me was that I was not eating enough protein.  This meant that my muscles were having a hard time building despite all the exercise I was doing.  Muscle growth means an increase in metabolic rate, which leads to more weight loss.  I would say the changes in my protein and fibre consumption both played big roles in getting off the plateau.  My body's nutritional needs were not being met!!!!

3.  Start lifting!!!  Or, using resistance bands, if you prefer.  But, the reality is, that weight and strength training do wonderful things for our body, and should go hand in hand with any cardio regime. 

4.  'move around the furniture': change HOW you eat, without necessarily changing the calories.  Try eating your bigger meals earlier in the day, whatever... Just change how you were eating from before.  Your body hits a plateau when it gets used to what you were doing before, which means you've gotta change it up and confuse it.  This can mean, take a week off from all exercise (well, just the gym, cause clearly you're not going to stop playing with your kids!), but maintain the same level of caloric consumption.  Or, have a high activity, high calorie day, to give your metabolism a jump start.

5.  Increase your activity level.  Go longer, or go harder.  But, DON'T do the same thing every day.  So, 5 days at the gym of doing one thing will not do exactly what you want it to.  Change it up.  But, seriously, take a rest, like your body recouperate, and then hit it. HARD. lol...

6. Never let the scale govern how you feel about yourself and what you've accomplished.  You are making yourself healthier.  Focus on those things that the scale doesn't measure.  If you were like me and didn't take your measurements in the beginning (still wish I did), try going shopping and trying on smaller sizes of clothes.  I did this when I hit my plateau, and it made me feel SO much better about myself.  I focused on my wicked endurance in the pool, and how much that was improving.  I found other measureables that kept me going.  I garnered strength from the knowledge that the number of the scale is a goal post that I was using to measure my health and fitness, but that the number itself is not the goal.  Like really, what is a number anyways?  It represents something that we want, but it is not what we actually want.  I weigh in every day, and don't get me wrong, I still get excited whenever the number goes down, but, when it doesn't, I don't let it get me down.  Remain confident in your assurance that it WILL.  This process works, and you will get there.  Trust the process. dOn't give up.  Don't even think about it.  There is no way back.

wow... that was super long... lol sorry about that!

Hello~!

I just wanted to maybe help you out a little bit. I just pulled out of a very long plateau today. What I did to break the cycle was.....nothing.

You just have to keep in your calories and remember to exercise every day (or as often as possible), and then just FORGET about the scale, or inches, or anything. Do it because you want to be healthy. Do it as an example to eat right in front of your kids. Do it because you want to live your life to te fullest.

I have been trying to only weigh myself once a week. I think you get the best motivation if you see that scale drop a pound or two at a time rather than the 0.2 every day or whatever. I used to weigh myself everyday and found myself to the point of tears because I was so discouraged. Then one week without it, and voila.

HANG IN THERE! It is SOOOOO worth it when you finally pull out of the plateau, I promise you.

~*~Gela~*~

Continue with your cardio for the next 2-3 weeks but eat at your body's maintenience calorie requirement. It's helping me with my workout right now and I know it'll get my body focsed again when I cut back on cals this friday or next (depending what tomorrow's weigh in says).