Plateau? Lets break it together!

I have reached a plateau since beginning this diet in January - I started at 171 lbs and i am now hovering between 150-152 and i am 5'5".

I definately need some motivation to get over this hump. Who wants to join me???

I have 15 lbs more to go, and I can not wait to rid myself of them.

Let's share our strategies and support - weigh in once a week on fridays and blow our plateaus to shreds!

Anyone Game?

Hello All!

Having just found this thread, it took some time to read the back posts and am now ready to post that I've been on a plateau at 140ish since last December. I've increased calories, zig-zagged them and am now back down to lower calories.

My exercise routine is 2x a week at the gym including 20" stretches/crunches, 45" weight training and 25" cardio on the floor. Then I do 45" cardio in the swimming pool and 15" swimming. Non-gym days resolve to 30" walk.

Thought I broke it last week with a 3# loss on the 13th but it's back this week. I do have progress as Body Fat % decreased by 1.5% in the last month and I lost an inch around the waist.

SW: 174 1/2006 Plateau SW: 140.8

GW: 128 CW: 140.6 as of 6/20/08

mischeif - you have made some amazing progress. i started at 171 in January and i am not stuck at 148-150.

Your workout routine looks great! I bet you are in great shape.

Love2hate - Well, looks like I'm on board with you! The doctors told me no more soda, so I've been half into caffiene withdrawl all weekend! lol, how is your battle against the stuff going? I gave in last night and had about 1/2 a cup of coke zero...

Newbie here!  Just found out about this sight and thought I would share my plateau struggles as well. 

I know how to work out and what work out's are better suited for me and my goals.  I know the do's and dont's of food.  

Here's my problem.....I usually go anywhere between 4 to 6 weeks and then the momentum just STOPS!! Completely!  And there is no rhyme or reason for it.  I am not sure if I am hitting a plateau and then just giving up or what, but it does not feel like it.  I feel like I go strong and then...BAM.....no momentum and the weight comes back.  I do have a problem with binge eating sometimes, especially at night, but I know that I can control that when I get motivated.  And I know that once I get started on a program, I am good to go.  But then there is that momentum loss, wherever it comes from.  So..........now, officially yesterday, I am back with it.  If there are any pointers out there about how to keep positive momentum this time around, then that would be great. 

Look forward to this discussion board.

:)

Well I had a great vacation I loved the time away from home and work. I started off my vacation by running every couple days it was going great. It got very busy when it got closer to the wedding we went for. My running ceased for the rest of my vacation, I drank more beer than I should of that 4 days. But the good news is that I walked A LOT when we were in Toronto for 3 days. I was so tried when we got back to the Hotel after sightseeing I didnt got up to the fitness room like I should of. Now I am back to my starting weight on this site of 225lbs, so now I am back home and back to work it is time to crack down and actually lose this weight once and for all.

I have read a lot of information on plateau's and found that women experience it more than men and quicker (maybe that is why there has only been one Biggest Loser female winner!!!)  Anyway, most of the research I did says that women usually hit plateau's every 6 to 7 weeks if they are NOT in the maintenance phase of their programs/routines.  And I also read that changing the exercises, routines, or programs that you are doing, can assist with fighting those plateau's as well.  I guess this makes sense because the body gets bored and expects things.  We need to surprise our bodies into changing.  Plateau's are definitely a killer, along with motivation.  I think they coincide.  Just a thought.

If I had to guess, using what I've accumulated on this site and from my own experience, I think that those sticking to their plan tend to plateau because:

The body is an efficient machine. It starts out telling you "Give me 1700 cals/day to run". You've been eating over that and begin a diet of eating only 1200cals/day. The body, at first, will burn these calories as they are provided to the system. In the first few days, we lose a lot of water weight. Over the next few weeks, we begin losing fat and some muscle (hopefully mostly fat!). Slowly though, the body begins to conserve calories. As you lose, you are doing less work to move yourself around and as you provide your body with less food, it begins storing it as fat, rather than immediately burning the fuel. In a month or two, the body is able to function on 1400cals rather than 1700 and boom, your weight loss grinds to a halt. This "plateau" can be helped for some by cycling your calories. For example, every weekend, I eat up to about 1500 and one day I might go ahead and eat my maintenance. This keeps my body from storing everything immediately so that I can metabolize it faster. I understand that switching up your exercise routing helps too (though I'm just breaking into the exercise arena as of a few weeks ago).

So there you have it - my plateau theory. Anyone around here who knows the real deal on plateaus... am I full of poo, or not far off base? lol

Sounds good to me.  Makes perfect sense.  I think that there are probably many reasons why people plateau.  Thanks for sharing. 

And by the way...I agree with the one day a week eating things that are not in the diet.  I call them "Eat whatever I want days."  I think that people binge eat, lose focus, and cheat more because the temptation is there.  So why not have an eat whatever you want day and that way you do not cheat the rest of the time.  This is really stressed in the "Body For Life" plan, which is a GREAT program if you like strength training and interval cardio.  If you do not like the Body for Life program, I would seriously recommend just reading the book because it is full of very important information that anyone can use, regardless of what tpye of program you are in.  I did this program many years ago and it works!  But I could not maintain....loss of momentum....again!  But I use many aspects of it, like the eating and diet parts.  Very informative.  Just a thought.  :)

Well hello everyone,

So I am not sure how it haapend but I broke my plateau..It must have been water weight like I mentioned in my previous post. I only worked out on edya last week, and ate fast food all weekend because I was in a motorcycle course class form 7AM-5pm both days and it was eat that or starve....Saturday I weighed 160, up apound from a few days before that..This morning I weigh myself....156.5......confusing but ok...I also need to stop checking the scale every day!......But it is hard...

The scale is a deadly thing!  Put it somewhere that is out of sight, out of mind.   Sometimes it is not always about the number on the scale; rather it is about how you feel, how your clothes fit, energy levels, etc.  I hate the scale and will not use it.  I will track my progress by the way I look when I look in a mirror and especially how my clothes fit.  I have some extra tight pants that will be my personal scale!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I really thought I'd broken out of my plateau, but it seems all I did was shift it down a tiny fraction -- as in, 1 freaking pound.  Two weeks ago I hit 153, went up to 154, then went on my period, up to 155+, then back down to 154 & 153.  That was all of last week.  Now this week, I've been hovering at 154 (something) every single day.

My last plateau was in Feb and only lasted three weeks.  This one is now at 8 weeks ... and only 10 lighter than last times.  If I'm going to plateau every 10 pounds, I'll be too old to enjoy my hot new bod, by the time I eventually get there.  Sigh.

I'm 158 today(not sure I believe it)

Hope everyone is doing good. I'm almost better. Really sick Tuesday and Wednesday. Gotta make my kids breakfast.

I haven't weighed myself all week until today - up a pound, but i've been eating around maint. level and have only exercised once this week - def have not drank enough water either. I did have a day where i was so tempted to weight because i just knew i had lost... you know how you can just feel it sometimes?

Anyway, i've got one more week of not being strict with food because work will be crazy, so after that i'm going to hit it hard again. I'm not really bummin about that extra pound. so be it.

Have a great night ladies! I'm having pizza and a few beers!

I really scrutinized my data for the last two months, and I discovered something:  I was wrong about being on a plateau for six weeks, and maybe breaking it two weeks ago.  For 6 weeks, my daily weights bounced between 155 and 157.  And then two weeks ago it fell to 154 and (once) 153.  Sure sounds like a plateau, huh?

Well, I scrutinized my weight data and started looking at strictly the trend points.  What I discovered was that May was not a plateau--it was actually a very gradual .9 lb gain, which was disguised in the daily weight fluctuations.  And on June 5th, the trend data started going down with only one brief, VERY minor jot up.  And in the past month, I've lost 3 pounds.  That's slow, but it would be acceptable to me, if I can keep it up.

When I looked back at my food and workout diaries for May, I can understand it.  My weekend calories took an upturn--Mother's Day, my birthday, our anniversary, and aweekend mostly away (ie, more eating out than most weekends), such that it combined to overall more calories.  And my workouts had slumped a bit -- omitted a few, shortened some others.  Between the two, I gained weight. 

I started losing weight again when I did two things:  1) I was desperate to get out of the "plateau" I thought I was in, and I started paying extra attention to the weekends--being tighter with the calories.  2) I changed from 4 workouts/ 3 off days, to 6 workout days and 1 off day.  And two of my workouts are now running and biking outdoors.  I little longer, a little harder.   

The fact that I was gaining in May, and didn't realize it, bothers me a lot more than the perceived plateau, because my departures from "my routine" were pretty minor.  Just too many of them.  It concerns me how VERY easy it was to gain weight, and not even realize it, because I neither recognized that my departures were too many, nor recognized the gradual weight increase in the midst of the day-to-day fluctuations.  It makes me despair that I will always struggle to maintain my goal weight, when I eventually get there.

 Ah, well, I'm not on a plateau, so I'm off.  Good luck to all the rest of you in discovering how to break through your plateaus.

SW: 174 1/2006 Plateau SW: 140.8

GW: 128 CW: 140.6 as of 6/20/08

Update CW of 137.8 as of 7/06/08

Well, I think I can safely say that I'm past the plateau now.  I kept accurate logs since Jan, got mostly A's for food analysis, exercised 120-185 min 3x week until mid June.  Exercise is down to 1-2x weekly due to gas and mileage distance to gym but I do walk every day.

I've been drinking distilled water since 6/10 and had broccoli at least every other day.  Cut out my favorite fruit of banana; eating apricots, cherries, nectarines and prunes.  Avg cal is 1350-1450 and I'm not hungry.

Not sure what broke the plateau as exercise is less and I'm back to the same calories that I started with in Jan.

I went on holidays for 3 weeks and came back with an increase of only just under 2lb, with 4 days in disneyland I thought that was a pretty good deal! Of course, the main problem is that now I am finding it impossible to get back into the swing of things, especially since I know I'll be away again in less than a week for another 10 days. I really don't want to slip back down the slope :(

Funnily enough, the increase in weight brought me straight back to where I was plateauing initially, I guess my body REALLY does like that number

After 2 1/2 weeks of no logging i am only up .8lbs, so thats not bad at all, i hope to really peel some weight off over this weekend - i'm off work today so that gives me a 3 day weekend!

Princess - make yourself work extra hard to get a jump on any weight gain that might occur over your next trip, i find that thinking of it that way, makes it easier for me to stay on track!

I am noticing that the only times i am showing losses is during TTOM, i guess that gives me something to look forward to, but if the trend keeps up, it means i am over a year away from getting these last 13 lbs off!

I need to workout harder or something.

Hi ladies -

So, I went away for 10 days and came back at the same weight.  That is good.  I didn't completely deprive myself (i.e. I enjoyed a smore or two during the campfires) and I managed to stay pretty active.  Golf, swimming, jogging (a few times), playing pickle with the kids.  Now I am home and happily getting back into my routine.  I think I may have actually missed working out.  Ok, not the oh-this-is-hard-I-am-so-tired-and-sweaty part, but the feeling about an hour afterwards when everything feels tighter and I get proud of myself for taking care of me. 

Meg - I am sure you will get back into it without a problem. 

Princess - with a 3 week vacation, 2lbs is not bad.  I am sure now that you aren't reliant on park food (I don't think there is much lo-cal at Disney) and other vacation foods I am sure those 2lbs will come off.  Remember too, you probably walked a lot, especially the days you were at Disney.  I agree with Meg, work hard the next few days before your next trip and I am sure you will be fine.

Ye are all wise beyond your years, the weight disappeared after a week! I am now only 1.6lb off having lost 30lb, if that's not a good motivator for sticking to sensible eating while I'm away then I dunno what is.

love2hate, congrats on the no-gain! It's so easy to forget how much we enjoy working out when we stop for a while, but it's always there when we go back :)

I ate hardly 800 calories on friday plus i exercised - it was just so hot that i didn't feel like eating, well, i certainly made up for it on sat. - I ended up eating almost 2,000 - (had to go to jack in the box after we went to a bar - the ultimate cheeseburger was calling my name!)

Yesterday joe and i went out for a late lunch and had nachos for dinner - not the healthiest, so today i am really trying hard to buckle down...

Monday is breakfast at the office, so the treat today was this blueberry cobbler-type yummy thing...

I ate two scoops of it, so i am estimating thats about 400 calories - probably a little more, but i don't really know - so eh. I skipped morning snack to make up for it and had a turkey sandwich for lunch.

I'm planning on having either my apple or my yogurt and fiber one late this afternoon before i head to the gym.  Joe's working late, so i have plenty of time to get a good workout in.

I think i am going to get back to doing couch to 5k, that was such a good workout. I kinda miss it... My cardio sessions need some structure!