Can someone explain how you can hit a plateau if calories burned are always higher than calories in?

I see a lot of posts on here about people stuck at the same weight for a long period of time, and who have tried everything to get the scale to budge.

And then I see a lot of posts about how losing weight is a simple mathematical formula of calories in being less then calories burned.

If that is the case, then why would you ever have a plateau?  If every single week you have a deficit of 3500 calories, why wouldn't you lose 1 lb every single week?

It has to be more to it than just the math.  This obviously isn't that simple of creating a deficit to lose weight because there are too many people on here who are doing it (creating a deficit) but are not losing the weight.

Am I missing something here?

Make sure your deficit isn't higher than 1000 and you're not eating less than 1200 cals.

Switch your cals around every day: EI: 1500 today, 1400 tomorrow, wed, thur, 1600 Fri saturday/sunday use as maintence days or eat a little over.  It works for almost everyone that does it.

And remember...it takes a while to lose weight and you have to stay focused and patient.  And that you really need to measure/weigh your foods to know you're being accurate.

The basic calories in vs calories out is right...but everyone is different. Two people of the same age height and weight will have different metabolism's so you can never get your exact burn rate unless you have medical tests done, its just an estimate.

The metabolism can change too, eating an exact calorie intake for long periods can cause the body to adapt. I think the idea behind calorie cycling is that you fool your body into thinking that your not constantly eating less so your metabolism doesnt slow down.

Your body is an amazingly adaptable machine.  It adapts to the exercises you do, becoming more efficient, so that eventually, doing the same thing will burn fewer calories.  The more toned and in-shape you are, the fewer calories your activity will burn, and the more often you do that particular exercise, the fewer calories it will burn.  The plateau is the outcome, and this is when you really need to change up your "routine."

Your metabolism is not a stable factor, either.  Your body also goes through times when it stores more than others, so this is probably a part of plateauing.

To clarify, I'm not talking about myself.  I haven't hit a plateau.  I'm just asking a general question as to how it's possible to do so.  Thanks!

The math is simple but losing weight is hard.  Calories Out is an estimate based on averages and your actual calories burned may be less that what you are estimating.  To make matters worse, when you reduce Calories In your body automatically responds by reducing Calories Out accordingly.  This is why it is important that you focus as much effort on Calories Out as you do on Calories In.  Increasing your level of activity, such as exercising, is how you keep Calories Out where it needs to be in order for you to actually have a deficit.  It is also important that you continue to challenge yourself so you keep your calorie burning up.

Well calories taken in are a lot easier to calculate accurately than calories burned.  Everything listed for burned calories is just an estimate.  The more your body adapts to the exercises you're doing the easier it becomes, therefore using less oxygen and burning less calories.  That's why it's suggested to slightly increase intensity on cardio workouts regularly and change up routines.  Weight loss is a long and grueling road that requires lots of updated changes based on the progress you're making.  Good luck and stay motivated!! 

See, I knew it couldn't be that simple as just the math.  Good answers.... I hate "metabolism", it's tricky and it tries to fool us and just when we think we have it figured out, it changes!!  It's like a conspiracy against our bodies to keep us from losing weight. 

I guess I am being too literal in just looking at the numbers in/numbers out, not considering that numbers out, is indeed mostly an estimation...

Something that worked for me is, every morning I take 2 tbs of extra virigin olive oil, when i hit my plateu, that knocked it back into motion. just a suggestion.

One thing that folks (whether on a plateau or not) can do to try and improve 'the math' (specifically the calories out part) is to use the change (or increase or neither) in your weight over a given period and your caloric intake to calculate your average daily burn.

For example, say you lose 8 lbs in 30 days and are eating an average of 1300 calories per day.  Multiply the weight you lost (8) by 3500, the average number of calories one must burn to lose a pound of weight.  Then divide this figure (28,000) by the number of days (30).  In this case you get 933.33, meaning the average deficit over this 30 day period was 933 kcal/day.  (Yes, it is an estimate, as some of your loss can be water, but this is more typical of someone starting to lose, not someone who has been losing and has reached a plateau)  To find out your average daily burn, add the average daily deficit to your average caloric intake (1300).  For the hypothetical example given, the average daily burn would be 2233.33.  You can use the same formula for weight gain or if there is no change in your weight (if you gained a pound over 30 days you would multiply -1 by 3500 to get a negative deficit; if your weight stayed the same, multiply 3500 by 0)

Using this formula can be helpful because people who find themselves on a plateau due to a shift in their metabolism (i.e. reduced daily burn) may continue to use an estimated burn from CC that is higher than their actual burn.  By doing the math yourself based on your own stats, I think most people could improve the formula they use for calories-in, calories-out.

For Barbatois:  I'm curious.  How did you arrive at this strategy?  And why does it work?

Hi, I am very interested in this also. And I AM on a Plateau and it is driving me ****** Nuts!

If it is so hard to lose the last few pounds how are all of you (who are doing it) able to maintain a GW?

I absolutely LOVE Calorie Count-I could spend all day on here some days- and I do spend too much time on here! (At the expense of other things that I need to get done:~)

BUT- I would like for this (CCing and losing a little bit of weight) to not be so damn time consuming. I NEED it to be less time consuming. After over two years of trying to do this and then finally finding this site and getting serious about counting cals and really paying attention to what I eat-I have lost a measly 8 lbs and have 7-8 more to go. Well you can see I am frustrated and whiny.....

Thanks for a place to vent and it would be great to keep this thread going-or to be 15 years younger again...

My answer to OP's original question is NO.  I can't explain it.  It just happens, no matter how careful you are with your calories in/out.  It is frustrating, and can make some give up all together.  I am chosing not to let it get to me as I haven't been able to get below 156 lbs since October.  My weight has gone up to 159 and back down to 156 and all points in between.  If I would have said "screw it" (believe me, I've been tempted), I probably would be right back at my starting weight of 190.

Hope someone comes up with an answer.  I might try Baratois suggestion of an Olive Oil cocktail in the morning  but I'm not looking forward to that one, yet.

In a similar vein, can someone explain to me how on earth it is possible to be gaining with a minimum of 500 cal daily deficit  90% of the time and a weekly 3000 cal deficit at least, I stress gaining, not maintaining..

PROBLEM SOLVED

Plateaus are a way for your body to say to you:"You need to change something!"

In Jan 09,  I was 202, now I am 174 and by May 31st 2009 I will be at 167 my ideal high school weight.  Then I am off the weight loss program and will never gain back this weight again, as I did so many times before 2009.

I plateaued at least 4 times so far during this weight loss program that I am doing in 2009.  Yes I do several things which are unconventional according to CC and other health website forums.  But to me this Plateau problem is easy to solve.

What goes in has to come out and often! 

A major problem on a weight loss program it is not going to bathroom enough during the day.  When I learned the colon can hold up to 40lbs of waste (in chronic cases) this inspired me to change my diet and make sure I evacuated at least twice a day but preferably three times a day.   Elimination is the key!

I do it all naturally and never use kits or pills..but this always kicks starts things and the plateau is history.  Now it has worked for many others to but because it is all natural foods most will be able to try it with out upsetting their own program.

Someone mention drinking olive oil but you can also drink castor oil to, to get things moving but to me that is not natural. That is for constipation. 

The body if feed the right foods will get rid of the waste in a timely way.

So when you hit a plateau eat natural foods which stimulate and make you go to the bathroom at least twice a day. That gets rid of the waste you have been carrying.  It has nothing to do with fat.  In my opinion.

Can you give an example of the kinds of foods you're reffering too themassageguy?

Original Post by joyhorvath:

See, I knew it couldn't be that simple as just the math.  Good answers.... I hate "metabolism", it's tricky and it tries to fool us and just when we think we have it figured out, it changes!!  It's like a conspiracy against our bodies to keep us from losing weight. 

I guess I am being too literal in just looking at the numbers in/numbers out, not considering that numbers out, is indeed mostly an estimation...

You are exactly correct, but it is not a conspiracy.  It's by design.  Your body is designed to last as long as possible on whatever it has.  Our bodies are not made to loose weight,  they are designed to use and store everything you give it.  If you start loosing weight then something is wrong and your body is going to do it's best to compensate.  Our bodies evolved in a world of fight or flight.  Where food is not always plentiful and we often need access to energy in short notice (i.e. run for your life).  It's the perfect machine for surviving on the planet earth. 

That being said, it doesn't make life for us in modern day society any easier.  We can't eat more than we need because our body will store it for later.  We can't eat too little because our body will slow down our internal processes to make sure our storage tanks deplete as little as possible and if you eat extra in this state, it will again store what ever it can (constant calorie deficit with no exercise=slow metabolism+binge eating=weight gain).

You want a good example of how all this works against us?  It's our muscles that burn energy.  If you are in a calorie deficit, what's the first thing our body does?  Burn our fat stores?  Nope, it burns muscle.  We need that muscle to loose weight and here our body is depleting our muscle so that when times are really tough (starvation time) we have access to our fat stores to keep us going for as long as possible.

In order to get around our bodies natural ability to adapt, you need to keep it happy and make sure it doesn't know what you are trying to do.  That means not eating too little, mixing up your calorie intake (zig zap) so that it doesn't think food is becoming scarce and do a mixture of different exercises (because you body will adapt to those to).  The exercise is to prevent your body from burning away too much muscle which you need to keep if you want to keep losing body fat. 

It's really hard to loose just fat.  If you loose weight without exercise you will be loosing mostly muscle.  The more muscle you loose the harder it will be to continue loosing weight.  You need to strength train your body so that your body retains muscle and burns fat.  When you strength train, you need to continually mix it up (different muscle groups, increased weight) or your body will adapt.

The ideal setup, would be for you to know with fairly good accuracy how many calories your body really uses.  Something like a Bodybugg or some heart rate monitors will work.  Or if you know your body fat % you can use your lean body mass value to calculate needed calories (but that does not factor in your metabolism).  Online calculators often overestimate.  Once you know what you need, you consume that much in food and then burn 500 to 1000 calories/day with exercise/strength training (1 to 2 hrs per day).  Many people don't have that much time, so most people will have to use a combination of exercise and food deficit.  The closer you get to your goal weight, the smaller the deficit can be (since you should not go below your 'real' BMR).  The smaller the deficit, the longer it will take.  It's a lot of work and you will need to continually adjust based on results (your BMR goes down as you loose weight).  To measure those results you can't just look at the scale.  You need to keep track of your body fat %, lean body mass and how you feel.

I would bet that after learning all of this, most people would wish they could just start fresh.  With this knowledge it is pretty easy to maintain a healthy weight.  Unfortunetly, the majority of people who take it upon themselves to learn all of this are either body builders or people who want to loose weight.  If only we were taught this in school.

Sorry for the long post, but I just wanted to add that this is just the basics.  Once you know this you need to understand more about the type of body you have.  Each body type (Mesomorph, Ectomorph & Endomorph) may have differing macro-nutrient ratio needs (% amounts carbohydrates, protein & fat).  That is why some people respond well to high/low carb diets and some don't.  You may be insulin resistant or carbohydrate sensitive.  You may have a naturally slow metabolism, which mean you have to work harder then everyone else (ya, that sucks).  It's all really interesting, but this just gives you an idea of why it can be so hard and how everyone ends up with differing results.