Plateau

[kateyb]

Hey guys, I just discovered this forum today (believe it or not through googling the 18 in 4 diet)!

Firstly please let me preface this by saying that I know there are no real quick fixes and that I should be looking to lose 1-2lbs a week through a combination of healthy eating and exercise. I am also aware that I need to view my weight loss as a lifestyle change rather than 'diet'. That said:

I am 29 yrs old, 5"5, and currently weigh 204lbs. On the 4th Jan I set myself the task of reaching the healthy zone of the BMI by Christmas, and in the past 2.5 months have lost 16lbs. For the past 3/3.5 weeks however the scale has not moved at all and I am becoming incredibly frustrated. I am taking measurments and have purchased a scale that shows my body fat percentage, so I am reasonably well enough informed to say with confidence that in the past 3 weeks there hasn't been any change - I've not built up muscle which has cancelled out any weight loss.

I have been using a website called myfitness pal to log all of my foods, calculates goals, record exercise and keep motivated. This website has suggested that I should be eating approx 1200 calories a day/160 carbs/40 fat/45 protein/2500 sodium and 24 sugar, and aiming to exercise for at least 30 mins 4 times a week (aiming for a weekly calorie burn of 1200). When the exercise is logged it awards you extra calories and breaks them via whatever percentages they use to calculate everything else.

Whilst I find it to be an incredibly useful tool and the support received by the community to be a real motivator there has been a lot of information bandied about regarding RMR's and BMR's and how sustaining a 1200 calorie diet will eventually lead to a plateau because your body enters starvation mode. The problem is everyone seems to be an expert (or at least think that they are), and everyone has a different opinion. So I don't know who to believe.

I always thought that it was as simple as you eat less and exercise more and you will lose weight. Now I'm caught trying to decide whether I should eat my exercise calories, eat back half, or have as large a calorie deficit as possible each day. As well asw understand why my efforts have stopped producing results.

I did try raising my calories to match my RMR, which that site told me was 1600, but the scale didn't move so I went back to the 1200. I am working out with a trainer 3 times a week (45 mins) doing a combination of cardio and weight/strength training. I am also attending at least 1, often 2 spinning classes a week and aiming to swim at least once a week. Sometimes I eat my exercise calories, sometimes I don't depending on how hungry I am.

This is a lot more activity than I was doing before, my job and lifestyle is very sedentary and so in theory I should be seeing some real results. It's so frustrating.

My 30th birthday is approx 12 days away and I am in the horrible stage where my clothes are looking really baggy and unflattering, but the size smaller is still a little too tight to wear. I reallly want to look my best on my birthday and so am desperately trying to shift at least 4lbs between now and then.

Other than keeping with what I am already doing does anyone have any ideas about how I can break my plateau and/or achieve a quick (even if temporary) fix?

Is there a particular diet you would recommend, just for the next couple of weeks?

 

[hanknicholson]

With good exercise and whole foods as a basis, I'm a firm believer in cycling calories to make sure your body doesn't adapt to the prolonged lower calorie input (i.e. it doesn't enter 'starvation mode').

I've been saying this in some other posts on the forum here too...

Basically, the idea is that you go low in calories for 3 to 5 days, and then you go higher in calories (a little above 'maintenance') for one or two days.

That way, you still create a calorie deficit, but rather over the course of a week instead of per day... plus you prevent your body from adapting to the lower level input, because every now and then you give the signal that there's plenty of food available, so it's safe to keep burning calories without having to adjust.

If you really want to give your body a little extra 'kick', you also go lower in carbohydrates on the 'low' days and do more carbohydrates on the 'high' days.

Any extra calories/carbs on the high days will then be used to replenish glycogen, which even further decreases the chance of storing fat... besides conditioning your body to burn fat anyway.

Other than that, always make sure that you're focusing on natural, whole foods all the time.

In this particular setup, you can go easier on your diet a bit on the high days... For example, you can have some sort of strategic 'cheat' meal, eating whatever the hell you want, because it'll only help you on our fat loss both physically and mentally.

This could work to break through a plateau... At any rate, it did the trick for me personally countless times.

Hope that helps...

 

[ObscureDreamer]

With good exercise and whole foods as a basis, I'm a firm believer in cycling calories to make sure your body doesn't adapt to the prolonged lower calorie input (i.e. it doesn't enter 'starvation mode')

I COMPLETELY agree with this! I shift my calories. I aim to eat 1500 per day, so on day 1 I eat 1200cal on day 2 I eat 1500cal and on day 3 I eat 1800 cal, on day 4 i eat 1200 cal, on day 5 i eat 1500 cal day 6 i eat 1800 cal...etc....

I have read about calorie shifting in alot of womens bodybuilding books written by bodybulders and personal trainers. I'm more likely to believe a body builder with no fat then a stringy skinny person or someone who has no real background. When people give you advice find out HOW they know that, and if it isn't from a solid source (like university, or bodybuilding pro's that clearly have had success) then be careful what you believe.

(and to clarify - I'm not saying bodybuilder are 'smart' persay - but someone that has a low body % and has built up the muscle wasn't born that way and even if they were using supplements - they would have still had to follow a diet that worked, so they know something )

 

[Tamago]

Your body will not really 'adapt' to lower calorie intake. The 'starvation effect' people talk about is small, usually just keeping a few hundred calories more than it normally would, it is not going to stop your weight loss..If this was the case you would see medium or healthy weight people coming out of concentration camps, or severe anorexic people with some body mass left (poor examples but still). A caloric deficit is a caloric deficit, there may be some stalls along the way, some problems with water weight, but there's nowhere for the body to go but down.

Found this interview with Lyle Mcdonald by the way:

Q. Some claim that that your body will go into 'starvation mode' if you eat too few calories, preventing you from losing weight and that trying to lose weight by eating fewer calories doesn't work. What do you think?

A. Well there is no doubt that the body slows metabolic rate when you reduce calories or lose weight/fat. There are at least two mechanisms for this.

One is simply the loss in body mass. A smaller body burns fewer calories at rest and during activity. There's not much you can do about that except maybe wear a weighted vest to offset the weight loss, this would help you burn more calories during activity.

However, there's an additional effect sometimes referred to as the adaptive component of metabolic rate. Roughly, that means that your metabolic rate has dropped more than predicted by the change in weight.

So if the change in body mass predicts a drop in metabolic rate of 100 calories and the measured drop is 150 calories, the extra 50 is the adaptive component. The mechanisms behind the drop are complex involving changes in leptin, thyroid, insulin and nervous system output (this system is discussed to some degree in all of my books except my first one).

In general, it's true that metabolic rate tends to drop more with more excessive caloric deficits (and this is true whether the effect is from eating less or exercising more); as well, people vary in how hard or fast their bodies shut down. Women's bodies tend to shut down harder and faster.

But here's the thing: in no study I've ever seen has the drop in metabolic rate been sufficient to completely offset the caloric deficit. That is, say that cutting your calories by 50% per day leads to a reduction in the metabolic rate of 10%. Starvation mode you say. Well, yes. But you still have a 40% daily deficit.

In one of the all-time classic studies (the Minnesota semi-starvation study), men were put on 50% of their maintenance calories for 6 months. It measured the largest reduction in metabolic rate I've ever seen, something like 40% below baseline. Yet at no point did the men stop losing fat until they hit 5% body fat at the end of the study.

Other studies, where people are put on strictly controlled diets have never, to my knowledge, failed to acknowledge weight or fat loss.

This goes back to the under-reporting intake issue mentioned above. I suspect that the people who say, "I'm eating 800 calories per day and not losing weight; it must be a starvation response" are actually eating far more than that and misreporting or underestimating it. Because no controlled study that I'm aware of has ever found such an occurrence.

So I think the starvation response (a drop in metabolic rate) is certainly real but somewhat overblown. At the same time, I have often seen things like re-feeds or even taking a week off a diet do some interesting things when people are stalled. One big problem is that, quite often, weekly weight or fat loss is simply obscured by the error margin in our measurements.

Losing between 0.5 and 1 pound of fat per week won't show up on the scale or calipers unless someone is very lean, and changes in water weight, etc. can easily obscure that. Women are far more sensitive to this. Their weight can swing drastically across a month's span depending on their menstrual cycle.

Thing is this, at the end of the day, to lose weight or fat, you have to create a caloric deficit, there's no magical way to make it happen without affecting energy balance. You either have to reduce food intake, increase activity, or a combination of both.

Since my Rapid Fat Loss Handbook actually uses an extremely large deficit, I discuss the issue of metabolic slowdown (and what to do about it) fairly extensively.