Originally Posted by Steve
I replied to someone's post in the Cohen's Forum accidently... The original poster was unsure how she could lose weight for weeks and then, simply plateau. It triggered this from me:
People will never get this on this board. Let's pretend your maintenance is 2500 calories per day. This means, you are eating 2500 calories worth of energy per day and you are expending roughly 2500 calories worth of energy per day. Results in a net break-even and theoretically, there is no weight gain or loss. Right?
BTW, 2500 calorie maintenance level would be for someone roughly 170 lbs. The bigger you are, the higher your maintenance level is.
INFORMED individuals looking to lose weight will cut calories by some small margin, say 10-20%. As they begin to lose weight, their metabolism will slow, even though they are going about weight loss in an appropriate fashion. You can't continue losing weight forever at your original deficit. Your metabolism catches up to you and it slows to a point where you won't see results. At this point, depending on a few factors, you could cut calories again to trigger another deficit based on your NEW maintenance level.
There comes a point where this will become counter-productive. You can't expect to continually play the "slashing calories" game and expect to be healthy AND expect to see results. There comes a point where you CAN'T eat any less and ideally, you don't follow the path this far! After a certain point, I recommend starting a cyclical diet where you bounce calories up and down. Or a diet including refeeds of carbs. There are multiple options you can execute once you come to this fork in the road.
Now, around here, most people cut calories originally by some ridiculous amount. Still using a maintenance of 2500 calories, I find many around here will slash to 1200, or something ludicrous like this. Why a 50% calorie slash seems OK to some of you I will never understand. Our bodies are very adaptive, finely tuned machines that are built to survive. And you better believe that you are sending many, many signals to your body that say, "Time to change physiologically because it looks like we are going through some hard times."
One of the greatest, actually, the greatest metabolic studies ever conducted was the Minnesota Starvation Diet. Here, they slashed calories by 50% off of maintenance to realize the impacts STARVATION had on post war and Jewish victims of the Nazis, and how to best go about rehabbing them. The sad thing is, I see a lot of people doing this same thing around here.
When you do this the right way, your body will adapt and progress will slow. What do you think doing it the wrong way does?
I have no idea any of the original poster's stats or how she is going about weight loss, so please don't think I am directing this at you.
But something that is directed at you is this. You say you don't understand how you can lose weight for weeks and then, plateau. That is because you don't understand how your body works. Your body adapts. The same technique, have it be a certain calorie intake, a certain way of exercising, or whatever have you will have to be manipulated and changed if you are going to realize continued success.
And for those of you who do things the least optimal way through starvation* are going to have a long, hard road ahead of you if your goal is actually looking and feeling good, and not just what the number on the scale says.
Realise that starvation does not actually mean eating nothing and being on the verge of death. i mean depriving your body of the basic macro and micro nutrients as well as sufficient calories in so that you are creating a below par atmosphere for your overall health and continued success.
