100 lb. Club - Diet zig zag to jump off of my long plateau

After many great suggestions here and hours spent searching the internet I finally settled on a plan to remove myself from my extended plateau. It has been about a month.

First of all, I added exercise. Stairs and treadmill and today we read that jumping rope would help. So, picture this... 3 of us were in the aisle by our cubes jumping imaginary ropes.

I am taking my calories up for 3 days. They have been too low, between 900 and 1300. I am bumping them up to 1,800 and adding fat. I do not like fatty stuff, it makes me feel ill. I don't like bacon, eggs, cheese etc so this is a challenge. I am keeping the carbs down but not doing Atkins.

I will let you know what happens. If I gain, it will be okay. I am in this for the long haul but I hope I will start to lose again.


What I ate today: 3 eggs, McDonalds crispy bacon ranch salad with ranch dressing (after 2 mths of not eating fast food this made me feel ill), some genoa salami, 2 pieces of Pizza Hut pizza. I think I am done for the day, hopefully my body is in shock and will do something! Oh, I cheated and 1/2 of a cut up red pepper to work. It was my favorite food of the day! Who would ever have thought that I would learn to eat so healthy.

You think you want to eat all that you used to but when you have the chance, it just makes you feel lousy.:p

Hi ,
congrats on the past weight loss. I am not an expert, but wouldn't going from a really low calorie intake, to almost doubling it, be too much of a change? Maybe you should increase your calories to something like 1600 a day? I do agree 900 calories is too low, at least for me, I would be starving all day. When I hit a plateau last week what I did is increase my exercise by 5 minutes on the treadmill, and I lost. Your diet that you ate today doesn't seem to have any fruit or veggies, maybe adding this would be a good idea.
This is what I ate today:
Breakfast: 6 oz of grapefruit juice, kashi instant oatmeal( 1pack) and a small Banana
Lunch: 2 smart pups( veggie hot dogs), with mustard and saurkraut( sorry about spelling), and a tlc kashi granola bar
Dinner shrimp with salad ( the shrimp was cooked vera cruz style) and blue berries.
Snacks: Cherries
Fat free frozen yogurt
I don't eat meat, or poultry, so there is not alot of protein in my diet, which is hard to correct , but I am trying.
I know soon you will see a change on the scale and it will be a downward change. Good luck with this plan.
cheryl

Plateaus are SO frustrating! With the caveat that I am not an expert either, I would agree with Cheryl's concern. Also, from just a scientific standpoint, making lots of big changes at one time makes it difficult to determine what it was that worked or didn't work. If this breaks your plateau, you might be convinced that Pizza Hut pizza works miracles (and I agree with you, BTW - this was something I thought I would miss, but the thought of it now makes me a little ill!), when it was the exercise that did it.

Still, it's great that you're willing to mix things up. I truly believe that the reason why such widely varying weight loss plans work for different people is that it causes you to pay attention to what you're eating, how it's affecting the scale and your body, and tunes you into what really makes you feel good. So - bravo on putting in the time and effort to make sure you reach your goal. I hope this works for you! And if it doesn't, I have complete faith that you will find something that will.

Oh my gosh, you are at the weight that i ALWAYS stall at. I mean always. :mad:This is where i give up and gain back 10. Good for you for sticking to it. You are hilarious with the imaginary jump ropes, i love it. :rofl:

Why were your calories all the way down to 900 at your weight? Honey, give yourself some wiggle room. Be prepared for a huge gain upping it to 1800 though. I would maybe up it to 1400, then 1600. And leave it at 1600. That is the calories i am at and i can lose 2 pounds or more a week at that range. It might take your metabolism a while to adjust but, stick with it. Like you said, it is a lifelong thing. I lost 100 pounds before and i did it by eating about 900 cals or less...sad thing is...i gained almost all of it back trying to get my metabolism right...gee, go figure once i started actually eating the weight piled back on. :dizzy:I wont make that mistake again. So just take it from me...the 900 calorie thing only works while you do 900 calories or less. That just isnt going to cut it for a lifetime, at least not for me.

Keep your chin up, keep up the exercise, and up those cals to something you can live with. Sounds like you have a good plan.

HocusPocus, I'm also more then a bit confused. I'm not sure why you're adding in all that fatty food and why you are upping your calories so drastically. If you've hit a plateau, the idea would be to usually DECREASE your calories and make those calories good nutritious ones. Lots of fiber rich vegetables and low fat proteins. And then of course to add in exercise. I think you may be disappointed with the results. But hey, only time will tell.

We are all works in progress. Everything we do is a learning experience that takes us to the next step. I wish you the best of luck. :)

So, if you diet at say 1,000 calories you have to stay that low or you will gain. If you diet at 1,500 you will lose at that level? Isn't that amazing how our bodies work?

I did have a large salad and 1/2 of a red pepper today. Did not eat fruit and really missed my oatmeal.

Believe it or not I struggle to get in enough calories. I am just not always hungry. I also overestimate calories. I added today's up and it came to 1,600. I am glad I didn't really go to 1,800.

Thanks!

Ugggg... I don't like high fat, makes me feel sluggish. Scale still the same.

One question please... if I exercise more, can I up my calories to where they should have been all along? I see now that they should be higher and I need to add a lot more veggies. Will that work? Thanks

If you want to up your fat, I'd recommend using healthy fats.

Olives, nuts, olive oil in cooking. Eating fish such as salmon. I'd avoid eating saturated fats as part of your desire to increase the fat in your diet.

You can have a healthy balanced diet for 1500 calories or so. Heck, I've eaten over 2000 calories eating "healthy" foods.

Upping your calories because you are exercisng is counterproductive. Yes, we exercise to pump up our heart rates, but let's face it - we're also doing it to BURN CALORIES. That's a good thing. :)

You also ask what would work. It really is trial and error. But keeping to a HEALTHY diet of nutritious foods, low fat proteins, whole grains and vegetables and adding in exercise - CONSISTIENTLY will produce weightloss. THAT"S what works.

I think Nelie's suggestion of 1500 calories is a great place to start. Try that for a few weeks and add in some activity and movement and see what happens. Just how are you tracking your calories though? HAve you tried one of the online tracking sites, such as Fitday.com?

Just recently...somebody here (I'm sorry! I dont remember who! Please chime in) was advised by their trainer to up their daily calorie consumption to break out of a plateau and start losing again. Apparently, it worked. Keeping health in mind along with lowering the scales, I agree with Nelie that healthier fats are a great solution to upping your calorie intake. Please let us know how everything works out for you.

I am only taking my calories up for a few days and then lowering them because I have read that this plus adding exercise may help my plateau. My friend told me to increase fat only because there are studies out there that say you should do the opposite of what you have been doing.

I do agree with you that it would be better to add calories with healthy food so that is what I did today. It's 6:15 and I am at 1,200 but they have been good calories.

My mistake when I started this was to take my WW points too low. I didn't know at the time that a WW point is about 50 calories. I was too low for my weight and height.

I wanted to add that before this week I was not exercising at all and I did the treadmill for 45 mins and the elliptical for 10 today. The treadmill is much easier than the elliptical!

That's awesome news Hocus! You're going to bust through this plateau like...a...some hard and fast through something weak!

I prefer the treadmill too. What I do is change the slope of the treadmill so its almost like I'm walking uphill so i get more of a workout. It hurts so good. Try it if you haven't yet!

I tried that for about 30 seconds! You are good!! It's hard at an incline.

I really want Dance Dance Revolution but my kids think it's so dorky. If we had a game thingy I would buy it!