Ro - quick math (it's the accountant in me... )
980 X 7 = 6,860
6,860 - 6,100 = 760
760 / 7 = 108 net k/cal per day

This is the 'quick and dirty'.
Is it possible you have hit starvation mode? & regardless, if you went from 0 - 60 exercise-wise, I would bet you are retaining water.
just things to think about - would definitely not let it get you down!

Happy Monday y'all!!

CenTxChk - Glad your mom's memorial went well, and the eating bender is completely understandable!
Glad you had a good WI this morning, pounds and inches - we'll take it!

Sue - fingers crossed for tomorrow!! Also hope hubby's appt goes well.
Had a similar NSV like your capri's, I had a skirt I wore on our honeymoon, which I had been holding on to because I loved it and always hoped to get back in it. When I tried it on a few weeks ago, it was WAY too big and had to go in the donate pile!

Ro - sorry you had a frustrating week! As others said, stay on track and see how this week goes.


Had a busy weekend, and another busy week ahead, although (hopefully) not quite so nuts as last week! Just plugging along with IP stuff, scale has fluctuated up a bit over the weekend, but as we all know it goes up and down.

Ro22, I totally relate. All I can say is don't let a stall get you down -- we all hit them and have to get through them. Try to look at the positive side. Another word for stall is maintenance! And holding your weight steady at a lower level is a good thing. I know sometimes the scale doesnt make sense to us -- mostly because our bodies are mostly water and water weighs a lot -- and many things can affect our water percentage. So just think of it as your water level popped up a bit instead of not losing weight (fat).

Even when we drink our 80 oz of water -- we are putting something in our bodies that weighs a lot! Every time you drink 16 oz of water, you are adding a pound to your body!! So if we get our recommended 80 oz of water in, that is adding 5 pounds!! Hopefully we pee a lot of that out. But if you retain some of that water weight, well you can see how the scale can really fluctuate.

In any case, I would try to find a silver lining and not get down about it. Eventually if you stick with the program, you will burst through and have a whoosh downwards.

I know for me, I sometimes go a week or even 2 sometimes with no progress at all. It can be frustrating, especially if in your head you thought your weight would be down based on your eating and exercise. However dont make the mistake I made in the past where I let frustration/depression over a long stall cause me to go on an eating binge (something I used to call "give up mode"). Try to look at the big picture of how far you've come and any sort of maintainance at that lower weight is GOOD.

By the way, I am in a tiny stall right now!! I've gone nowhere in the past 5 days. It does bother me a little bit, but dang I am still down 95 pounds since September -- and maintaining my weight around this level is a positive thing!

It's all how you look at it.

Sue, I was just the same. My fear and anxiety the last month of P1 before P4 actually got so strong that I almost felt panicked several days, so you probably literally can't get any worse than where I went in the fear and anxiety category. My response to the panic was to go overboard on those days with IP packets, which of course just made it worse, because it made me feel like the minute I don't have this structure I am just going to ruin everything (basically a compulsive spin of mental negativity). This forum and my coach really helped me during that time.
One thing that really did work is for P3 and also the first 2 weeks of P4, I planned out all my meals on my equivalent of MFP, and then I put them together on Sunday, and literally only ate what I had planned. It made me feel really relaxed, and I didn't gain any weight, even though I added quite a bit of food it felt like. (P3 breakfasts are much bigger than I would have ever allowed myself to have before - I loved them and I still eat exactly the same breakfasts now, and it still feels completely decadent).
I still plan out my days a day or two before on my MFP type app, or before I prepare the meals, but I've got the general feeling for it now so I don't have to do it a week ahead.

Avalon & ro22 - I know we all keep hearing and saying the same thing, but if it helps to hear it one more time.... the closer you get to goal, the longer the time of the weight balancing out. I often didn't lose for a week or two or even three. The body is rebalancing, burning fat some places, keeping muscle other places.... my physical therapist told me something, and I have no idea if it's true, and I asked my doctor about it and they said they'd never heard of it but it helped me mentally, so I'll share it. The PT said that if there is a weight you held at for a while in the past, then it will take the body longer to get under that particular weight, as it remembers it and thinks it should stay there. For example I had long period of my life where I held around 170, and other times around 190, and getting past those two weights really felt like eons of time and just sitting at that weight.
Also he said when the body starts burning the denser longer-held fat, it takes longer, and during those times you might not see a loss on the scale.
Amanda/Lisa/Liana might have more medical facts about these things... For me, I felt like Who knows what's what but these type of things just helped keep the negativity in check for me, and reminded me all is well, just keep going. The key is not to give up.
Sometimes I would try to get into like a superhero mentality - instead of caving or feeling weaker, I would think "strength" - because I really was, and am for the rest of my life, fighting a battle against what my body wants to do. My body, genetically with insulin/pancreas and also because of the metabolic syndrome I have created, will always, always want to keep and gain weight. But my job is to learn to steady that impulse and find the balance of what it needs - not more, not less - and not necessarily what it thinks it wants. Tracking my food daily and weighing daily have been my two main battle tools, and writing things out here is a third, and keeping in touch with my coach the fourth.
So let's have a successful week on the battlefront!

Sue - Keeping all crossable things crossed that you get that magical number tomorrow. If anyone deserves it, it's you! You've been so patient waiting for it, despite how busy your life is, and how much stress you're going through waiting for hubby's results. Good luck!

Ro22 - Too much exercise, not enough calories. Your body is revolting against the lack of nutrition. Eat more. Aim to replenish at least 75% of what you burn off.

The last two days I've been an eating machine while on the road. 1900 calories one day, 2700 the next. This morning my weight is down to my lowest adult weight in 30 years. Sometimes the body knows best, and it leads us correctly. These days I'm learning to trust it - if I cannot shake hunger then I will eat a little more and see how I feel. My body has ALWAYS liked small amounts frequently (what my former boss used to call a "grazer") and my digestion does better that way. You wouldn't know it, but I'm a high anxiety person and it doesn't take much to get my stomach all twisted out of shape. I'm not shy, or even quiet, but anxiety kills me - especially new situations and new people to meet face to face.

Alexandra - 5 days is not a stall. It's an adjustment phase. What does your tape measure say?

Amber - I think many doctors base their knowledge on experience of what their clients in a similar position went through. I know that my body goes through a loss phase, followed by an inch loss phase, then a balancing 10 days and then back onto small, steady losses again. I spent 20 years at morbid obesity levels so I would be the exception to your doc's rule. However, I can see the logic in his thought process about the more stubborn fat being resistant and you've given me this week's Googling exercise.

On the subject of the body wanting to regain weight - I have read a great deal about this. There are two schools of thought on the subject. The health and fitness industry "gurus" believe it's a load of old nonsense because the body is never in a fixed state - it is reactive and WE should be proactive and guide what we want it to do. On the other hand, the weight loss industry (and somewhat "pointed" medical research done using donations) would like us to believe that we are genetically pre-disposed to regain because of biological markers.

However, the genuinely independent research indicates that both sides are partially correct - we ARE predisposed to store fat when our blood sugar levels are high and our bodies toss out insulin. Our body is aware that our fat cells have been depleted and that they are not fully stocked. But, and here's the fact that should be obvious to all of us, most dieters fall back into a degree of "pattern eating" where they reintroduce favourites and fail to take it into account. Small increases of caloric intake and carbs will always make a carb sensitive person regain. Because humans cannot be totally honest with themselves about what goes into their mouth (ever notice that people say "I don't know why I'm gaining weight, I hardly eat anything") and denial is a massive factor in obesity.

So, my advice is to take it all with a pinch of salt. Learn how your body works - push the boundaries of what you can eat before you stall or regain. Introduce a food group in isolation for a week and see what effect it has. Everyone is unique, people have different sensitivities, different hormone reactions, different activity levels .. you get the picture. What works perfectly for one of us may absolutely crash another's overall health and/or weight loss. Look at how many people do IP with no thyroid problems, and how many have issues that need to be resolved. It may or may not be directly related to IP, or it's an underlying condition that has been exacerbated by a low carb diet and restriction of food groups that kept the thyroid limping along.

Common sense is always the best bet, coupled with regular medical checks to confirm that your assessment of overall health and metabolic functioning is spot on.

Amber - I didn't want to quote the whole post, but I wanted to say THANK YOU for your post, and for this part especially. I worry a lot about "what happens after," and it's one of the main reasons I switched clinics a few weeks ago.

Seeing how you, Liana and others handle maintenance helps! Honestly for right now, I'm just trying to focus on one step at a time.

Amanda congratulations!!!!!!
That is amazing. So much great work.

Thank you also for everything you wrote, it echoes my experience nearly exactly.

One thing I have noticed in the trial and error on P4 is that I will have days where I can eat a little more, and there are losses on the scale, and I am happy because I felt I trusted my body for what it needed. However, I then have to be esp. watchful, because something can sneak in and start to tell me I can push the boundaries more than before.... and I start to see on the tracker that I've had a few days in a row of a bit more calories here and there, and then the weight starts to go a little up. So then I adjust again.

I'm lucky I've had enough sense so far to be honest about my tracking, even when I don't like it and feel like it was "wrong" or too much in a given macro - or I know I had more than needed because of trying to calm stress or anxiety- but I do it "in the name of science" and it actually helps me see where my boundaries are when I look back and review it. Also then I feel if I really start to get off course and I don't know why, which hasn't happened yet, but if it did then my doctor and coach would have something real to look at other than my memory of it all.

Another thing I can mention "in the name of science" for our mutual research and echoing what the independent studies say that you mention- I don't know if this is true for other maintainers, but I am noticing after about two or three months on maintenance, I am a lot less hungry overall. I think at first my body might have been pulling for more calories since I had been on P1 for so long and wanted to replenish. But now that it is seeing it is getting consistently enough, it is settling down a little. So maybe after a while it won't "pull for more" all the time. We'll see. It might also be that I'm in the 2 weeks of my TOM where I'm usually not so hungry anyway.

Amanda, I'm not worried about my "adjustment phases" ... that's a good term! I've had them from the beginning ... and I always burst through. I used to call them "weight plateaus" instead of stalls.

And big congratulations on hitting your lowest adult weight in 30 years! WOW!!

Thanks Alexandra - it's not a "big" drop, just under half a pound, but it's down and it was in the right direction so it made me happy.

I'm glad you're not letting this stage bother you. I sometimes wonder if a negative state of mind has a big effect on the body and how it functions regarding weight loss, as I know that cortisol (depression) does.

How's everyone doing on this sunny Star Wars day? (May the Fourth be with you!). A little quieter around here than we're used to.

Funny you mention that Amanda, I talked to a different coach this weekend in passing, and she mentioned that having stress over food can be almost as bad for digestion as eating something “bad”. So a random example: If eating a 100 calorie amount of potato stresses me out, but eating a 100 calorie apple I think is just dandy and healthy, guess what my body is going to do - when I eat the potato, there will be more stress, my body won’t digest it as well and also it will think I am about to enter a stressful situation and want to hold on to it and store it somewhere. She said that stress during eating can lead to up to a 90% reduction in efficient digestion. That is why so many nutritionists advocate for sitting down and eating quietly and calmly.

I’m sure you’ll have a field day researching if that number is proven

I spent too many years with poor digestion and "nervous" stomach issues with everything from gas pain in the colon to feeling like I was going to vomit every time I ate (not one of my favourite life stages) to believe that our anxiety levels and emotional health don't play more than a passing role in nutrition.

From a vitamin/mineral absorption level as much as the macronutrients and how they are broken down in the gut.

I know that since I've been taking four digestive enzyme tablets per day, and two prebiotics, it's been a gazillion times better. Cutting out the grains helped it further and the only time I get even a hint of that horrible twisting pain is when I eat bread. I think it's the yeast, tbh, as I have no problem with any of the nut flours or wraps, but I guess I'll find out more when I phase out completely.

I have never been someone who eats on the run. 95% of the time I sit at the table to eat, and I never eat standing up. Just not something I've ever done. Mealtimes were always social in my family and I've forced my husband into the same mentality, from his former "swallow-a-burger-whole while attempting to exit the drive thru" habit.

I'll add it to my list of interesting subjects to follow up on.

I have not experienced a true major stall yet, just minor stairsteps where the plot flattens a bit (an "adjustment period" as Briael put it). Perfectly normal. Actually, my weightloss "run" might be about as good as one could hope for. I certainly am not complaining.

The exponentially declining regression line (red dashes) is still exhibiting a lot of predictive skill -- showing a steadily declining rate of weight loss (that is, as my weight falls, it's taking me slightly longer to lose a given amt of weight -- again perfectly in-line with weight loss theory).

In any case, I FINALLY broke into the 220's for the first time in 9 years (since 2006)!

I am now only 29 lbs (14.5%) overweight (since 200 lbs is considered healthy for someone of my height) and my BMI has dropped to 28.6 (closing in on the magical BMI of 25). This is a huge drop from my September starting point of 126 lbs (63%) overweight and a BMI of 41.

This is the big picture ... going all the way back to day 1. The exponentially declining regression line has been amazingly predictive all the way through. When you "pull back" (i.e. collapse the time-scale) this far, most of the little stair-steps that you see in the zoomed plot pretty much disappear. This is probably why a lot of IP coaches suggest you weigh yourself only once a week (or even once every 2 weeks) -- as if you do that, you smooth out all the little minor wiggles in the plot.

Amber ~ Thank you for your words of wisdom...it is so great to have you here for your insight!


Been there, done that, wrote the book LOL... No worries you will get there. I have learned that less calories is not always better. Sometimes my best weeks are the 4 & 5 nights dinner is out and not in my control...sometimes I guess the body screams for more...

Good Job on the loss! Yeah... I didn't realize you were doing the college search thing too...is your child a junior? He liked yesterday's but our issue is that he does not know what he wants to do so it makes things so much more difficult. I know he will figure it out...just need to get thru the end of the junior year stresses...SAT's June 6th and AP exam this Friday and maybe then he can focus...

My donate pile is overflowing and the capris I wore yesterday looked like baggie pants by the end of the day...guess they are going too lol...not a bad problem to have.

Great Job on the loss! Into the 220's is fantastic...I remember my disbelief when I got there lol....had to look twice at the scale...

Well I am pretty confident unless I gain 2 Lbs this morning that I will finally make it into my fantasy land...AKA Onederland. I will keep you posted as soon as I can, but my home scale was at 200.9 and the clinic scale is usually 1 lb less....fingers crossed.

Sue - Keep us posted!! I will be checking for an update from you. So excited!!

And, yes, I have a Junior too. We've done the SAT and ACT once. School counselor wants him to take at least one again and a prep class. His girlfriend is a senior and looking at the community college. I worry he will want to follow the same path even though he is so smart (except his priorities are all about her at the moment).

Took a big long walk after work last night and am feeling it in my legs this morning. Took our lab and she pretty much set the pace (and pulled me up the last hill. Ha!). Slept like a log last night so that was good at least. Down a smidge on my home scale this morning. Still have a another pound to get back to where I was last Fri.

Hope everyone has a great OP day!