I find in the last few weeks of school when everything is due and you have to study for finals that I need a couple hundred extra calories a day XD else I'm too lazy and absent minded to bother doing any of my work, its as though studying and paper writing requires more brain power than say playing video games :P any one else slow down their weight loss during crunch time?

Well i find for me that my weight loss stops.. i tend to maintain instead of lose because i get so stressed over my finals that im studying for, that i tend to stress eat...i just want to eat and eat and eat.. Then after the exam..it subsides and im back on the wagon more so then before

I have heard that major stress can be a roadblock to weight loss. I think what you are saying makes perfect sense, but I have never really noticed it. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, I just don't weigh myself the frequently. Another thing, if I am hungry, TRULY hungry, I eat. I try to always stay under maintenance calories, but I will eat another snack or whatever to get me through the day.

So long as the numbers on the scale keeps going down, I'm happy, no matter how long it takes.

Yeah - whenever I have papers due or mass studying to get done, I always eat more food. Usually it ends up being junk food since its easy to grab. My brain can't handle watching what I eat AND studying/writing papers so one thing has to give. Unfortunately , it has to be the healthy eating since I doubt my professors would accept "I couldn't write my paper since I was focusing on losing weight"

LOL would be funny to see their faces if we told them that though. I do tend to eat 100-300 extra calories during finals month. Sure itll slow my weightloss a couple lbs that month but I want good grades XD and I just don't study on an empty stomach

I'm an art student so I don't necessarily write papers. However, this whole semester has been a class geared towards preparing for an interview (on Wednesday! ) for acceptance into the program. Only a select few are chosen.

The class is intentionally very difficult with harsh deadlines and strict rules or when and how to complete work and to show progress through ideas. It's ROUGH! One project, everyone in the class pulled an all-nighter just to finish. One top of this, I still have to work full time and and run my department by myself.

For this reason, I have mostly maintained this semester with a few pounds loss here and there. I'm OK with that. Starting next week, I'm hoping I'll have more time to cook and exercise, both of which have been severely neglected over the past few months.

Writing my dissertation (intense writing periods) cause me to crave carbs like crazy. Explained by the fact that the brain uses glucose to function.

I've been eating Paleo/low carb and while my dissertation is still being written, I have increased my carb levels because otherwise I just can't function well for my school. I'm sure someone in the Paleo community can argue that eventually my body will start to convert fat to glucose, but I just don't have the time, energy, or motivation to get there by the time I want my dissertation to be done.

I'm not taking any classes now but the stress was horrid. I'd eat tons and tons of apples during finals. TONS.

So I don't know how true this is because I never looked into it, but I have heard that thinking really hard (like you would do for finals, or working on a paper or project) does actually cause you to burn more calories and need more energy. So like a workout, it may actually up your daily energy needs. Like I said, I haven't verified this, and it isn't necessarily from trusted ssources - so I don't know if its true. Seems like it could potentially be true though - thinking is using energy. So possibly, by upping your intake just a small amount, maybe you will still lose.

I find that when I have those kind of stressors - my other issue is that I want to turn to food for comfort. Because I don't have the free time to unwind that I like, food seems to be the one comfort thing left that doesn't get in the way of working. I find resisting those urges very difficult so in times of great stress, I just strive to maintain rather than lose.

And of course, there is also the havoc that increased cortisol can have on weight loss.

Its hard - I know! But you have my moral support! I am sure you can do this - get through the semester with flying colors AND lose (or not gain) weight.

I still lose I just lose maybe 1-1.4 lbs a week instead of 1.5-2lbs XD. I have everything on my shoulders this week. everything. If I make it to see saturday morning it will be a sheer miracle

When I'm stressed about anything (but especially school), I plateau until I'm stress-free. The odd thing, though, is that I don't tend to gain when I stress eat or whatever. It's like my body just doesn't know what it's doing! lol

I think my thing is that i dont get enough sleep during the last two weeks before finals and so i eat more because I'm trying to keep myself awake..that, and I am trying to use carbohydrates to cope with the stress by calming the brain down..YEAH...losing weight right now is like ..."Whatever" Ive got EXAMS!!!