Advice Please :)

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  • I was very excited to get to onederland indeed but now I am stuck at 192. I weighed a few weeks ago at 192, today I weigh 192.

    I checked my sparkpeople food log and I average 1500 calories a day.

    I do cardio 1.5 hours a day for 5 days and I add w/s training 3 days.

    What am I doing wrong?
  • You may be doing nothing wrong! Sometimes weight loss is like that. For many of us, such plateaus are part of the process! It makes it very frustrating!
  • Yes it is frustrating. Makes me wanna pull my hair out :|

    Thanks for the response
  • Yesterday, I was reading a Tom Venuto newsletter that I get and he was talking about what to do if you are on a plateau. Here are his five suggestions that I thought sounded like smart thinking. I'm no expert on the guy, so take it for what's it worth. Don't get yourself down.

    1) Lose the pounds slowly.

    Slow and steady wins in long term fat loss and maintenance every time. Rapid
    weight loss correlates strongly with weight relapse and loss of lean body mass.
    Aim for one to two pounds per week, or no more than 1% of total body weight
    (ie, 3 lbs per week if you weigh 300 lbs).

    2) Use a higher energy flux program.

    If you are physically capable of exercise, then use weight training AND cardio
    to increase your calorie expenditure, so you can still have a calorie deficit, but
    at a higher food intake (also known as a "high energy flux" program, or as we
    like to say in Burn The Fat, "eat more, burn more.")

    3) Use a conservative calorie deficit.

    You must have a calorie deficit to lose fat, but your best bet is to keep the
    deficit small. This helps you avoid triggering the starvation response, which
    includes the increased appetite and potential to binge that comes along with
    starvation diets. I recommend a 20% deficit below your maintenance calories
    (TDEE), a 30% deficit at most for those with high body fat.

    4) Refeed.

    Increase your calories (re-feed) for a full day periodically (once a week or so if
    you are heavy, twice a week if you are already lean), to restimulate metabolism.
    On the higher calorie day, take your calories to maintenance or even 10, 15, 20%
    above maintenance and add the extra calories in the form of carbs (carb cycling).
    The leaner you get, and the longer you've been on reduced calories, the more
    important the re-feeds will be.

    5) Take periodic diet breaks.

    Take 1 week off your calorie restricted diet approximately every 12 weeks or so.
    During this period, take your calories back up to maintenance, but continue to
    eat healthy, "clean" foods. Alternately, go into a muscle building phase if increasing
    lean mass is one of your goals. This will bring metabolism and regulatory
    hormones back up to normal and keep lean body mass stable.




    learn more at ====> http://www.burnthefat.com
  • Thank you so much, Pita
  • I do have his book..maybe one day I should read it :|
  • ugh, isnt it frustrating? ive been hanging around 180 for over a month!!
  • Sounds like you are doing everything right. As far as your working out, I don't like to look at it as far as how much time you put in; I look at it as far as how hard the workout was. When I started my weight-loss journey, I was walking every day for an hour. It slowly morphed into jogging for about 45 minutes to an hour most every day unless I felt ill. So as my weight came off, I could go jog for longer amounts of time than I walked. At the end of that summer I could log six miles in little more than an hour. At that point, the weight was melting off. That winter, I slowly gained back about seven pounds just because my workouts at the gym, even though they were just as long, were no where near as strenuous. I would try some workouts that pack a lot of punch. Maybe a soccer league or rock climbing. I play softball, rock climb, and jog, but I do a ton of sprinting in softball. I can pretty much eat what I want in the summer, but once winter hits this year, I am going to have to keep up the energy burn with stuff like indoor rock climbing and volleyball.
  • Are your eating and exercise programs becoming routine? I find that my body tended to plateau when I got in a rut. Mixing up my exercise and varying my food choices and calorie intake helped me break through.

    Why not try a week of calorie cycling, trying some different foods, and mixing up your exercise? See what happens, and report back
  • Is your cardio steady-state or high intensity interval training? If it is the former, try incorporating the latter. If it is already the latter, hang in there!!! You're doing great! I think sometimes our bodies need to get used to a loss before they are ready to move on with more loss.
  • onederchic,
    I suggest you focus on what you have done right, which is ALOT.
    It's my impression that plateaus are natural. I used to be in Weight Watchers, and members would talk about being sure you eat enough. Sometimes we really eat too little and our bodies hold on to what we have to survive.
    Also they would talk about changing up the foods you eat, like different forms of protein, or different vegetables.

    Good luck. You are doing great and an inspiration to me and many others.
  • I don't really have any advice, but wanted to jump in here to say "HANG ON!". You have come sooooooo far. This is just going to be a blip in your journey that you'll look back on and say, "that wasn't so bad, afterall!".

  • Thanks so much everyone!

    As far as my routine, it varies between different programs for the Wii and DVDs. I usually change things up quite often.


    labean - Thanks very much! That means so much to me
  • Quote: I don't really have any advice, but wanted to jump in here to say "HANG ON!". You have come sooooooo far. This is just going to be a blip in your journey that you'll look back on and say, "that wasn't so bad, afterall!".


    Aww thank you!!!