Anyone same experience: Weight loss stalls at some point, even with calorie shortage and excersize?

[SonicUth70]

Hi all,
I was wondering if anyone has the same experience during his/her journey to loose weight and with a changing lifestyle. That is that after a good progress of loosing weight steadily, there comes a moment that one stalls or even gains some weight, even after a period of higher intensity exercise and calorie shortage. I have a Fitbit versa since January 15th. Really happy with it and as soon as I got one, I started to change couple of things.
 
First some short info on my situation and the question I have.
I'm a male, 182 cm height. When I got the Fitbit I weighed 130 kg. I have sedimentary type or job. and did not have any particular exercise until the moment I got the Fitbit. From that moment on, I started using MyFitnessPal together with the Fitbit to keep track of what I eat and excersize. And I really do that very punctual and accurate so that I have good insight in the amount of calories I am taking in.



Food:


I also changed the volume of carbs I consume. It used to be probably on 60 to 70% of what I ate in the past, especially the “bad” type of carbs. It dropped to approx 35 - 40 % upon I started changing things in January. Usuall pattern nowadays is Carb-Fat-Protein --> 40% - 40% - 20%. I take only the "good" fat from products like fresh fish, olive oil, nuts etc. So in general I guess my food pattern has changed in a positive way.

Exercise
I reach my Fitbit goals in at least 80 % of the days, i.e. steps = 10000, distance = 8 km, calories burnt = 3445, 30 active minutes, 10 floors.
Please note that the calorie amount is based on the goal that Fitbit came up with, being aimed at loosing 0,5 kg per week. (I believe the proposed calorie shortage was -500 calories short a day). Until two weeks ago my exercise consisted of (long) walks, biking. No power training like fitness and lifting weights etc. One could say it was not very intensive but aimed at achieving the Fitbit goals I mentioned.
 
Progress:
I almost always have a calorie shortage on a daily bases (i believe that I missed only one or two days after I started measuring it) . The shortage is sometimes 700 and sometimes 1000+, depending on the food and exercise I had that day. I am measuring my weight on a weekly bases and so far I consistently lost weight. That varied from 600 grams to 1,5 kgs in an exceptional week.
 
And here the “paradox”:
Now here comes the paradox, yesterday I returned from my 2 weeks of holidays. Two weeks ago I weighed 114 Kg (so in total having lost 16 Kg's). During the holidays I continued my eating pattern, meaning that I had the same type and level of macro nutrients when I was loosing weight. On the exercise front,  I took things to an higher level. That meant that during these 2 weeks, I almost on a daily bases did exercise on a treadmill, cross trainer and did muscle workouts (aimed at the upper body and legs).

This all resulted in quite an increase in the calorie shortage, i.e. I had at least 1000 calories short a day compared to what I did get in with food.
Yesterday, in good confidence I stepped on the scale an to my surprise I weighed 116 Kgs. Two Kgs gained!!

I was not that disappointed that I think all my efforts are wasted because I do feel much fitter and somehow stronger. Also my clothes are still okay and fit. There’s even one shirt that I bought two weeks ago that now seems a little bit looser somehow. I do feel that climbing stairs is becoming easier, the workouts must have paid off in that respect. The only logical explanation I can give to the increased weight, is that muscle volume gain due to exercise could have surpassed the fat decrease in weight so that on a net level weight increase could have been achieved.

In terms of calories taken in and burnt, laws of physics tell that weight loss has to kick in at some point in case of a shortage.

So I was wondering if anyone had/has similar experiences or is it time to change things. Struggling to find an explanation of how the weight gain is possible.

Thanks!!

[WavyDavey]

Fluctuations in water weight could account for some of it.

I find  it better to look at the overall trend instead of picking a short period and drawing conclusions from it.

1000kcal deficit per day sounds too extreme to me. How fast are you trying to lose weight?

[SonicUth70]

Hi Dave,

I fully agree with you on the timeframe one should view the progress. I avoid stepping on the scale on a daily bases, my limit is weekly 🙂

However, this is what I observe on the somewhat longer term and based on the actual way I eat and exercise. So IMHO, the water fluctuation as such is probably not the cause. The 1000 kcal deficit may sound harsh but to be honest, I am simply following my body's "signals" so to speak. My proposed deficit by fitbit is 500 kcal a day, overall aim is to loose 500 grams a week. At the moment, when I'm hungry I tend to eat something but the simple fact is that those moments are far less than let's say a couple of months ago. The big difference with my "past" behavior is that I only eat natural stuff, no processed food. For me personally this works out pretty good, my cravings are very limited. I guess at the end of the day, I could eat more than in fact required but it would not really be out of hunger necessity.

What I am suspecting still is that due to the level and way of exercise ( i.e. workouts focused on muscle strength), I do continue to burn fat but probably also gain muscle volume. During the last months I started, this is the biggest difference, the way I do workouts. To my knowledge, muscles need energy in the form of proteins and store this energy as liquid. All together possibly resulting in extra weight. I am reading in this forum similar observations from other people as well and at this moment I tend to believe that there has to be a period that muscles will gain volume and strength. And that in fact does seem to be a positive thing to me and might encourage others as well to stay focused. Bottom line is that as I said, many of my clothes seems to be even getting looser in contrast to the 2 kg gain. So I am wondering what other people's experiences are in this matter.

The question in this case would, how long this would last as muscles cannot endlessly grow. There has to be some "turning point" I guess.

I just purchased a scale that can measure stuff like muscle volume, fat percentage, bone volume, etc. Will post updates on progress as soon as I have some data but for all having same concerns on such a situation, there's hope in my opinion. No reason to panic 🙂

[WavyDavey]

I don't think it's probably that in two weeks you've added much muscle. I would check again after two months on that.

If you're interested in strength training, you can't be too interested in weight loss. The two are somewhat opposed. The difference should and will be obvious enough that others around you notice the changes.

I find with strength training, my shirts get tighter and pants looser at the waist. But that didn't happen in 2 weeks. You can add maybe 1 pound a month of muscle in the first year.

It's said a novice can add weight to the bar every workout. An intermediate can add weight every week, and an advanced lifter adds weight maybe once a month or two. It's definitely diminishing returns after the first 6-12 months.

Take those scale readings with a big grain of salt. They're nowhere near as accurate as a Dexa scan, and tend to be sensitive to changes in water weight. Best of luck.

[bikerhiker]

If you are eating food that you bought in restaurants or on a cruise ship and that you didn't cook, then usually those food are high in sodium (salt), sugar and cholesterol even if you have the macro nutrients and calories counted down correctly.  Sodium holds water content and excess sugar can either be converted to glycogen (to store energy for your workouts) and to store glycogen you need water and when you exceed your glycogen stores capacity, the excess glucose will then be stored as fat.  If you have been working out for 2 weeks with weights, you will notice some increased in strength, but the physical features will only start to show up after 6 weeks or so and a few months later for you to see the lean muscles growth.

Unfortunately, when you eat outside food not cooked exclusively by you, the ingredients they use will make people easily get fat.  Even those healthy coconut drinks they keep telling you is healthy has sugar content that exceeds WHO recommendation!  Diet is really 90%+ weight loss.  Exercising, contrary to popular belief, does not burn fat efficiently because when you are exercising, you are stressing the body.  When you stress the body, cortisol is produced which inhibits fat loss.  

For me, I have resigned myself to just enjoy my holiday and the food I eat and just lose the weight when I come back.

[SonicUth70]

Indeed, food that is processed in the way you describe is out of the question. I avoid those type of things all the time, even during my holidays. I stick to "simple" food in its basic form (like fresh fish, nuts and grains, fresh fruit etc). After doing that a while (for me approx 4 weeks), one stops even craving for other sort of food. You give what your body actually needs, and that is in my case the macro's n their simplest form.

This behavior combined with a more active lifestyle alone has given me a weight loss of approx 15 kg's. The biggest difference is again that I feel somehow a little bit stronger it the stuff that I am doing, walking the stairs, carrying stuff etc.

Not aiming to get a "big" muscled body at all, but so far this little bit of those muscle training has helped me in at least the motivation to maintain this new lifestyle.

[Baltoscott]

Sounds like you are on the right track @SonicUth70.  I would not worry about changing anything unless the trend changes over the next month or so.

As for the 2kg change between two weigh-ins separated by two weeks, I think it is mostly water gain (at least if you are fairly certain that the type and amount of food you ate was about the same as normal).  If you click the link in my signature you can see a few thousand of my daily weigh-ins over the past seven years or so.  Particularly if you look at points where the trend line is fairly stable, the individual weigh-ins over a couple of weeks, even one day after the next, can be as much as 4 pounds or more apart (bigger swings when I was heavier).  If you check just the weigh-ins for every other Sunday over a couple of months I'm sure you'll find examples where weight "went up" if you look at just the weights recorded on those days, but the trendline went down or stayed the same because many of the weights recorded on the days in between went down.  That daily variation is all about changes in water retention and food not yet fully processed.  But if your trend line for your daily weigh-ins is going down, you can be pretty sure that your weight loss = fat loss.

Keep up the good work and let us know how its going.