Breaking past the flatline

[Kaelon]

Hi Everyone,

I've had my Fitbit since April, and I've had a tremendous journey so far -- a combination of calorie-restricted dieting (nothing crazy, just commonsense) and elliptical exercises for ~30-40 mins 5+ times a week, has allowed me to lose ~30 pounds.  But, for the past 3 weeks or so, I've been stalling/flatlining at ~30 pounds lost.  I'm a guy in my 30s, short (5'3), and finally for the first time in my adult life am just on the cusp of being overweight.

My doctor is encouraging me to lose another 10-20 pounds.  But I'm at a loss at what I should do.  I've restricted my calories to ~1500 a day, and anything less I feel might deprive me of essential nutrition.  Should I be looking at lifting weights? Adding some other exercises? 

What do you recommend to push against a flatline like this?

[shipo]

First off, congratulations on your progress so far.

You might want to mix things up a bit; add in a little weight lifting and swap out a day or two per week of elliptical for a real run out of doors.

[Kaelon]

Thank you!  I'm excited -- it's come off a bit easily, but I don't want to give up and really want to get in shape and start building muscle. I am also still carrying a bit of a belly, but most of it is thankfully disappearing.  Very exciting!

I've never been athletic in my adult life, so I'm not sure what type of weight exericses you'd recommend I'd try.  A real run out of the doors sounds very interesting!  I may give that a shot. 🙂  Do you think this variety will ultimately help me push against this plateau?

Thanks again for your thoughts!

[shipo]

Mixing things up helps, to a point.  Beyond that you're going to need to up your game a bit and add more time and/or days to your workout routine.  The general consensus is running is the most sustainable high-calorie per our burn exercise there is.  Were you one of the folks I coach, I'd recommend gradually replacing your elliptical with all running; augmented with a light weight training routine.  

[GershonSurge]

Lifting weights doesn't burn many calories, but it is good for other reasons.

I recently broke a 13 day plateau by reducing my exercise and increasing my intake to a deficit of just a few hundred calories. 

If you aren't already a runner, I suggest walking. The leg muscles are the among the biggest ones in the body and burn the most calories. Start with a short distance and increase it gradually.

[MarkkkH]

Well done! It is very hard work and very difficult to stay motivated! I am, and have been in a similar baot to you. Today I have just surpassed he 100lb weight loss and have had 3 'flatlines' on the way. I actually found that cutting back on exercise for a week gave my body more chance to recover and then get straight back into exercise the following week - I found doing this and continuing my usual diet works a treat. I think your body probably gets used to regular exercise and starts to conserve energy and giving it a short break tricks it into a new, albeit temporary, routine. Mixing up exercise will also do this, although I don't think weights would be as good as aerobic - so mix up elliptical, bike ride/exercycle, outdoor runs etc.

Good luck with your quest!!

[FitBeforeFifty]

One thing to keep in mind is that fat loss doesn't always happen linearly. During my weight loss phase, it wasn't uncommon to go 2 weeks without the scale budging and then have a big drop in the 3rd week even though I didn't change anything.

When people try to correlate weight loss with exercise and food on a daily or weekly basis, you come to all sorts of crazy conclusions. Essentially you get correlation without causation.

Personally, I don't consider 2 or 3 weeks a big deal and isn't something to be concerned with.

Having said that, if you eat at a constant caloric intake you are guaranteed to plateau.  As you lose weight you burn fewer calories because your TDEE is based on your body weight. In general, your goal should be to maintain a consistent deficit instead of a consistent calorie intake. This means your calorie intake has to drop as you lose weight or your calorie burns have to increase.

[A_Lurker]

I have a few more questions (but my advice is somewhat already covered).  How quickly did you lose the 30 pounds, as that may change my answer slightly.  Also, you say you are eating 1500 calories now but is this how you started.

Assuming that you started right at the start of April we have 14 weeks in total.  You say you have been stalled for 3 weeks, so assume you lost 30 pounds in 11 weeks.  That is a pretty fast loss, so I assume that you have been eating 1500 calories since the start.  Your body might be fighting back and saying it wants more food, and since you are not listening it is running on less.  You also may have become more efficient at the regular exercises so you are burning less calories.  Think back to the first week on the eliptical - are you really working as hard for those 30-40 minutes or has it become easier.  Changing up your exercise is a good idea, it forces your body out of a routine.

Waiting another week would not be the end of the world.  However, eventually you will need to change something.  What is your deficit at 1500 calories.  Your public profile hides how many calories you burn so you may be eating too little.  However, when I look at your number of steps, well, the peaks are getting lower than they were 4 weeks ago.  As well, your less active days are getting lower as well.  It could be that you are a little worn out, so perhaps eating a little more might be a good idea.  Again, base this on the number of calories burned daily.

Remember, you did not gain the weight overnight.  It rarely comes off overnight either.

(I think I need to reboot my laptop, I cannot type apostrophes, question marks, etc.  It was harder than I thought to type a post without any of them.)