Hitting plateau despite increased deficits

[DraigGoch]

Hi, all.  Hoping someone can give me some insight on the plateau I've hit.  A bit of background data:

I have been using MyFitnessPal and Fitbit to track food and exercise for years, and probably got lax after starting a new job in autumn 2016.  When clothes really started not fitting around the holidays this last winter, I buckled down again, tracking food much more diligently (ok, much more honestly!) and upgraded to a FitBit HR from the original Flex I had for years.  I'm 35, 5'4", currently 144lbs (down from 146 at my annual physical in March, which was the first time in my adult life I'd gone into "overweight" BMI).  Never been pregnant, etc.  I don't drink sugary drinks/pop (at all), since that seems to be one of the first things people ask about!  I drink plain hot black tea (no sugar, no milk, no lemon), 3-4 cups most mornings, and plain water (no fizz, no flavour) through the day - probably 3-4 cups there as well, more or less.

I workout 5-6 days a week.  Isometric and isotonics 3 days a week (approximately 20 minutes per session) and cardio 5-6.  I prefer walking on my lunch break or after work, 30-60 minutes, average heartrate around 120-130, generally between 200-300 calories burned per walk (per FitBit).  If the weather is inclement, I will hit the elliptical for 20 minutes and burn around 150.

From January 4 to the end of February, I was seeing positive results.  I was doing weekly morning measurements and seeing a decrease of an average 1/4 inch weekly.  I knew I would hit a plateau eventually (and that it was likely "water" inches that were going that quickly early on).  From beginning March, I have now seen a definite 0 inches lost.  As mentioned, my weight at my annual exam in mid-March was 146, now down to 144 - I have started weighing myself daily and averaging the weight per week since I have seen no change in measurements.  Current measurements are: 

Waist: 31.5 inches

Hips: 38

Calf: 15

Thigh: 22

Bicep: 11.5

Again, that's no change on those since March 1, measured weekly from March 1 to April 14 (when I cut it to monthly since it wasn't helping to see the tape going nowhere), first thing in the morning, after a visit to the bathroom.  So it's not that "I'm losing the fat in other areas first".  I'd really like to get those first two down because I'm decidedly pear-shaped at the moment.  Goal measurements: waist 29, hips 36.  

Here's where I'm getting frustrated, with a capital F:  according to the numbers, I'm doing everything I should be to get through this plateau, but the stall continues.

During the first 8 weeks (when I was seeing results), my average daily calories-in was 1448.  During the last 10 weeks (no change other than that 2 pounds since mid-March), avg. daily cals-in = 1497.  

First 8 weeks, avg. daily cals-out: 2011

Last 10 weeks, avg. daily cals-out: 2114

First 8 weeks, avg. daily deficit: 561

Last 10 weeks, avg. daily deficit: 622

As far as I can see, the only possible reasons why I've not lost more than 2 pounds over the last 10 weeks have to be significant miscalculation of calorie intake, significant miscalculation of calorie expenditure (measured entirely by FitBit HR tracker), or underactive metabolic rate (age, decrease in thyroid activity, etc).

The only thing I can reasonably control here is calorie intake and tracking, outside of asking my doctor for a hormone/thyroid test.  I don't really think it's realistic for me to increase my workout time/intensity very much more - I've got to have some time for other life activities!

One of my biggest questions right now is about the "1200" calorie benchmark.  If I hit 1200 and my tracker tells me I've burned 2200 calories that day, do I need to ignore the part where it says I have 500 calories left in my "budget" and cut it off at 1200, no matter what?  In other words, is "500 day/3500 week deficit" doing me absolutely no good here? 

Is there a deficit I should be shooting for instead, if a 500-calorie daily deficit isn't helping (or closer to 625 going by my averages the last few weeks), because I feel like I'm flying blind here 

[bikerhiker]

I see.  Still you haven’t answered my question.  Perhaps I need to clarify a bit about my question.  

When we are dieting and exercising, we have the potential to loose weight and promote muscle growth.  This muscle growth will allow the potential for fat burning which will then lead to more weight loss.  It is difficult to spot reduce fat at places you want especially around your waist line, because fat is not muscles.  But you can reduce your waist line if you have a goal to train your body to yield a specific body shape.  Let me give you an example.  Let’s examine the difference between Michael Phelps and a Kenyan runner.  Immediately, you will see 2 different body shapes.  One has a swimmer body and the other has a runners body.  Waist line will be different as well as I had been both types, but they are at their healthy weight.  The runner is skinny like a stick, but he does not need to push through water to move forward like a swimmer does, but he needs to push through air.  Skinnier profile serves better for being slightly better aerodynamics.  Same with a Sumo wrestler and a martial artist.  When I started training Aikido, I had to bulk up as my runner body is not suitable for that sport as I need to build a better center of gravity as my base.  Thus my waist line grew.  

So I hope this clears up my question.

Right now,  I chose to have a swimmers body and am not as skinny as I was when I was a runner.  And as such, my waist line dropped from 33” down to 31”.  If I chose a martial arts body, then my waist line would probably be at 33” which was when I was 160lbs.  Now I’m 148lbs almost close to 145lbs.  Ideal for me to be a good swimmer, good hiker and lifting not so heavy stuff for my nursing.  If I want my runners body, it will be another 1” off my waist line.  From 31” to 30”.

Can you answer my question now?  What is your weight goal?  What do you want your body to be?

[oh_suzanney]

This is a pretty rude reply, tbh. It's not really any of your business what she wants her weight and measurements to be. She's run into a fat loss plateau and has asked for advice on how to break it, and doesn't owe you an answer to your question about what she wants her measurements to be.

[DraigGoch]

Makes total sense to me.  My goal isn't so much the number on the scale.  In fact, I didn't even start looking at the scale regularly until the measuring tape stopped shifting.  My goal is, very simply, to be able to wear the size 30 waist jeans/size 10 trousers that I have in my closet.  Thus, ideally, I'd be aiming for 30 waist, so dropping around 1.25 inches.  What I don't really know at this point is whether that means firming up, working deeper abs, etc., or if it is fat that needs to be burned overall.  Everything else is fine.  If my thighs, calves, and biceps slim down, great, but if they didn't, it wouldn't be a problem.  Besides all that, it's a pretty well established theory that belly fat is the worst kind to let stick around in terms of overall health concerns.  

Does that answer a bit more?

[DraigGoch]

I don't see anything rude about it.  I've certainly shared where my measurements were/are several times.  It's a fitness forum, I can't imagine it being remotely rude or inappropriate to ask what my target measurement is.  There are a lot of ways to break plateaus, I'm sure, but not all of them are applicable for one reason or another.  That's why I've tried to include as much data as I can.  There are a lot of people with a lot more experience with this stuff than me.  If I wanted generic advice, I'd have stuck to Google and Self magazine telling me "drink more water".  

[bikerhiker]

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@DraigGoch wrote:

Makes total sense to me.  My goal isn't so much the number on the scale.  In fact, I didn't even start looking at the scale regularly until the measuring tape stopped shifting.  My goal is, very simply, to be able to wear the size 30 waist jeans/size 10 trousers that I have in my closet.  Thus, ideally, I'd be aiming for 30 waist, so dropping around 1.25 inches.  What I don't really know at this point is whether that means firming up, working deeper abs, etc., or if it is fat that needs to be burned overall.  Everything else is fine.  If my thighs, calves, and biceps slim down, great, but if they didn't, it wouldn't be a problem.  Besides all that, it's a pretty well established theory that belly fat is the worst kind to let stick around in terms of overall health concerns.  

Does that answer a bit more?

---

Yes it does and thank you so much for sharing these information.   I'll explain why I need this information that nobody here asked about.

Regardless of your height and build, the waist line measurement is a good indication for the underlying cardiovascular diseases like heart disease and strokes (very common).  The reason we measure the waist line is that, this will determine the internal fat deposits which coats the heart, the kidneys, the liver, the digestive organs and the pancreas.  So if a person's waist line is above 40" for men or 35" for women, then there is a high likely hood that that person will have a heart disease or suffer a stroke due to the excess fat deposits.  There's also atherosclerosis, which is the hardening of the arteries that can also cause cardiovascular disease.

But in your case, your waist line is 31.25", which I think should indicate that you are at a low risk level. 

So now, what to do about the fat deposits that are coated on your internal organs around your waist line?  The best way I know is to exercise with a long steady state HR and just slowly burn the fat.  Slow steady state works the heart, the circulatory system of your body and your digestive system.  Did you know that drinking 2 litre of water each day burns 100 calories?  If you do that 7 days a week; that's 700 calories and 2800 calories/month which is close to loosing 1 lb (takes 3500 calories to loose 1 pound).  Even drinking water can help loose weight by promoting good bowel movement and help shrink that waist line.  So to go further and loose 1.25", which if you think our waist line in quadrants (front, back and sides) is doable.  You just need to adopt a long steady state workout and hydrate properly by drinking water during and after the exercise. 

Are you doing any dynamic core workout as part of your exercise regimen?

[DraigGoch]

@bikerhiker  

It sounds like you're an advocate of staying within "fat burn" HR zones, am I reading that correctly?  That's basically what I've been doing, though I do think that getting up to cardio for a bit of the time *should* help with "afterburn".  But, that is as may be.  When it comes to 3500 calories = 1 pound, my body appears to laugh at that.  I've got weekly calorie deficits of 5000+ for weeks now and rarely drop more than 1/3-pound a week.  It's definitely been slow progress.  

I'm not particularly concerned about cardiovascular issues, but at the beginning of the year, my waistline was around 34 and in mid-March I was "officially" in overweight BMI at 146 pounds.  I know that it's something that would become a concern if I didn't keep after it.  

I'm not doing a *lot* of dynamic core stuff, primarily isotonics and isometrics with weight stacks.  I do tend to add a bit of core-twist to weighted ab work, trying to get a little attention to the obliques as well. What I should probably do is get back to listening to salsa music while working out, that usually just naturally encourages hip movement/core dynamism.   

[bikerhiker]

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@DraigGoch wrote:

@bikerhiker  

It sounds like you're an advocate of staying within "fat burn" HR zones, am I reading that correctly?  That's basically what I've been doing, though I do think that getting up to cardio for a bit of the time *should* help with "afterburn".  But, that is as may be.  When it comes to 3500 calories = 1 pound, my body appears to laugh at that.  I've got weekly calorie deficits of 5000+ for weeks now and rarely drop more than 1/3-pound a week.  It's definitely been slow progress.  

I'm not particularly concerned about cardiovascular issues, but at the beginning of the year, my waistline was around 34 and in mid-March I was "officially" in overweight BMI at 146 pounds.  I know that it's something that would become a concern if I didn't keep after it.  

I'm not doing a *lot* of dynamic core stuff, primarily isotonics and isometrics with weight stacks.  I do tend to add a bit of core-twist to weighted ab work, trying to get a little attention to the obliques as well. What I should probably do is get back to listening to salsa music while working out, that usually just naturally encourages hip movement/core dynamism.   

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I advocate it because it is safer to do and will cause less injuries and perhaps because I work in geriatrics nursing.  So seniors favour slow and steady vs the young who favour more HIIT.  And the obesity rate of seniors are atrocious, so I'm well aware of the complications obesity brings.

There are 2 kinds of fat.  Visceral fat and Subcutaneous fat.  Visceral fat is what you can't see -- fat deposits coated to your internal organs, whereas subcutaneous fat is what you can see because it is under the skin.  This is what most people are targeting at and as I summoned is probably at low levels.  But in the presence of excess visceral fat, you need subcutaneous fat as they play a symbiotic role.  The subcutaneous fat actually keeps people who are otherwise obese healthy.  So subcutaneous fat, the fat you see under the skin actually keep these people healthy and alive.  By removing subcutaneous fat to dangerously low levels, these people are compromising their health and which can result in death.

So you can't no longer diet and increase deficits to burn visceral fat.  You simply can not.  In order to burn visceral fat, you need to move and increase the intensity and the duration of the exercise, otherwise you need to accept, as you have realized, that it is a very slow process. 

The cause of the increase in visceral fat can sometimes come actually from failed diet plans.  The side effects of failed diet plans can actually leave more fat deposits on their internal organs.  So the next time they want to loose weight; not only they have to contend with their lower metabolic rate, but also work much harder to reduce their visceral fat.

Dynamic core workout helps tighten your abdomen muscles as you work to reduce your visceral and subcutaneous fat, and also serves as a HIIT training complementing your slow steady workout.  HIIT can help burn visceral fat faster than slow steady, but slow steady you can do more often.  I combined both and it works out for me and my clients.

[Dominique]

@DraigGoch: what was your weight in summer 2016 (before you got your new job and started to "get lax") and in winter 2017 (when you noticed your clothes were no longer fitting). I’m asking in order to see your weight history over a longer period of times (two years instead of 6-7 months).

You mentioned you saw positive results during the first two months of 2018. You only mentioned inches lost (0.25" per week). I personally tend to lose 1 cm on my waist for each kilogram lost. One inch is 2.54 centimeters, so if you lost 2 inches (about 5 cm) in January-February, that would translate into 11 pounds. This would put your starting weight at 157 lbs and would have had you lose at close to 1% of your body weight per week, which is a lot. Of course, all these numbers are just guesses from me, hence my question.

The problem with rapid weight loss is that it tends to work well in the beginning, less well after a while (law of diminishing returns), until it hardly works at all (the dreaded plateau), in spite of increased effort (as you reported). This is why I now like to set safeguards to my weight loss phases: I keep them no longer than 12 weeks and make sure weight loss doesn’t exceed 1% of body weight per week. This is what the current phase looks like graphically (more info here😞

 

I’ve been losing at a steady pace (slightly more than 0.5 kg per week), starting from a relatively low weight (BMI 21.3). In spite of being a male and taller, my calculated BMR is not much higher than yours (less than 100 calories), due to being older and lighter. So it’s not l’m burning that maný more calories than you. I will stop dieting after the 12 weeks are over and switch to maintenance for at least 2 months, possibly longer.

[SunsetRunner]

Hi, I had for many years a plateau as you have it now, and now I am trying to pass a second one in which I am working as well. If you feel like we could have a chat and we could share opinions. 🙂