Plateau help

[Kerivkennedy]

I started Dec 1st using My Fitness Pal and got a FitBit Zip around the 14th of December.

I started at 225 lbs and I'm 5'2" (I'll be 40 in September)
My inital goal was 175 lbs, which is what I weighed when I got married in 1999, seemed like a reasonable goal for someone who has been overweight her whole life.  
After learning more I realized if I got to 160 I would be out of the obese category so that became my new goal.  
I've been doing walking - some treadmill and a lot around the house (jogging laps around the house). I'd get 10,000 steps or more, aimed for 60 active minutes (or more) and my average TDEE has been right around 2,300 (my BMR was around 1700 when I started, I undertand with my weight loss its now around 1500).   I stuck to around a 1,200 calorie diet (recording in MFP).  
 As of the end of March I was down to 185. 
GREAT progres, right!  

Now since then nothing.  

I've tried increasing calories some, to closer to 1500 per day.  The biggest change in exercise is I'm more consistently getting 12,000 or more steps and my active minutes is staying closer to 80 or more.  After all, this isn't just about loosing pounds, its getting healthier. 

Somehow my Zip thinks I burned 2,600 calories yesterday which seems really high since its not like I was doing heavy cardio or running for long periods.  (Active minutes was 92).  

I just want ideas on what I should be doing to jumpstart the loosing again. 

I know the "easy" think most of y'all will say is eat more.  but how the heck am I supposed to eat more and eat healthy?  Seriously 1,500 leaves me more than satisfied.  Even at 1,200 calories I was rarely hungry, except right before meal time when we should be hungry.  

[awood08]

I had the same problem, started at 235 last June. Stalled out in February around 175 pounds. I'm finally down to 160 now but I've had to increase my workout intensities. Lift heavier, and watch my food alot more closely. I completed a 15 day challenge of strict clean eating with alot of low carb and high protein consumption with vigorous workouts. It helped greatly and now my body almost got a reset. My advice is to revaluate your calorie intake and nutrition, and look at your workouts. Are they too easy? Then you'll need to push yourself harder.

[JohnRi]

Weight loss is a real challenge sometimes.  First thing remember it took you months and years to gain the weight, it's going to take your months and maybe years to lose the weight.  I've been losing weight since October.  I've lost 54 lbs so far.  It's taken me over six months to lose that much.  I've got at least another six months to 12 months lose the next 44 lbs.  I've had weeks, sometimes two where I lost nothing, or even gained.  I've had to switch to daily exercise to maintain my diet starting in February. 

Now so many people his a point where losing weight gets hard to do.  As far as your diet is concerned 1200 calories is a little low.  1300 is probably the minimum calories you should eat in a day.  So 1500 is ok, as long as your burn 2000 or more calories a day, you should lose weight.

But here might be your issue, your body might be used to your exercise routine.  So your body might burn fewer calories during your non exercise part of the day, and prepares for the calorie burn when you exercise.  Do you exercise at the same time each day?  When you exercise what is your heart rate?  When I first started walking my heart rate was up in the 140-160 range.  Now I rarely see it above 106. 

And like you my BMR keeps falling.  Was 2600, now it's 2300, and by the time I get to my goal, it will be around 2000.  So losing weight is getting harder and harder.

My suggestions, are walk at a faster pace on your treadmill.  Or go to park with a walking trail and walk at a faster pace and get your heart rate up. You can also add other exercises.  I've had to add cycling to get my heart rate above 130 bpm.  Changing the exercises you do every day, helps throw off your body, and stresses different muscles.  Walking, running, cylcing, swimming are all good.

Also get a clothing measuring tape, and measure your body.  Often we lose inches, but don't lose lbs on the scale.  I have a Aria scale, and I can see my fat percentage fall, even when my weight is unchanged or goes up!

Bottomline just keep at it.  Eventually you will see the scale budge.  And congrats on your weight loss.  Keep at it!

[emili]

actually it would be eat less. if you haven't recalibrated your caloric intake to your new weight, you are more than likely overeating. If you have then either you might not be logging accurately or somewhere your math is wrong. the more you lose the harder it becomes- you have to be meticulous about everything you put in your mouth. And unfortunateIy the calories in/out is all based on estimations so I would really suggest you play around with the numbers some.  hope you break through!!

[Dominique]

I read an interesting article yesterday about a recent Danish study on successful weight loss maintenance. The article said that if you manage to maintain your weight loss for one year, it’s likely to be successful (in the long term). It interpreted this as being the time it takes for your body to adjust to its new weight and no longer fight to get you back to your original weight (homeostatis).

Going from 235/225 to 175 in a relatively short time (less than a year) is a huge change. Maybe it’s better to maintain for a while rather than antagonize your body?

[SunsetRunner]

Don't eat more to lose weight, jeesh!

If you're stalled go back to your plan and reduce daily calories by 100 - 200 (or increase exercise burn) until the weekly averages start moving again.

A stall of two weeks or more indicates an opportunity to reassess.  Best of luck!

[Kerivkennedy]

Based on my Fitbit TDEE I was already eating 1,000 deficit, some days more like 1,300 . 

Everything I've read says I shouldn't eat below 1,200  (at least not as an ongoing diet). 

I have been eating around 1,200 calories (some says depending on what I eat I'm totally satisfied at much less) 

I've made a spreadsheet of my MFP calories in, my FitBit TDEE, the resulting difference, and  my weight 

I havent' increased calories by much,  just from 1,200 to right around 1,500 (which is my BMR).  

Yes, this stall has gone on since the beginning of the month.  Daily fluctuations of 1-2 lbs, but putting me at about 185 since 4-1  

[SunsetRunner]

Calorie counting is not an exact science.  Just because we're tracking at 1200, doesn't mean we're actually eating at 1200.  Calorie labels, inaccuracies measuring, small mistakes can skew the actual numbers by +/- 50%, same goes for activity tracking, tends to be heavily skewed to a higher amount of calories burned that realistic.

Knowing all of our data is approximate, we have to adjust based on real world results.  I would try reducing intake/increasing burn by 100 calories a day and compare a weekly average of weight (rather than day-to-daty results) to see if the progress is matching expectations.

[BamaAlum97]

Plateaus happen.  I would focus more on making sure that you are eating "clean" calories and worry less about making a significant change in the number of calories.  1000 calorie deficit is already pretty big and I would not look to increase that.  Maybe make sure you are getting enough calories pre/post workout but otherwise, hold course and let it happen.  

I recently lost 50 pounds in about 4 months.  I noticed a pretty consistent trend of periods of weight loss followed by plateaus. 

[FitBeforeFifty]

After 6 months of weight loss, most people start to plateau. This is usually a combination of mutliple changes:

1. Adherence (sloppy tracking, not weighing and measuring everything you put in your mouth)
2. Behavioral adaptations (long term calorie restriction leads to subconcious energy preservation)
3. Biological adaptations (lowered resting energy expenditure, muscle contraction optimization, lowered body temperature)

The bottom line is our bodies have evolved to go into energy conservation mode when faced with long term calorie restriction and fat loss. Your body doesn't know you are intentionally trying to lose weight, it sees a pattern similar to a famine.

The combination of adaptations are referred to as Adaptive Thermogenesis. If you want to learn more about how this works, feel free to read the studies at the bottom of this post.

The best way to avoid this situation in the first place is avoid severe calorie restriction and create most of your deficit with exercise instead of diet. 

To reverse the adaptations, you need to eat more and move more. I know people scoff at the notion of eating more and I understand why ... if you study Adaptive Thermogenesis, however, you will not be as sceptical. In fact, scientist that specialize in sport science use this protocol in an attempt to avoid (or recover from) adaptations: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3943438/.

My suggestion is to increase your calorie intake (slowly) while also increasing your activity level and make sure you are accurately measuing everything you put in your mouth.

References:

Effect of calorie restriction on the free-living physical activity levels of nonobese humans: result...
Adaptive reduction in basal metabolic rate in response to food deprivation in humans: a role for fee...
Role of nonexercise activity thermogenesis in resistance to fat gain in humans
Evidence for the existence of adaptive thermogenesis during weight loss
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18842775
Long-term persistence of hormonal adaptations to weight loss
Diminished energy requirements in reduced-obese patients.
Energy metabolism after 2 y of energy restriction: the biosphere 2 experiment.
Natural bodybuilding competition preparation and recovery: a 12-month case study
Increases in ghrelin and decreases in leptin without altering adiponectin during extreme weight loss...

[FitBeforeFifty]

As a follow-up to my last post, the biological portion of adaptive thermogenesis is on the order of several hundred calories. If you have an estimated 1000 calorie deficit, those adaptations alone wouldn't be enough to stall you. 

I would address the areas I mentioned in the order I mentioned them:

Adherence (sloppy tracking, not weighing and measuring everything you put in your mouth)

Do you weigh your food ? Weighing is much more accurate than measuring. While I know pre-packaged food is characterized as unhealthy by many due to additives and over processing, one option is to eat nothing but pre-packaged food that can be scanned (I think MFP allows you to scan bar codes) for a couple of weeks. That wouldn't be a long term recommendation, but it minimizes the margin of error and will identify if you had an accuracy problem previously.

Behavioral adaptations (long term calorie restriction leads to subconscious energy preservation)

Is walking your only exercise ? If so, why not replace some of the walking with a combination of resistance training and cardio. You'll burn more calories per minute with those activities than walking and you can then afford to eat more.

Biological adaptations (lowered resting energy expenditure, muscle contraction optimization, lowered body temperature)

There is really nothing you can do to counter this other than increase your calorie intake. In my opinion, you shouldn't have been eating below your BMR in the first place. If you are uncomfortable eating a lot more consistently, you could try calorie cycling. Eat above your BMR 2 days a week ... preferably on a day you add an exercise like resistance training.

Rapid weight loss with severe calorie restriction seems to trigger a stronger adaptive response from our bodies than a deficit built upon calorie restriction and exercise:

Metabolic and Behavioral Compensations in Response to Caloric Restriction
This shows that people that lose weight with exercise and diet mitigate biological/behavioral adaptations.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0004377

To get a better idea what happens to people on severe calorie restiction, see the recent study on the biggest loser participants. Their extreme weight loss has left them in a state where their resting metabolism is, on average, 500 calories below predicted for their current size. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/health/biggest-loser-weight-loss.html?_r=1