@sakers
Hi Sakers,
Welcome to the Fitbit forum and congratulations on your first weight loss attempt.
Without knowing your BMI and your weight, it is difficult for us to ascertain the reasons and causes for your weight plateau. Losing weight is not as simple and direct as calories in and calories out. Meaning that if you eat less and exercise more, then you should lose some weight. But this part is not and never was a guarantee. If it was, then there wouldn't be companies like Fitbit, Apple, Polar, Garmin and the reason making these health products to track what you eat, when you sleep and how much your exercised. The reality is that, the body works in much more complex ways than what a simple calories in and out theory make out to be as you would have found out by now.
First of all, I like to explain as to the process of weight loss and perhaps shed some light towards your current predicament.
I also want to make this somewhat simplistic for you to understand without going into some medical jargon. Your body basically has 2 reserve tanks -- Glycogen storage and body fat. What is unique about glycogen stores is that, this storage is dynamic as it expands the storage to a finite amount to fulfill a certain activity that you need to complete like running a marathon so you don't hit the "runner's wall" or any endurance type events. The term "Carbo Loading" means just that -- you eat carbs to load up on your glycogen stores as it usually takes about 24 hrs to fully complete the process. Basically carbo loading is storing excess glucose that was converted from eating carbs through a process called glycogen synthesis and then it gets stored in your blood cells, kidneys, liver and muscle groups necessary to complete the activities. What is glucose? Glucose basically is fuel that had been converted through ingestion of carbs (eating) and then digestion (through your digestive systems) to become glucose to be absorbed into your bloodstream. So if you run for 30 mins on a threadmill, you will have the glycogen stores in your body to complete that 30min run and complete your strength training for the 5 days period. In order to store glucose as glycogen, you need to store it with water. This ratio is about 2.7 to 1. So for 2.7gram of water is per gram of glycogen roughly speaking. So basically as you exercise more, you may gain more weight but most people think that the weight gained come from muscle mass and bone density growth and yet they do not realize they are also taking on water. If you go to the gym, you will also see a weight scale and sometimes you see some people weigh themselves before and then weigh again themselves after. What they are doing is to measure the loss of water weight, because after they had exercised, they would have depleted the glycogen stores and hence loss water weight. As you recharge your glycogen stores, you will gain some of that lost water weight back.
You would have noticed by now that I haven't talked about losing body fat at all. And that is because most of the time, most people simply lose weight in terms of water weight and hardly even touching their body fat reserve. The signs you see is after you lost weight, you will gain some of that back mainly as water weight. If someone truly had lost weight, they will notice a few things. The waist line would have shrunk considerably (this is a good measure of body fat% and not your weight), your hips and your underarms fat will shrink as well. The fat around your waist line comprised of both subcutaneous fat and visceral fat. Visceral fat is the fat deposit around your internal organs -- heart, kidneys, liver etc and the subcutaneous fat is fat found under your skin. As visceral fat is reduced so will your subcutaneous fat and taken over its place will be lean muscle mass through strength and weight training exercises and complete glycogen depletion. To give you an idea of glycogen depletion rates, normal daily routine will deplete glycogen stores in about 12hr to 24hr. A mild cardio activity will deplete glycogen stores in 90-120 mins and a HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) where intense cardio and or extreme weight training to muscle failure will deplete your glycogen stores in about 20 mins. What is glycogen depletion is so important? Well, that is because your body will start to rely on your body fat stores when you are nearing glycogen depletion and that is when your body will begin using body fat as its fuel source. Now given enough of these occurrences, you will slowly deplete your body fat stores and the areas around your belly, hips and underarms (for ladies) will start to shrink and easily toned through combination exercises and the weight gained by your muscles, stronger bones and water will be offset by the loss of body fat and sometimes, you will notice your weight will either plateau or decrease. But because we do not have the same bodies, sometimes we may gain weight slightly.
Once you lose weight, you want to ease off in your calorie restriction to allow your body to recharge and recoup from the stress of losing weight. Remember that another determinant factor to help the body lose weight is hormones; especially a hormone called Cortisol which is released through stress either mentally afflicted or physically afflicted by overtraining, too much exercise and not enough recovery and rest days, not enough sleep and stress in relationships and workplace. When cortisol is present in your body, it jacks up insulin and when insulin is present, no fat burning will occur. So when that happens, your exercises are limited to a certain range and then your exercises will plateau. As you keep pushing more exercises but restricting your calorie intake while insulin is present in your body, the body will respond by taking fuel from somewhere else. Since it can't take fuel from your body fat because of insulin, it can only take fuel from your muscle group. This process is called gluconeogenesis and it converts muscles into glucose for your body to consume and of course any excess of that will get stored in your glycogen stores. Again you need water to store glycogen and since our bodies are mostly composed of water and you have to drink everyday; voila you gain weight EVEN when you eat less. That's why, you hear a certain diet advocate who tells you not to drink water too often and it's okay to drink when you feel thirsty. They do this to bypass the process so you don't gain too much water weight. Of course, thanks to your strength training, you are building your muscle mass only to be farmed by your body for fuel. This is when your exercise intensity and duration will come to a plateau. It is a vicious cycle indeed. Also, as we grow older, our body will need to store more body fat as we heal slower from any nasty diseases we might contract as body fat is used as the last reserve to sustain life in the event of a major illness.
So what is the best way to determine the ideal body weight? It is a body weight that is unique to you. Do not compare how your body looks and should weight against someone else or against a body image you strive to achieve that you saw online or in a magazine. That is their body and they can achieve that. You have a specific body type that promotes the best, so the most important you need to determine is
1, What is your waist line and is it in the healthy range
2. What is the size of your hips and underarms are they in the healthy range
3, What are your sleep patterns -- do you get a full 7-8 hrs of deep sleep. (this is extremely important for body fat loss)
4, What is your stress level during the day? Can you reduce it or transcend over it. Overcoming your psychological challenges that cause this particular stress event? If you overcome a particular stressful event; even being part of that event will not cause your cortisol level to rise..
5, If you have stress; can these issues be resolved through therapy like EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) or EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitize Reprocessing) and others which can help resolve certain psychological imbalances in your subconscious. Most people do not realize that this gives you the best bang for the buck in terms of weight loss than a diet plan, but most people refuse to face their fears.
Our body is simply a reflection and feedback to our psychological and emotional imbalances. You correct these imbalances, then losing weight is really simple because the body will follow the mind. Have a healthy mind, then the body will become more healthier.
Hope this helps.
