(F Age: 28, SW: 193 CW: 178) So I’ve lurked here for quite some time and gotten some great knowledge and second hand advice. I’m only posting this because I thought it might be useful to someone like me.
I only started losing weight in December and have tried to maintain a small calorie deficit (250-500). I was losing pretty steadily between 0.5-1 pound until the beginning of March when the scale seemed to stop budging. I weigh weekly, and it was three weeks of the same number.
Naturally I did a depth dive in this forum and the internet in general. Everyone had different suggestions and answers, but there were general themes.
“Your calories may have crept up/you fell back into old habits.” “Your body may have adjusted to your workouts.” “Have you checked your macros?” “Are you weighing everything you eat?” “Metabolic damage! Thermo-whatever! Your body may be working against you!” “Have you started a new workout, including cardio? because it could be causing water retention for up to 6 weeks.” “You may need to recalibrate your scale because some of them have memory.” “Are you SURE you’re in a plateau?” “Have a cheat meal.”
Guys I was SO confused. I felt so certain I was doing everything the same: still weighing my food, still meeting my step goal, the only thing I could think of was having been able to go back to gym workouts for the month until everything in my province shut down again.
Gradually though I figured it out, and it wasn’t one thing, it was like... most of them.
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My calories HAD crept up - because MFP doesn’t automatically shift it’s calorie recommendations after you’ve lost weight. Go into the settings and re-click on your goals if you’ve lost ten pounds or more.
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My calories had ALSO crept up bc I’m a fool and made a mistake regarding calculating the weight rather than volume of ICE CREAM. Which is packed with calories, obviously, so that added a few hundred calories per week.
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I had stopped going OVER my step goal - I had started just meeting it instead of going thousands of steps over going for walks with a friend who moved away. I hadn’t input just how much this had added because I always thought “oh I met my step goal” and stopped tracking.
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Because I weigh weekly, I was missing very minor but still downward fluctuations within a window of weight variance - I wasn’t fully in a plateau. The Happy Scale app revealed this.
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I had stopped getting as much protein.
Nothing wrong with my scale and I don’t think there’s much water retention from my workouts, but once I fixed all this stuff (and threw in a reasonable cheat meal for good measure?) After one week back at it, bam, one more pound down.
I know this is super long, but if you feel like you’re in a plateau, it might not be one thing. It could be many small things working against you! Don’t give up!
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/moj7v8/it_wasnt_one_thing_it_was_all_the_things_plateau/
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