I've been losing weight. It had been going great for about 6 months.
Then for the last month I haven't lost anything. This would be an indication that I need to get more serious right? Eat better and do more exercising?
Well, I have. I've been eating salads every day for lunch for a month and I haven't lost a SINGLE POUND from it.
I eat a small breakfast of yogurt and a banana, a salad for lunch and a sandwich for dinner.
My BMR is around 2000 and I think I'm eating a little under it, but what difference does that make relative to my former diet?
The salad was changed from a Dunkin Donuts bacon egg and cheese bagel with hash browns, so it should be a substantial calorie reduction.
So why haven't I seen any gains from my calorie reduction? (Even if you disagree with my calorie counting, it shouldn't change the fact that I DID reduce my lunch calories)
That may be correct, but it still doesn't explain why I haven't lost anything from a CALORIE REDUCTION
Hudson Green
count your fucking calories
Jaxson Harris
I do. As much as I can (via the restaurants posted numbers but who knows about those)
The DD lunch was approximately 900 calories.
My salad + iced tea is 620.
And I've kept my diet perfectly equivalent in every other way. So why haven't I lost anything from a 280 reduction?
William Wright
OP remember that as you lose weight, your maintenance also decreases, so you have to eat less to maintain the deficit.
Progress is also not linear, sometimes you plateau and you just have to fight through it.
If you're still not seeing progress then rigorously count calories.
Jackson Evans
It's not what you eat, it's how much. Like the other guys said, start counting and you'll be surprised.
You could eat nothing but lard sandwiches but as long as you were controlling your portions, you'd lose weight while the guy who eats salads plateaus hard.
Salad tastes like ass anyway.
Wyatt Rivera
Protip: Calculators aren't 100% accurate. Another tip: The calories given by fast food places aren't 100% accurate either.
If you're not losing weight you need to lower your calorie intake or count better. It's as simple at that.
Justin Allen
So how do you even count calories if no calculator is reliable
Nicholas Robinson
You use it as a guideline dumbass. Say you calculate your TDEE using various calculators and find the average to be 2500 calories. You plan around eating ~2000 calories a day, your so called deficit. After a few weeks, you notice you're merely maintaining weight and haven't lost or gained anything. Example being the OP, or you, or whoever finds they're not losing weight.
There are now a few things you can do: 1. Lower the amount of calories you're eating 2. Double check you're counting properly 3. Increase exercise length, amount, or intensity
I started at 308lbs and I eat at 1700-1800 calories a day. I've steadily lost weight and will recalculate if I hit a wall.
Jonathan Miller
Have you reduced how much you've been eating since you entered you plateau?
Your body before you lost weight required more calories than your body does now, so if you want to lose weight at a similar rate you have to reduce your caloric intake proportionally. Also, BMR and calorie counting can be pretty accurate compared to any other method, but they (especially BMR) are estimates and yours maybe lower than is normal for someone your weight. Just reduce your food little by little until you start losing weight again.
Are you exercising?
Diet is the most important part of weight loss, but if you exercise it will help a lot. Do you have an exercise routine? If so what is it?
I've plateaued a few time myself and it was always because: 1. I didn't reduce my calories as I got slimmer 2. I'd have a "treat" or "cheat day" more often than I should have and it would erase my progress pretty reliably.
Lincoln Thompson
Look up visual guides to portion control and use a calorie counting app like My Fitness to at least accurately gauge your serving amounts.
Restaurants serve 40% food per meal than they did 50 years ago. You've ingrained the wrong amount as the right amount since you grew up with it. Or something along those lines, I stopped paying attention desu.
Justin Bell
have you re-calculated your TDEE with your weight now?
Zachary Foster
I did decrease my calories, by 280ish as explained above. I can't understand why there hasn't been any change from this.
I do exercise daily. I do 20 minutes of biking indoor, 100 crunches, dumbbell exercises (bicep, triceps, lunges, etc) and I'm starting to use a kettlebell.
Yes
Carter Morales
Lower your calories again then. I assure you you're not breaking the laws of thermodynamics.
Gabriel Cook
Is there any possibility that I'm eating too few calories?
Or is that a myth
Landon Cruz
It's not a myth, it just applies to starving African children over surburanites with diet issues.
Adam Collins
Absolutely 0 possibility. "Starvation mode" doesn't happen till like 72 hours of not eating or eating at a HUGE loss.
If your BMR is 2000 you could safely eat 1300-1500 calories no problem. Would it be the healthiest option? Maybe not. My BMR is ~2300 calories and I'm eating at 1700 calories. I often go below that without trying. I weight ~260lbs, losing about 2lbs a week steadily for 2 months now. Barely any exercise because I lack discipline and I'm a lazy sack of shit.
I even binge drink and go out to eat with friends on the weekends. Probably balances out.
Jack Walker
>I've been losing weight. It had been going great for about 6 months. >Then for the last month I haven't lost anything. This would be an indication that I need to get more serious right? this is an indication of adaptive thermogenesis my friend
it is widely known that if you´re in a deficit for a long time your body adapts to the starving amount you eat and drops your metabolism
Basicly the cure to this is eat at maintenance for some time, maybe a month or two and then cut back again
If you dont wan this to happen ever again eat normal amounts and do more cardio
Austin Gray
>iced tea Are you retarded by any chance? Drink water
Ayden Torres
Do people generally agree with this?
You're saying I should increase my calories and do more cardio? For a bit
Benjamin Peterson
I want to increase my metabolism so I'm drinking caffeine.
I'm switching to coffee soon.
Samuel Gonzalez
Also am I technically eating at maintenance already since I'm not losing weight?
Landon Stewart
>yogurt and banana >salad >sandwich >a little under 2000 calories How in the fuck is some fruit, some lettuce, and a sandwich a little under 2000 calories? That should be less than 500 or something.
I made pic related in Excel to track my Calories and Macros. I eat 5 meals a day, and my target is 1500-2000 calories. Let's look at yesterday.
Breakfast, a bowl of oatmeal, 83 calories. Brunch, I had an egg white omelet. 223 calories. Lunch, I had two grilled chicken breast wraps. 472 calories. Dinner, I had a small amount of steak with two eggs on top. 426 calories. Supper was a protein shake in milk. I put 3 scoops in to hit my 200g protein goal. Total was 1748 calories. I ate much more food than you, but didn't get to the caloric total that you did.
Calories can be deceptive. Estimations are only estimations. Give yourself a 500 calorie target. Also, eat often. Do not be hungry. On some level, I think starvation mode is broscience, but in my own experience, eating often yields better results.
Joshua Ramirez
If you've been doing it for more than 2 weeks and haven't lost weight, yes, you're eating at maint.
Carson Cox
its not a fucking joke its a real thing google adaptive thermogenesis
no thats your lowered metabolism maintenance
eat at whatever maintenance is technically at your current weight. You might gain a little but thats okay. Let your body heal for a month and then add cardio in while eating the same
while diet is important starving yourself is not the way to go longterm. At some point cardio is MUST
Carter Adams
Try doing a re feed and eat 500 over. That's how I got past my plateau.
Jaxson Nguyen
Yogurt is 120 + banana 100 Salad and tea is 620 Sandwich is approximately 900. I'm guessing.
How much cardio? I do at least 20 mins of biking a day
How long did you do +500?
Liam Miller
definitely more than that
maybe 1-2 hours a day
Jayden Reed
Is that sandwich a fucking Big Mac?
Listen. Increase your caloric intake by about 500 calories. Eat 5 meals a day instead of 3. Do cardio every day. After a month, drop the 500 calories. Continue everything else. I promise you, you will blow past your plateau.
Aiden Rogers
>your lowered metabolism maintenance Nice meme. Lost 120lbs just doing a calorie deficient and medium amounts of cardio, slowly adjusting my calorie intake to change with my weight. Never felt like I was starving myself either.
Camden Hughes
Refeed is a one day thing
Noah Taylor
Holy fuck why are there so many different opinions on this.
120lb man how would you respond to my plateau problem
Anthony Brown
useful video for you OP explaining issues with attempting to lose large amounts of weight at once
Increase your cardio. 20min is fucking shit, especially biking. Cut calories an extra 100-200.
Then you're golden.
Would bike for at least 35-60 minutes. Do high intensity, then average speed for a rest, high intensity, and so on till you're done. Set what your average is right off the bat. If you're using a stationary bike, make sure you never go BELOW a certain speed. Start off with that speed/resistance for a warmup, ramp it up for 1-2 minutes, then go back to that speed. Never below.
Joseph Collins
Thanks. So what is my maintenance in my scenario?
Is it salads or the fat lunch I had before?
Samuel Foster
What's in your salad, OP? Salads are good at being deceptive. Is it just vegetables? Chicken? A lot of people tend to think they're eating healthy because they're eating salad when in reality they're drowning their salads in dressings full of fat and sugar.
just because you went from lardass to semilardass doesnt make it not true, your anecdotal evidence also means jackshit
Anthony Ortiz
This will sound counter intuitive but you need to have a cheat meal once a week now and the rest of the week be extremely strict.
Talking about a controlled cheat meal not a cheat day.
1 High carb & high fat meal not fitting your macros AND spills over your typical kcal for the day by about 500kcal
Rest of the week should be minimal carbs & fat back to normal.
Jaxon Reyes
The difference is minimal.
Hunter Fisher
you say so so it must be true
Liam Perry
Correct. My word is law.
Brandon Jones
Spinach, chicken, pecans, cranberries, oranges, and parmesan cheese
Grayson Brown
If I remember correctly, the body needs about 15 calories per Pound if you relaxed all day just to keep you alive. Thus, as you lose weight, your maintenance Will get lower and lower, requiring you to increase your deficit.
>According to your age of 23 and measurements of 5' 10" tall and weight of 280 pounds you will burn about 4110.99 calories a day just to keep going.
>You have to burn 3500 calories to lose one pound, or take in 3500 calories more than you burn to gain one pound.
I literally just need to exist and not eat like a pig to lose a pound a day. That's not even including exercise. I have no excuse.
Elijah Hughes
>20 minutes of biking indoor Double that at least (I'd recommend 1 hour), do it betwen 3 and 6 times a week and get a heartrate monitor (HR-zone-training ...). Should help
