Oh-No,, Not the Plateau! (Help Please)

[yovwmon]

Alrighty,,,, I have a few things going on, First off, I am not following a regular program because I am currently attending physical Therapy for my back which was hurt doing deadlifts back in January, full story here àhttp://forums.jpfitness.com/sh owthread.php?t=22707 Over the last two months I have been doing extremely well with my weight loss, I have dropped 18.5 Lbs using a combination of JB’s diet recommendations and a little TT when I can. I have tracked everything in Fitday waiting for a plateau, and I think I may have hit it.

Here is my Fitday journal àhttp://www.fitday.com/WebFit/P ublicJournals.html?Owner=yovwm on I have tracked every singe thing I eat for about two months along with all my workouts. For the record I am drinking about 200oz of water per day, and taking 3.0g of creatine per day. I started the creatine about two weeks ago and I believe it is assisting with my recovery.

Looking at the Fitday log I was loosing steady 1 – 1.5Lbs per week, this past week I went up 1.5 pounds, and over the last two weeks I am showing zero gained and zero lost. I need to get this moving again; please I need some serious recommendations and ideas that have been proven to work in the past.

Currently I am not doing intervals, I plan to return to them shortly once I am released from therapy, until then I need some other ideas.

Thanks!
Adam

[Frank.S]

You cals are all over the place. Some days you are under 1000, some near 3000. This is probably your problem right here. On average you look like you are only eating around 1600cals per day.. This is almost for sure, not near enough food.

Ramp up cals for the next few weeks until you get to a steadier, higher number. You may gain a few lbs, but in the end you will be able to loose more.

Personally, I would up the carbs and fats and focus on a more balanced macro split.. but i dont want the low carb people getting mad at me haha.

[Jimbo]

What has been your caloric daily goal?

I agree with what has been said, that is, your average daily calories has been too low. Yet, you have big eating days in there. That's a good recipe for gaining fat. At least for me..

Your diet does look similar to mine in macro breakdown. Low carb, high fat and protien. This works for me too.

I would refeed for a couple of days..up the carbs for a couple of refeed days..then back them down again but keep your calories a little higher than you have been averaging and be consistent.

Add fat...not necessarily more protien to bring the calories up. Keep the calorie count as rock steady for a couple of weeks and see what happens.

Oh..and HIIT is a good idea. But the diet is more important as you already know.

[gobbla]

You might check out these threads for some good advice:

Okay, Now U Tell Me What To Do.
Someone please Tell me what's wrong with my diet!
My Fitday Journal – Your Opinion?
Help, My weight loss has come to a screeching halt!?!?
I NEED HELP PLEASE! (getting cut!)

[yovwmon]

Great reply gobba! Looks like you even included my first post ever.

Their was some great information in those post and I'm glad you worked so hard to find them. I did go back and read through most of the stuff and noticed that I have done alot of the recommended workouts, and started following a pretty clean diet.

Since some of those post were created two years ago the circumstances are a bit different, ie. I am in physical therapy, I can't choose my workout at this time. My diet is clean and the weight-loss is slowing, I'm looking for diet modifications that have worked for others in my situation, do you have one?

Different time - Different circumstances - Different post - Thanks tho!

Originally Posted by gobbla

You might check out these threads for some good advice:

Okay, Now U Tell Me What To Do.
Someone please Tell me what's wrong with my diet!
My Fitday Journal – Your Opinion?
Help, My weight loss has come to a screeching halt!?!?
I NEED HELP PLEASE! (getting cut!)

[yovwmon]

Hi Frank,

See the post below.

Adam

You cals are all over the place. Some days you are under 1000, some near 3000. This is probably your problem right here. On average you look like you are only eating around 1600cals per day.. This is almost for sure, not near enough food.

Ramp up cals for the next few weeks until you get to a steadier, higher number. You may gain a few lbs, but in the end you will be able to loose more.

Personally, I would up the carbs and fats and focus on a more balanced macro split.. but i dont want the low carb people getting mad at me haha.

[yovwmon]

Hi Jimbo,

I try to keep the calories between 1500 - 2200 per day. Some days I take in more calories because I am awake longer and I eat every 2.5 hours. The weekends are hard for me because I am not in a routine like I am during the week. I do reward myself on the weekends but still try and keep it clean despite the higher calorie intake. I have seen that eating more just one day out of the week can actually stimulate weight loss, maybe because it revs up the metabolism.

I am open to any recommendations.

Originally Posted by Jimbo

What has been your caloric daily goal?

I agree with what has been said, that is, your average daily calories has been too low. Yet, you have big eating days in there. That's a good recipe for gaining fat. At least for me..

Your diet does look similar to mine in macro breakdown. Low carb, high fat and protien. This works for me too.

I would refeed for a couple of days..up the carbs for a couple of refeed days..then back them down again but keep your calories a little higher than you have been averaging and be consistent.

Add fat...not necessarily more protien to bring the calories up. Keep the calorie count as rock steady for a couple of weeks and see what happens.

Oh..and HIIT is a good idea. But the diet is more important as you already know.

[LisaS]

IMO, two weeks of no net change is hardly a stall or a plateau

[gobbla]

No problem buddy. If you know you've gotten good advice in the past scroll over your name and hit the "find more posts by username". It takes about 4 seconds.

From what it looks like your dietary circumstances haven't really changed at all (and likely won't since the dietary principles that you're basing everything off of aren't going to change) from previous similar threads. You don't really have a caloric goal or aren't sticking to it, you're WAY lite on vegi's, and I didn't notice 1 piece of fruit logged (it might be there but I didn't see it).

So that'd be where I'd start. Figure out a calorie goal (unless you're not super serious about dieting and want to maintain reasonable heath and appearance), triple your vegetable intake, and add at least 2 pieces of fruit a day. Roll with that for 2 or 3 weeks. You need to have something static before any meaningful adjustments can be made.

[Lost Dog]

Average calories work fine to lose fat, for the most part. Of course eating above a deficit on a rest day might certainly put on some fat. I'd make sure your big days are for your big workouts, if you choose to have swings like that.

If you think you are in a plateau, stop rewarding yourself on the weekends, for instance. Also, you just shouldn't reward yourself with food. Find a new term. Like "I have a cheat day on Saturday."

And, if you're going to have cheat days, try to plan it so your biggest workout falls on that day, hopefully just before the cheat foods start. At least that way you have a shot at having the food put on some muscle, and not just fat.

Hope your injury gets better fast, Adam.

By the way, I'd agree that two weeks isn't necessarily a plateau. But, it never hurts to shake things up a bit, just in case.

[Jimbo]

Originally Posted by yovwmon

Hi Jimbo,

I try to keep the calories between 1500 - 2200 per day. Some days I take in more calories because I am awake longer and I eat every 2.5 hours. The weekends are hard for me because I am not in a routine like I am during the week. I do reward myself on the weekends but still try and keep it clean despite the higher calorie intake. I have seen that eating more just one day out of the week can actually stimulate weight loss, maybe because it revs up the metabolism.

I am open to any recommendations.

Hmm. Again, I'm doing something very similar but I kept the calories on a tighter leash the first few weeks. I was almost spot on 2200 a day. I even did olive oil shots at night to maintain that calorie count. (yes, I was anal)

But now I'm doing exactly what you are doing. I've loosened up a bit, but I haven't hit that platuea yet. I've only been doing this for 5 weeks so far..so when I do bottom out..I'll make sure and see what you did to get through it. Hope you get to losing again so I'll have my answers!

[Paradigm]

On a completely unrelated note, you look like one of the guys on Mythbusters from your pic, Adam

[yovwmon]

The weight loss looked as if it was slowing but I guess I was wrong, down to 198.5 today and I was down to 198 even last Thursday. I am going for 197 by this Friday.

Lost Dog, Thank's for the pointers, the injury is coming along, I'm getting better but it's going to take some time.

Paradigm, you're right, I do kind of look like Tony Belleci, lol...

[Lost Dog]

Originally Posted by yovwmon

The weight loss looked as if it was slowing but I guess I was wrong, down to 198.5 today and I was down to 198 even last Thursday. I am going for 197 by this Friday.

good news! Nice.

[yovwmon]

Well today I hit 196lbs, this is my lowest weight since I quit smoking four years ago. I would like to thank everyone for all the assistance, pointers, and motivation; I seriously couldn’t have gotten this far without the wealth of knowledge available on this forum.

I plan to continue moving forward, so far I have lost 22lbs in 2 ½ months, I plan to loose at least 10 more before 9/16/2007, but I won’t stop there - more would also be great. After I return from vacation I may go through a small bulk, but then go back to maintenance until February.

Thanks again for all the help!
Adam

[ParanoidAndroid]

Nice work, man!