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Author: kidsmom
Date: 02-26-04 16:56
Okay all you weight loss savvy folks...
I have a question about plateau.... I am wondering if there is an amount that a body loses and then hits a plateau.... I have not yet hit one...but.. I am one of those crazy people who like to think of things 15 steps ahead (makes my hubby nuts) and ruminate on stuff.
I started my new life on Jan. 12th and have lost 21 pounds so far... I am trying to gear myself up for a plateau and was wondering if any of you had lost... lets say 30 pounds... and then hit a wall.... and... if you did... what do you do to make it over the plateau?
I have been losing between 2-3.5 lbs. per week... depending on if I splurge some on the weekends... I am just so "realistic" (hubby calls it pesimism... don't know why) :) and want to mentally prepare for a set back...
I started at my heaviest weight ever of 238 and am now down to 217...so... should I look forward to a little more of the "good life" of losing...or... should I gear up for a little slow down.
Maybe I am just being too anal about the whole thing and should be grateful for what happens... yeah... maybe that is the plan.
What do ya think!!!???? Am I over analyzing? :)
Kristie
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Author: moni
Date: 02-26-04 17:04
Typically speaking the more you have to lose the faster it comes off in the beginning. Then I think your body "learns" your new calorie intake and adjusts your metabolism to that. So I have heard it is good to vary your calories. Have a cheat day or do a varied calorie thing like 1200 one day 1400, 1500, 1700 etc etc.
But the bottom line is I guess if you eat less then you burn off you are gonna lose in the long run so you just have to stick with it!!!
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Author: miranda
Date: 02-26-04 17:40
Actually, it's not quite that your body adjusts to your calorie level--your weight adjusts to you calorie level. The more you weigh, the more calories it takes to maintain that weight. So, you have to keep adjusting your calories downward to avoid plateaus. If you encounter a true plateau--one where your weight remains the same for a few weeks--that means that you are consuming the exact number of calories it takes to maintain your weight. The number of calories which allowed you to lose weight 30 pounds ago may well end up being the number of calories which causes you to maintain after those 30 pounds are gone--no loss, no gain. I don't agree that you have to increase your calories or vary them to break a plateau--you just need to eat less. Others disagree, though. All I know is that neither I nor anyone I know personally has ever had a plateau which was not readily explained by how many calories we were consuming overall, and to break the plateau, all we've ever had to do was eat less.
I believe you can go to the home page of this site and find out how many calories it takes to maintain a certain weight. If you get stuck for more than two or three weeks, you are almost certainly at maintenance level (anything less than a few weeks may be water weight or just a quirk--weight loss is not always linear).
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miranda
230/169.5/145
"I don't need to compromise my principles, because they don't have the slightest bearing on what happens to me anyway."--Bill Watterson, "Calvin and Hobbes"
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Author: GymmyMac
Date: 02-26-04 18:08
Shes right. I would just add that i have known many people to get to their goal weight without ever hitting a wall. Platues are usually no weith loss within a month or so...it is common to go a few weeks without losing anything then all of a sudden you drop 5 pounds. To avoid platues you must (and you should be doing this anyway) increase your cardio intensity as weeks go by...coupled with sturctual diet changes like miranda said and you will be saying 'whats a platue'?
~Short, sharp and intense = results~
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Author: BFL Michelle
Date: 02-27-04 08:10
Miranda made a good post and I look at it like this...if your weight loss stalls you either need to increase the cardio, decrease the calories or both.
If an anorexic can starve themselves to death, then I'm pretty sure I won't be hitting any plateaus for long. Just long enough to make an adjustment or two and then I (or anyone else) would be back to losing.
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Author: miranda
Date: 06-23-04 09:36
Here's yet another article on the low-carb controversy:
Low-Carb Trend
Not totally one-sided--the Atkins people get to respond.
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miranda
230/169.5/145
"I don't need to compromise my principles, because they don't have the slightest bearing on what happens to me anyway."--Bill Watterson, "Calvin and Hobbes"
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