When you've hit a weight loss plateau...

[PeacefulChaos]

Ok, so I started 'working out' slowly back in... February? End of February, I think.

I lost 10-15 lbs in the first 3 weeks.

And that's where I've stayed. :glare:

I work out more than I did then. When I started, I was just doing the exercise bike (don't make fun of me! It was the only thing small enough for our house, therefore the only thing I would actually be able to do!) and now a friend and I are training for a 5k instead. For various reasons we haven't been able to meet up and run this week. :( But in general, we go three days/wk. As of last week we were running for 4 minutes/walking for 2 minutes. We went all the way around our trail, which is 1.6ish miles and takes about 21-22 minutes for us. IOW, we haven't gotten particularly far in our running plan, BUT our 5k isn't til September so we're about where we should be.

I HAVE noticed that I have been trimming down despite not losing the weight, because my clothes are fitting differently.

But it's still a little depressing to have lost the weight so quickly and nothing since. :(

I started out needing to lose about 30-35 pounds to get a good BMI, and 45 to be where I'd like to be ideally. But I really would be happy at 35-40 if I was in shape and felt like I 'looked' good. Sounds vain, but it's true.

 

Any advice? I was really hoping to get in shape and this just makes me feel like a total bum lol... it's just not what I expected at all. Thanks!

 

 

ETA: Should I be doing both? Like, should I go back to doing the exercise bike on MWF and keep working toward the 5k on TTS?

I also have some 3 lb weights that I was doing some arm stuff with, but I don't know if that's at all necessary??

 

OH, and one of the MAIN things I wanted to ask was about the stomach... I don't think I'll EVER EVER EVER have a flat stomach again. Is it possible, at all, for a 30 year old who had 3 c-sections to get a pretty stomach again? I'm doubting it, but thought I'd ask anyway... I've noticed crunches don't do anything, and I did the exercises I saw on a website for diastasis recti (sp?) for like a week but then I forgot to do them again... do they actually do anything? If I know there are real people out there who say they help, I'll try to find a way to remind myself/remember.

[PeacefulChaos]

Really? No one has any advice whatsoever? :blink:

[twoxcell]

You will have to look at what you are eating. Truth be told, exercise can only get your so far and a lot of people will tell you it has nothing to do with weight loss. I've found that to be true for myself. I've lost weight exercising with modifying what I eat and not exercising with modifying what I eat and lost weight no problem both times. Except I was not as toned and trim without exercise. But I have attempted to just exercise without modifying what I eat and could lose very little weight.

 

The stomach thing...um yeah I have a small flap of skin after having 2 kids. I doubt that will ever go away. It's been there no matter how heavy or thin I've been. That probably requires surgery.

:iagree: I think you need to look at your overall diet and see what you can modify there. What is a typical day of eating like for you?

[TracyP]

I agree, exercise alone isn't enough. You will be burning more calories and if you don't watch what you are eating, your body will just make up the difference. I exercise because I love the way it makes me feel, but when I want to lose weight I count calories and/or cut down on empty carbs.

[redsquirrel]

I also lost weight at the beginning only with exercise. Truth be told, you are doing much better than I ever did at first. It was only when I started tracking my calories in addition to upping the exercise than things really took off. I did it by mistake, lol. I was so, so desperate that I was considering that OTC weight loss drug..ally? I really did not want to take a drug and, frankly the results weren't that impressive for people who took it. So I looked at the rules for the med and it has to do with limiting your grams of fat at a meal. I figured it would be easier to just do that than take the drug, lol. That meant I had to do some calculations for every meal and that quickly became keeping a food journal and tracking my calories and monitoring my portion size. I already eat a whole foods diet and I have never been one for soda or white bread, I have never eaten fried foods or fast food etc so I didn't feel the need to make major dietary changes. If I had a more standard diet I would have had to make some major changes. Instead, for me, it was more about portion control and watching empty calorie 'treats'.

 

And it is difficult for women. I know that I walk a very, very fine line of how much I can have. My husband can eat a couple cookies after dinner and not worry about going over his allotment. I have a much smaller calorie allotment, due to being a small woman (I am 5' tall). I have almost no margin for empty calories. A muffin, even a homemade fat free carrot muffin, can blow a sizable percentage of my daily allotment. One glass of wine? yes, if I have planned for it. Two glasses of wine? Only if I ran 5k that day.

[Coffeetime]

Ugh. I hit my plateau a couple of weeks ago. Cannot lose despite running and really watching calories.

I lost 7.9 lbs in two weeks and then just stopped.

Granted, I'm within a healthy BMI-- but I'd REALLY like to lose 10 or so more lbs. I had to be on a progesterone supplement for a few months for some "female problems" and I put on 15 lbs!!!! :confused1: :glare: :cursing:

[Michelle My Bell]

Look into Trim Healthy Mama plan (book). I could have wrote your post. No amount of exercise (running a 5k) or calorie restriction changed my weight for two years. 6 weeks on THM took 10 lbs off.

 

Michelle

[UrbanSue]

I try to exercise regularly (when it's not 153% humidity) because it makes me feel great. But I have never experienced any weight loss from exercise alone. About the only way they relate, in my experience, is that sometimes a regular exercise plan gives the motivation to eat better. My sister is a serious racer and does half marathons (and has done one full) and has been about 30 pounds overweight through it all unless she's on a strict diet. Ditto my husband who gets a ton of exercise in the course of his day but gets pudgy if he isn't eating well. Check out your diet.

[PeacefulChaos]

Sigh. I was afraid I was going to hear that. :/

I just hate the thought of having to limit what I eat for the rest of my life, kwim? I'm the type of person who likes to enjoy everything and the thought of always having to not have the unhealthy (snack) foods just is like, really? Because it's like, who wants to sit and munch on celery every evening for the rest of their life? So I was trying to avoid any sort of diet. :(

I don't like the idea of keeping track of everything I eat (with myfitnesspal or anything like that, or just on my own) because it seems obsessive. And it's a TON of work - I make everything from scratch, and I don't make the same things over and over, so when I did try it I had to enter new recipes every day. It was SUCH a pain.

Anyway, here's what I eat on a normal day:

I don't eat breakfast - I don't like it. So I wait until about 10:30-11 and eat lunch. I love salad, so I usually either eat a salad of some sort or leftovers (usually some sort of stir fry lol). If I happen to have nothing else on hand, I'll eat a peanut butter sandwich.

I drink nothing but water at home (on days I run, I drink 4-5 16 oz glasses, on days I don't, I drink 3-4). The only time there is an exception is if I'm feeling nauseous because of my medicine (once per week, tops) and I'll drink Dr. Pepper because it is the ONLY thing that settles my stomach well. Oh, and I guess I do drink a cup of cappuccino some mornings, too. I don't drink water when we eat out (not often - maybe 2-3x/month) because the unfiltered town water here is disgusting and tastes like chlorine. :)

For dinner we eat well. We don't eat processed foods to speak of, I don't cook things out of a box, I make stuff from scratch. We have a lot of (as I already mentioned) stir fry, crock pot meals, or various 'mexican' style foods. Occasionally we have pasta. We always eat plenty of vegetables, not a ton of carbs, and a fair amount of meat.

I do like a snack in the evenings. I was doing well eating veggies and dip for a snack, but I got out of the habit. So it varies, what I have - I wouldn't say I eat a lot of whatever it is though.

I go through the drive thru at taco bell and get a limeade sparkler on my way to the grocery store every Thursday night. I don't know that I'm really willing to give that up. I'd give up the snack, I think, before I'd give up that. :)

I guess that's about it. We have ice cream once in awhile, etc. So I guess my two guilty pleasures would be the snacks in the evening and the limeade sparkler. I can switch back to veggies at night (I don't mind, I just have to remember to do it!) until I get used to not having anything again.

I just have to get used to the feeling of being hungry again, I think. I was used to it for awhile, and then over time I just hate that feeling again despite knowing that it's necessary. :glare:

[PeacefulChaos]

Oh, and I'm not exercising TO lose weight, per se. Training for the 5k and losing weight are two separate issues in my mind - I just thought that exercising regularly would have more of an impact on my overall health than it has. :)

I really love to run, I always have. So that's why I do that. I just know that I also, on the side, need to lose some weight so I don't feel like a total whale all the time.

[TracyP]

My personal WORST thing I can do to sabotage my weight loss is to eat after supper. So if I were you and wanted to make just one change, I would give up evening snacks completely. I think you could go ahead and keep your limeade sparkler ;)

[KungFuPanda]

Can you play with portions instead of changing what you eat. If your plate is 1/3 meat, 1/3 veg, 1/3 starch, just adjust a bit so it's 1/2 veg, 1//4 meat and 1/4 starch, OR 3/4 veg, 1/4 meat, and no starch. I've seen friends drop weight by going wheat free, but I'm not about that life. If I had a lot of weight to lose, I 'might' consider it.

 

Also, can you eliminate the evening snack, or change it to fruit or a smoothie? Or, can you shift the snack earlier to make sure you aren't having it within a few hours of bedtime?

 

I've been told that using the luncheon-sized plates at dinnertime and the saucers at lunch is helpful.

 

I'd try those things, and upping water consumption, before resorting to changing the 'type' of foods I prepare.

[Joyofsixreboot]

The exercise didn't really help my weight loss until it got pretty intense. (It did make things much less jiggly). I often guestimate in myfitnesspal. My homemade pumpkin bread may not be just like the one listed in MFP but I figure it's close enough. For me, I will lie to myself if it's not on that computer screen. Sorry if that's a downer. As for the snack thing~ I like berries with a sprinkle of unsweetened coconut, a cup of hm cocoa (in winter), or lately melon with a single square of dark chocolate. It's a treat without me mindlessly munching.

[SailorMom]

Less food/ better & real food/ more weight training

:)

[SarahW]

OH, and one of the MAIN things I wanted to ask was about the stomach... I don't think I'll EVER EVER EVER have a flat stomach again. Is it possible, at all, for a 30 year old who had 3 c-sections to get a pretty stomach again? I'm doubting it, but thought I'd ask anyway... I've noticed crunches don't do anything, and I did the exercises I saw on a website for diastasis recti (sp?) for like a week but then I forgot to do them again... do they actually do anything? If I know there are real people out there who say they help, I'll try to find a way to remind myself/remember.

 

The TedMed thread contains my opinions about weight loss, so I won't repeat them here. But about the stomach specifically -

 

I tend to be "thick" in the middle, even when at a "normal" weight, causing a great deal of wardrobe frustrations. Two things specifically gave me a flat stomach.

 

1) Walking over two miles a day, every single day.* I only did this when I lived in a foreign country and lacked easy transportation. And I lacked easy access to snacks to "compensate" for my exercise. This also caused me to lose weight from my thighs.

 

2) Going low-carb (50-75g) on a Primal eating plan. So also no soy, but a lot more beef fat. High-fat keeps me satiated for hours, and I would regularly skip lunch. This also caused me to have to buy smaller bras, including smaller cups.

 

Lessons I learned: Walking is my friend. Soy is my enemy.

 

YMMV.

 

 

*ETA: the walking was done outside, either urban or in the countryside. So up and down hills and steps. Stopping and starting. Different speeds. I don't think just walking on a treadmill would recreate the physiology in a meaningful way.

[Amy in NH]

I think No about the nice stomach. Without plastic surgery, that is reality of a body that has been through multiple pregnancies.

 

I disagree with the others about the weight loss. Muscle weighs more than fat, so while you are building muscle you may be losing fat/size but not losing weight. You have to work through the weight-loss plateau to the point that you have built enough muscle that it uses enough calories to compensate for the increased muscle mass.

[redsquirrel]

I understand about not wanting to keep track of what you eat, but I do want to let you know that I make our food (I make the bread and yogurt and hummus and keffir, pasta sauces, refried beans etc) and don't use much processed and I don't find it difficult to track calories. I am not trying to get you to do something you don't want to do, but don't write it off just because you think it is difficult to track food you make. It isn't difficult. You just have to weigh and measure and after a while you get good at knowing portion size.

 

And doing things like measuring how much cereal you are actually eating or measuring your peanut butter (it adds us FAST) can make a difference. Almost everyone eats more than they think they do. I read a study that even nutritionists will underestimate how many calories they are taking in by 20%...and this was a group that KNEW they were being asked to keep track to see how well people kept track of what they ate. It is so, so easy to take in more than we need. It is the consistency of keeping an eye on portion that makes the difference.

 

I personally find that by going for veggies first, getting a lot of fiber (beans! lots of beans!) and getting enough protein that I stay full and don't exceed my limits.

 

And my tummy is great, I have a graceful waistline...that leads to a rear bumper/hip area that is difficult to miss.