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Post by dryfarmer on Mar 25, 2015 4:40:45 GMT -7
Any advice for pushing past a weight loss plateau? I have been stuck between 155 and 156 for almost two weeks. I am down from ~168 since early January, losing on average about a pound a week. I have not been tracking calories closely until the last two days, when I consumed 1500 (no workout) and 1700 (power workout) calories each day. I'm male, 39, 5'10". I have a very sedentary lifestyle when not exercising. I sit at my desk all day. Then I get home and if not dealing with house chores I sit at my laptop some more. I've been taking two ~10 minute brisk walks per day, including some hills and stairs. Here are the things I'm considering.
1) Eat fewer calories. This seems crazy (to me), given I'm already ~1500 but maybe that's what it takes? 2) Be more active, without actually doing "exercise". aka take more, and longer, walks. 3) Do cardio. 4) Do more SEs. Currently I do SEs about 1x per week, and it's usually only 4 exercises, 3 sets each, so doesn't really feel all that substantial. 5) Remove three inches of my shins, and three inches of my thighs. I haven't figured out the logistics of this procedure yet, but I'm pretty sure this will move my body towards the climbing ideal if I can do it. 5'6" with a 5'10"+4 wingspan! 6) Some kind of crash eating/fasting metabolism confusion deal. I know nothing about this so far. 7) Stay the course. Patience is required. 8) Just forget about losing more weight for this cycle. I'm nearing the end of my power phase. I already lost more than ~10 pounds. Yeah, I almost certainly could lose more (based on visual appearance and best-guess at body fat %), but whatever, I can try again next cycle.
Suggestions welcome!
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Post by amalec on Mar 25, 2015 7:53:08 GMT -7
Metabolism will drop in a prolonged diet. It's also possible that you've been eating more than you thought you were (either than you measured or than you ate on the two days you measured).
A few things that may help:
1) Diet break for a few weeks, eating at maintenance (or through your strength cycle) 2) More/longer walks (will have a minor effect but can't hurt). 3) Generally stay the course over a longer time horizon, with slower fat loss (more like 0.5#/week)
I'm confused though on why you wouldn't want to recoup at 155, rather than lose more absolute weight. That is, try some cycles of slowly losing weight during the power phase (e.g., drop 2-3# during the power phase) and slowly gaining it back during the strength phase to lean out while gaining some muscle.
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Post by dryfarmer on Mar 25, 2015 8:45:44 GMT -7
Thanks Amalec, that's helpful.
Yeah, I'm totally sympathetic to the notion that I'm underestimating what I was eating before I started measuring, or that I'm not measuring everything, or underestimating the measurements. I try to counter these tendencies (e.g., always round up size/weight of food item, write down even the bite of your daughter's snack that you took [or don't take it], etc.) but yeah, the mind is an incredibly powerful tool for self-deception, agreed.
I'm leaning towards continuing current diet as planned through the end of power phase (just in case a few pounds decide to mysteriously melt away), then moving to maintenance through performance phase, and eating more freely in the next strength cycle, with another diet in next power. I haven't been feeling too hungry which has been great, but the diet tracking and calorie counting sure is a pain in the *ss, not to mention constantly eating a different dinner than the rest of the fam, so I won't miss the dieting.
The motivation behind dropping more absolute weight is basically because my best guess (from visual assessment, informal pinch test, absolute weight in previous years or my long lost youth, reports of body weight for others of my height) is that I have more weight to lose. If it's there, why not lose it. But it seems like maybe I just was starting a bit too high to push to the optimum in one cycle? In that sense, my impression is that weight loss IS, to some extent, cumulative. Which contradicts one of the sidebars in the book a little bit.
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Post by jessebruni on Mar 25, 2015 8:56:36 GMT -7
I've been struggling with this myself recently. My first diet cycle was two months long in September and October of last year. I dropped 15 pounds from 152 to 137 and felt great. Since then I gained a few more pounds and started a new diet cycle at the beginning of March at about 140. I seem to be stabilizing around 137 which seems like around a 1 lb per week loss which I guess is good but last time it was closer to 2 lbs a week and like you I don't think I can cut back on calories any further. It seems to me that the lower body fat levels get the more weight loss slows down. I think for me getting down to 130 would put me at around 8-10% BF and I have no intentions of getting there this cycle, but I am assuming that weight loss will slow down to about .5 lbs/week during the next cycle if I try to cut it down lower. Hopefully it won't bounce back up like it did last time. Additionally I liked option 5.
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Post by MarkAnderson on Mar 25, 2015 9:02:41 GMT -7
This will seem somewhat radical at first, but it really sounds to me like you need to do some "re-feeding". I'm not an expert on this practice, but I've used it myself with good success from time to time over the past year. I suspect there are others on here that know more specifics than me. But essentially, your metabolism has dropped off a cliff, and that is why your weight is stagnating despite not eating very much. This seems to be a big problem with yo-yo dieters, where the body gets better and better at realizing "starvation mode" has arrived and reacts by turning down the metabolism with increasing quickness. This happens to me after about two weeks of hard dieting (one reason I like to avoid hard dieting). The idea behind re-feeding is to consume a ton of calories, especially carbs for those following a low-carb diet, over a short period of time, in order to re-set your metabolism. The mechanics of it are somewhat tricky. What I do is basically binge like a high school wrestler for around a 6-hour period, then I return to my usual diet. The next day I will have gained 1-3 pounds, but then it drops right off after a day of frequent bathroom trips, and then the diet seems to magically start working again for a few days. Then it stagnates again, and I repeat the re-feed cycle as needed. Generally around once every 5-7 days. I usually only have to do this 1-3 times in a season before I reach my goal weight (usually my weight stagnates within a few pounds of my goal weight). People who are smart and disciplined eat healthy, yet high carb foods during the re-feed period. I eat garbage, and it seems to work just fine, although I'm sure my colon would like to disagree here I've experimented with just staying the course with a stagnating diet and it hasn't worked out for me. In retrospect it was always a mistake. If I go more than 3-4 days without losing weight on a really low calorie diet, then something is wrong and I need to re-set. All that said, I think diet and weight loss are extremely personal, so what works for me may not work for you.
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Post by MarkAnderson on Mar 25, 2015 9:04:32 GMT -7
I've been struggling with this myself recently. My first diet cycle was two months long in September and October of last year. I dropped 15 pounds from 152 to 137 and felt great. Since then I gained a few more pounds and started a new diet cycle at the beginning of March at about 140. I seem to be stabilizing around 137 which seems like around a 1 lb per week loss which I guess is good but last time it was closer to 2 lbs a week and like you I don't think I can cut back on calories any further. It seems to me that the lower body fat levels get the more weight loss slows down. I think for me getting down to 130 would put me at around 8-10% BF and I have no intentions of getting there this cycle, but I am assuming that weight loss will slow down to about .5 lbs/week during the next cycle if I try to cut it down lower. Hopefully it won't bounce back up like it did last time. Additionally I liked option 5.
It's an asymptote, so of course it's going to require much more "effort" (starvation) to see much smaller "gains" (losses) the closer you get to zero.
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Post by amalec on Mar 25, 2015 9:16:15 GMT -7
Best way to do refeeds for me is something like:
1) Eat low carb/low calories prior to workout 2) Long, hard climbing session + SE (e.g., some of the PE workouts like linked bouldering would be fantastic for this) -- your performance will totally suck, and it will be a nasty, brutal few hours. 3) Eat large amounts of high carb, low fat food (Japanese rice crackers are my go to here)
It's really easy to go off the wagon with refeeds, though. It's a good way to goose the metabolism if you do it weekly based on actual weight loss, it's a great way to mess things up if you do it whenever.
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Post by dryfarmer on Mar 25, 2015 9:24:16 GMT -7
This will seem somewhat radical at first, but it really sounds to me like you need to do some "re-feeding". I'm not an expert on this practice, but I've used it myself with good success from time to time over the past year. I suspect there are others on here that know more specifics than me. But essentially, your metabolism has dropped off a cliff, and that is why your weight is stagnating despite not eating very much. This seems to be a big problem with yo-yo dieters, where the body gets better and better at realizing "starvation mode" has arrived and reacts by turning down the metabolism with increasing quickness. This happens to me after about two weeks of hard dieting (one reason I like to avoid hard dieting). The idea behind re-feeding is to consume a ton of calories, especially carbs for those following a low-carb diet, over a short period of time, in order to re-set your metabolism. The mechanics of it are somewhat tricky. What I do is basically binge like a high school wrestler for around a 6-hour period, then I return to my usual diet. The next day I will have gained 1-3 pounds, but then it drops right off after a day of frequent bathroom trips, and then the diet seems to magically start working again for a few days. Then it stagnates again, and I repeat the re-feed cycle as needed. Generally around once every 5-7 days. I usually only have to do this 1-3 times in a season before I reach my goal weight (usually my weight stagnates within a few pounds of my goal weight). People who are smart and disciplined eat healthy, yet high carb foods during the re-feed period. I eat garbage, and it seems to work just fine, although I'm sure my colon would like to disagree here I've experimented with just staying the course with a stagnating diet and it hasn't worked out for me. In retrospect it was always a mistake. If I go more than 3-4 days without losing weight on a really low calorie diet, then something is wrong and I need to re-set. All that said, I think diet and weight loss are extremely personal, so what works for me may not work for you. Thanks Mark. Interesting. Especially the part about the yo-yoing. Admittedly my dieting through base and strength (which was not as severe) was very yo-yo. During power (more severe diet) it was more consistent, but still one period of yo-yo due to family-related travel. Also interesting that yo-yoing sounds like it's both the problem and the solution... When you say "eat like a high school wrestler for six hours", roughly how many calories are we talking about here?
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Post by MarkAnderson on Mar 25, 2015 14:48:58 GMT -7
No idea. But a lot.
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Post by Charlie S on Mar 25, 2015 18:14:53 GMT -7
Interesting info on the re-set. I might have to dig into that.
But at least you guys are headed in the right direction. I was headed down, then went to Indian Creek and climbed 36 routes in 4 days (one day was 28 routes for a friend's birthday challenge). I gained 4 pounds and still haven't lost it. Then again, I was pretty free with my caloric intake on that trip.
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Post by Jesse W. on Mar 25, 2015 18:41:30 GMT -7
I agree with the above comments, cyclical plans have always worked the best for me, my favorite for breaking through plateaus and losing weight quickly is a little stricter carb cycling like carb nite, where you eat low carb (30g or less per day) except for one night a week, where you refeed with super high carbs and low-ish fat from dinner until bed time.That's actually what I'm doing right now for the last two weeks of my power phase before a climbing trip to lose the last little bit. You can find more info on that specific plan here: athlete.io/Also, to further pimp Kiefer's stuff, whenever I get to my maintenance phase, I've found the backloading protocol to work great for gaining strength while keeping bodyfat pretty low. Lastly, all of the above plans have been proven very effective with all of the clients I've had implement them (both personal and group training)
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Post by MarkAnderson on Mar 26, 2015 9:03:09 GMT -7
After reading through Keifer's site, the "Carb Nite" concept is pretty much exactly what I do, including the recalibration phase and maintenance phase. My personal experience bears out a lot of his concepts, like delaying breakfast and consuming most carbs late in the day.
One side note to the OP, if you are following an extremely strict low-calorie/high-protein diet it may be possible that you aren't consuming enough fat. I've definitely fallen into that trap when obsessing over tuna and salad.
Edit to add: Here's a top-level article that explains the concepts: www.mensfitness.com/nutrition/what-to-eat/carb-backloading-to-get-lean
I think Carb Nite is much more relevant to us than Carb Backloading. And that leads to another point, which is to be careful following Bodybuilder advice. They don't care about weight, they care about lean-ness. We care about strength-to-weight ratio, although certainly lean-ness can help with that, but bodybuilders try hard to avoid muscle-mass loss. Climbers shouldn't necessarily worry so much about that (depending on the muscle, etc). We should care more about strength-to-weight ratio loss, which is not necessarily the same thing.
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Post by Jesse W. on Mar 26, 2015 17:14:19 GMT -7
Agree 100%. One thing I will add that can help in this case is to combine the general ideas of the carb loading with some actual calorie counting. I can make some decent enough gains (or losses) just following the guidelines without counting kcals, but it's really easy to go overboard (with carb backloading in particular) especially if you like to eat as much as I do If I were to use the backloading protocol for climbing training I would use something like myfitnesspal.com to make sure that my post workout loads stayed within my total calories for the day to maintain weight. I would then monitor my bodyfat and adjust both the total amount of carbs in the load as well as their quality if I was going too far in the wrong direction.
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Post by dryfarmer on Mar 26, 2015 20:38:44 GMT -7
Well, I did an ad-hoc carb-nite type of thing before reading any of this stuff on how to do it properly. So we'll see what happens. This info will be good for next time though.
One thing that might be useful for people to keep in mind is that it can be a bit of a psychological mind-f*ck when you do this. What I found is that once I cracked the door to forbidden food open, all the barriers I had erected came crashing down immediately. Whole swaths of the supermarket I had forgotten existed were tractor-beaming me in all the way from home. The last thing I remember is opening the fridge and saying to myself, "if I were a high school wrestler, I would DEFINITELY drink all these IPAs." Like I said, we'll see what happens.
I think this is somewhat what Amalec was warning about...
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Post by MarkAnderson on Mar 27, 2015 10:16:05 GMT -7
Haha, well no matter the results at least you will learn something. I find that I feel pretty sick/nauseous the day after a re-feed, and that motivates me to clean up the next day. By the 2nd day all those delicious carbs are a distant memory.
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