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help with plateau

bstudiogirl

New member
Okay I've lost 80lbs. since March but for the last month I have plateaued with no end in sight. I am 5'5" 170lbs. BF% 29 Currently I am getting about 800-1200 calories per day 60-110g of protein a day. I am doing 2 hrs. of cardio 5x a week. Any suggestions or advice?
 
Wow. First welcome aboard & congrats on your 80 lb loss!! That is no small accomplishment! The plateau has probably resulted either from your body having adapted to the diet & training you have been doing since the beginning of the weight loss effort. Or it is your body need to take a break to get used to its current situation where you have lost a lot of weight in a very short periold of time.

Are you currently working with a nutritionist or a training? Can you post your current diet (take a typical day's menus & times of eating). And do you do any resistance training? You are doing huge amounts of cardio - describe the type of cardio you are doing. Is it the same thing on all 5 days?

If you haven't done any resistance training, I would highly recommend that you start. I'll hold my request to rush over & buy a gym membership until I hear your situation, but doing only cardio will help you lose fat, but you will also lose muscle if you only do lots of cardio. A big part of getting a really great muscle / toned look is by building up your muscles as well as by cutting bodyfat. Note that your bodyfat measurement is a ration of your body muscle & body fat. You can drop the ratio by dropping body fat, but you can also drop it by increasing muscle. To illustrate, consider what your typical long distance runner looks like - very lean & almost skinny, sort of stringy mucles. Then look at what a sprinter looks like. Lean & muscles! Who looks "healthier"? (No offense to the long distance people .... just trying to make a point.) If you continue doing nothing but cardio, eventually you will approach the long distance runner look. And also if you get stuck at a certain bodyfat measurement & adding more cardio won't get you anywhere, you can throw in some good weight training & create a more toned look by buildign up the muscle.

Let me give you an example of that - my mom is 63, she walks 5 miles/day & step aerobics w/ a little bit of resistance training (3 lb weights) in the class 3x/week. She eats a couple small meals / day, usually more fruit, light on the protein & loves pasta. She's 40% bodyfat. She knows that number & it freaks her out given the lifestyle she follows. But I can't get it across to her that if she eats a little more protein, I think also her fats are not sufficient, she again freaks out - she thinks too much protein will get her to freaky & I still think she considers "fat" in the mindframe that started the "low fat" fad. Also she doesn't want to "lift weights" because she thinks women don't do that & they can't lift heavy weights. When I did a couple local body building shows a couple yrs ago, she was convinced I was going to look like Arnold Schwarzeneger. So the misconception is already established.

This drives me fricken nuts.

So back to you - give us your typical day's diet & training. Personally I would say it is time to make some changes in your routine and also take a close look at your diet because 800 cal/day is starvation. Your body may be thinking that it is in a "drought" situation and is going to hold on to all its resources (fat) like its the last meal on the planet. The idea that you have to starve yourself to lose weight is very wrong. You have to eat to lose fat - but you have to eat in an optimal way, such that you feed your body what it needs at intervals during which it will metabolize what you fed it and then provide it more when it is ready to start metabolizing again. This is the basis for the idea of eating 5-6 times per day. If you feed it too much, the excess will be deposited as fat. If you feed it too little, the metabolism function will slow down (e.g. like when you see your rate of fat loss slow down or stop) and your body may also turn to your muscle as an energy source.
 
Sassy pretty much covered it all

hun...800cals is starvation.....ur metabolism has slowed down.....because its not getting enough food.,...and w/e food u eat....ur body will hold onto it to keep u alive. You should be eating 1200cal or more....never go under 1200cal because thats starvation...adn u wont be losing the weight u want..u will be losin more muslce and water rather then fat. Right now ur body is storing fat....and of course ur going to plateau because ur metabolism has slowed down.....you haev to eat more.......and if you think you are eating enouhg....tehn i suggest seeing a nutritionist to help you understnad how dangerous 800cal is...and she/he cna get u ont eh right track.....maybe an eating disorder specialist?...good luck
 
Well thanks for the advice so far. The problem with the low calorie intake is that I did have weight loss surgery so I can't physically get over 1200 calories a day without making myself deathly sick. My normal diet is the following:
Morning: 2 eggs 1/4 cup of chesse
Afternoon: lean cusine meal
early evening: cottage cheese
evening: chicken/fish or lean cusine meal
night: fresh fruit protein drink or cottage cheese

as for exercise- Monday: spinning 1hr. boxing 1hr. Tuesday: weights 1 hr. stairmill or treadmill 1hr. Thursday: gymnastics 1 1/2 hr. Friday: Spinning 1hr. boxing 1hr. Saturday: weights 1hr. spinning 1hr. Sunday: kickboxing 1hr. stairmill 1hr.
 
OK, well call "weight loss surgery" a rather important detail you really need to include if you are going to request advice cold. OK, so given that you are under a much more specific health situation than we come across here, my personal advice is to go back to your doctor & the nutritionist that I assume they hooked you up with when you made the decision with the surgery. The reason that we've described for your plateauing is probably still pretty accurate. You've made a huge change in your body in a period of 8 months and I would guess its also trying to adjust to the change as well.

And please understand, I'm making comments only based on what I've gathered from a 2 posts describing your situation & my experience personally & talkign w/ people who are also looking to lose weight. If you haven't already developed an understanding of how nutrition & your body's metabolism work together - that's where you can talk to the nutritionist & also educate yourself. This will help you set your expectations for what you can do to move forward. When you say "plateaued with no end in sight" - that tells you me you are maybe setting your expectations such that you know of no way yourself to get past the plateau. With a solid understanding of nutrition you can adjust your diet so that you when you hit plateaus, you can adjust things to get past it. I would also suggest you consider addign some resistance training to your regimen. You have a great cardio schedule which is good - defiintely continue it! I was going to suggest that if you do only low-impact such as treadmill or something for long periods of time, you can change it up by adding in some high intensity interval training. But you are including a lot of that type of stuff wiht your activities. Before going forward with resistance trainign, I would also suggest coordinating that with your doctor. A good place to start w/ the basics of training is the "Body for Life" book by Bill Phillips. YOu don't have to follow the diet, but the training suggested is really good for people new to resistance training.

Hope that helps some. Again, because you are working under specific conditions I would definitely defer to your doctor & nutritionist for specific activities.

Let us know what you decide!
 
Fantastic advice Sassy. As usual! :)

While the diet may not be able to be modified much (surgical limitations), the training needs major overhaul.
 
First consult your docs. I really like the Body for Life approach - you can maybe skip or pare down the diet part, but the training & cardio approach is really good for learning the basics of core strength training and more about cardio. It starts with training splits of upper body on one day, lower body on another day. Generally you want to train each muscle group (e.g. biceps, triceps, chest, legs, etc) no more than 1 every 24-48 hrs so you give the muscles proper time to recover. This training program is also geared for efficient use of time in the gym so you aren't lookign at 3 hour training sessions.
 
Thanks for the replies... Yeah I contacted my docs. Mainly on the diet part I'm doing what I'm suppose to be doing. They couldn't really tell me anything on the cardio or training part. What do you think about this particular training split:
Day 1-Chest and triceps
Incline Dumbbell press 4x10-15
Incline Dumbbell fly 4x10-15
Push ups 4X faliure
French Press 4x10-15
Cable Pressdown 4x10-15
Kickbacks 4x10-15

Day 2-Back and Bicep
Lat Pulldowns 4x10-15
Cable Rows 4x10-15
Dumbbell Row 4x10-15
Barbell curl 4x10-15
Dumbbell curl 4x10-15
cable curl 4x10-15

Day 3- Legs and shoulders
Leg press (all 4x10-15)
leg extension
hanstring curl
standing calf raise
seated calf raise
seated dumbbell press
front lateral raise
rear lateral flys

Then abs every other day. Cardio 30 minutes on weight days non weight days 1 hr.

What do you guys think?
 
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