Before I get into the main topic of today's post I will mention that I had three sessions with the trainer this week and now my body is killing me. I am really enjoying the sessions and he is pushing me just past my comfort zone. He says my dead lift technique is perfect already.So I sent an email to F2F radio at the beginning of the week, here is the correspondence as follows.
Me:
Hey guys,
I first want to thank you for all your helpful information. I decided to take your advice and start eating at and a little above my maintenance level. It has been a real treat to have a little more to eat each day. However I have noticed that my body is absorbing those calories like a sponge. I have already gained 9 pounds and it has been around 3 weeks. My pants are starting to get tight and I saw the 200's again on the scale this morning. I know you said this would happen, but I am starting to panic/freak out a bit. Perhaps an email from you guys telling me to have faith in the eating more to break a plateau would help. How long should one eat at this level to break a plateau. You mention anywhere from a few weeks to two months. I don't want to stop too soon but I don't know how much more weight I should gain. I response via email would be appreciated at your earliest convenience. Thanks guys. Michelle from episode # 139
Jeff:
Hi Michelle,
I'm going to give you some suggestions and then give you a ton of information to read that I'm going to cut and paste from previous shows. If you manage to get through most of our shows, we answer a weight loss plateau question about every 12 shows and we have some shows where those people write back to us a year or so later to tell us that the strategy worked.
Yes it is true that your body will be absorbing calories live a sponge. It was starving and it is getting as much as it can right now. There is also the possibility that the glycogen stores in your muscles were depleted. When you start eating, those glycogen stores move back into your muscles, and it takes up water to do that. Yes your leg may be a little bigger, but it was from hydration, not gaining fat.
If you gain 3 lbs per week, you will need to eat an extra 1500 calories per day! I doubt that you are doing that. If anything, this is showing that you need to break out of this weight loss plateau even more. You lost most of your weight very quickly - you are very far ahead. Who cares if the last 10-20 lbs comes off slowly after revving up your meatbolism. The benefits will last every single day in your future. The email that I answered right before yours was from a guy who weighs over 350 lbs and is stuck there and he only eats 1500 calories. I told him that I weigh about half his weight, but I eat 2600 calories per day to maintain. On the road he was going, he was going to be eating less and less and fighting his body the entire way. When he hit my weight, maybe he could only eat 1100 calories to maintain his weight. That is a recipe for weight gain. It shouldn't be so hard to maintain if you get there slowly.
So here is a bunch more info that might help you out:
"" Breaking weight loss plateaus
One of the most common questions/problems/concerns from our listeners is what to do when their weight loss seems to stall. It can be an extremely frustrating time for dieters. Many have gone months eating at their goal calorie levels and regularly exercising and have consistently lost weight week after week. Then the weight loss stops for weeks or months with no obvious reason.
This is one situation where if you follow your instincts, you will do exactly the wrong thing and make your weight loss plateau worse.
Most people think that they just are not trying hard enough. They will eat even less and increase their exercise to try to kick start their weight loss. By doing this, they only end up making things harder on themselves and suffer needlessly. You cannot use willpower or determination to get out of a plateau, you don't need to work harder, only smarter.
To break out of a plateau, you must eat more. To truly break free, you need to eat at your maintenance level or even a couple hundred calories more per day for a few weeks.
This type of weight loss plateau is caused by one of two reasons. The most common cause is known as underfeeding. This happens when you are not eating enough calories on a daily basis. The second common cause is from long-term dieting. In both cases, the body has gone into a starvation response and is simply slowing down its metabolism to keep from losing all of its fat and dying! Your body has no idea that this reduction in food isn't going to be permanent.
Dieting is stressful on your body. If you eat too few calories, your body panics to keep itself at the status quo. If you eat below your Basal Metabolic Rate, that is a guarantee that your body will quickly go into "starvation mode". An average man's BMR is around 1900 calories, an average woman's is around 1500. Even if you are only eating at a moderate reduction in calories, after several months, your body will realize that it has been losing fat and can move into a starvation response.
The simple way to get out of a plateau is to remove the stress from dieting long enough to convince your body that it is not at risk of starvation. Then when you reduce your calories again, it will begin to release fat again.
Many people are concerned that if they eat at their maintenance calories for a few weeks, they may end up gaining weight. This may happen, but it may be necessary to fix your stalled metabolism. In a month or two, you will be much farther ahead.
Here are some tips that will help you avoid plateaus:
Only do a moderate restriction in calories of no more than 500 per day.
Make sure that a portion of your fat loss is a result from doing exercise and activities, not only caloric restriction.
Take some time off from dieting every once in a while. A cheat meal once a week or even a cheat weekend once a month will help you in the long run.
Don't do the exact same workouts day after day. Make sure that you are continually changing you activities so that your body does not become adapted to any routine.
Make sure that you are eating often through out the day. Try to eat a meal or healthy snack every 3-4 hours and never skip meals."
Also, here is a question and answer from our book:
Could my weight loss plateau become permanent?
Could my weight loss plateau become permanent? If I didn't make any changes to my calorie intake or my workout routine, wouldn't my plateau work itself out over time and eventually my weight loss start up again?
A plateau is really just your body responding to its survival instinct in a physical way. If it thinks that you are in a famine and starving, it will do whatever it takes to slow down your metabolism.
Once you take away your body's perceived stress about starvation, it will loosen up and you will start losing fat again. We have been giving this advice for the past 3 years, and have received many emails from people who report that increasing their calories has broken them out of plateaus that were months or years long. A common message from these people, is why did I make myself suffer for so long?
Could your plateau become permanent? The short answer is yes, or at least you can permanently slow your metabolism down. When your body thinks that it is slowly starving and is trying to slow it's own metabolism, the best way that it knows to do this is by reducing your muscle mass. For every pound of muscle that your body digests, you metabolism will be slower until you spend months or years in a gym to gain that muscle back. In fact, the only reason that men burn more calories per day and have an easier time losing weight than women, is because they have more muscle mass.
To answer the question about whether with a lot of patience, your body will break out of a plateau if you keep struggling and eating those low calories, the answer is no.
There is almost no chance of that happening. The reason is that your body has found its homeostasis level where it can maintain its weight on low calories. Your body isn't all of a sudden going to forget its own survival instinct and start losing fat if it thinks it is in a famine.
If you have been eating 1500 calories per day and haven't lost any weight in 6 months, why would you expect things to change in the future? If your maintenance level is 2400 calories, eat at least 2400 calories a day for a couple of weeks. Then lower your calories again later.
Losing body fat isn't all about willpower, sometimes you just need to work smarter."
What I would do is take a week off from exercise, and eat 1800 calories and be fairly sedentary and see what happens. To hit your ultimate goal of 133 and stay there with a fired up metabolism and with the exercise that you are doing, you should be able to eat in the 22-2400 range to maintain that weight of 133. If you don't get yourself out of a plateau, you will hit 133 through some drastic efforts and possibly end up only eating 1200 calories to maintain.
One of the other emails that I answered tonight I was talking about a guy who is about 350 lbs and his weight is stuck and he has been eating 1500 calories per day. He is going to be absolutely screwed in the long run if he continues to lower his calories and up his exercise. Yes, he will slowly lose weight, because after all, everyone will eventually starve to death, even thought their bodies are fighting against starvation.
Here is the transcript to part of a show:
Why can't I lose weight?
95% who are struggling are caused by errors that can be fixed! 100% of people can lose weight, no matter what. There is not a single person on the planet who will not lose any weight if they were stranded on a desert island with very little to eat. It's true that people might not lose the same amount of weight, but everyone will lose weight. A 400 lb person who has been stranded for 2 years will not still weigh 400 lbs no matter how many diets they have tried in the past and failed at. We all know that this is true on many levels.
- people believe that it is impossible to lose weight
- many actually do try and honestly believe that they can't
Top 8 Reasons
1. Education
People learn about nutrition in elementary school, but not how to eat
learn from pop culture such as talk shows (The View - black chick gastric bypass, Oprah - liquid 1000 cal diet) or weight loss shows (The biggest loser - people are convinced by t0he product placements)
learn from infomercials which convince people that it all has to do with a certain exercise machine
This shouldn't be a problem for our listeners because we are not just a motivational show, but an educational one.
Degree in P.E., but learned how to calculate calories years after by reading a diet book.
2. Food Reasons
too many calories (99% of people underestimate cals) - We mentioned a survey of Subway patrons in the past and the meal that they estimated at 400 calories was actually over 1000 calories. Also the book Eat This Not That is full of gotchas.
Some people refuse to count calories, whether you do or don't you have to have a calorie deficit.
lose weight with portion control, but you have to measure your results carefully to see if it is working. How do you even measure eating a little less?
Track your portions, many people feel that they are eating less, but are they making up those calories elsewhere? Eating less, but more cals?
food journals are extremely important
hidden calories such as sugar in beverages, condamints with sugar such as ketchup, supplements such as fish oil have calories
eating simple carbs which don't fill you up, give you cravings
croissant vs oatmeal
eating at night (from email 12-14 lb is 79 cals)
snacking
sampling food while cooking
candy dish at work
3. Exercise reasons
biggest exercise failure isn't NOT exercising, its blowing all of the benefit by eating after. Most overestimate the amt of cals burned and then over-reward eating after. Swimming, - Sports drinks...
too little exercise, you need to sweat and put in the time
exercise should be progressive
weak muscles that keep a person from being able to exercise for long or do a high intensity
You need to do an activity that actually burns lots of calories.
Cycling probably 5/min, ellipticals 12-15/min, walking on an incline
4. Damage from previous diets
your body can adapt to very quickly go into starvation mode
as soon as you lower your calories, your metabolism slows
less muscle slower metabolism
all or nothing diets
5. Hit a Plateau
from eating too few calories or lengthy dieting or dieting for a long time at once
Your body has figured out that it is starving and losing weight, not necessarily quickly losing weight
Eat more calories
Nothing wrong with taking a week or 2 off and eat at maintenance
6. Emotional Reasons
emotional eater
coping habits
boredom
stress, not enough sleep
Eat to fill the hollow feeling
Eat because it is sooo good - is it really that good?
7. Motivational reasons
If you really don't want to change the way you look and feel, it will never happen. Others can't make you want to change.
you will never out-perform your self image or
You can't outperform your own expectations and beliefs.
How many times per day do you say to yourself that you are fat vs how many times per day do you say to yourself that you are a thin and healthy person? This will make a huge difference. Don't get me wrong, you cannot think yourself thin or anything like that, but it is easier and more automatic to do things that are inline with your beliefs. So for example, most people would feel bad if they beat up and stole money from a 3 year old because we all have a belief that this isn't the right thing to do. We get that bad feeling in our stomach after doing something bad from our subconscious mind based on our underlying beliefs.
In the same fashion, if you are constantly repeating to yourself day in and day out that you are a thin and healthy person, you will start to believe it and it gets easier and easier to actually do the things that thinner and healthy people do. Attitude does effect beliefs which can affect the actions that you do. I used to have no problem stopping off at a convenience store and buying a king sized chocolate bar or large sub sandwich every single day on the way home from work. If I do that now, I feel bad about it, because "people like me don't do that". I believe that I'm a thinner and healthy person, and I will actually say that to myself when I get tempted. I will feel just as bad by stealing from a child as I would walking up to the till with 15 chocolate bars right now because I believe that I'm not that kind of person.
self sabotage - similar, what if you think you are losing weight too quickly or get uncomfortable with your new size and people noticing?
8. Medical Reasons:
PCOS - 5% of women - you need to be treated under a doctor's supervision
hormone problems
Hypothyroidism
medications
Steroids such as prednisone
Antidepressants that include Lexapro, Zoloft, Tofranil, Paxil, and Elavil (Laurie took Elavil in college to help with migraines. She gained a BUNCH of weight. More cushion...)
Antipsychotics that include such drugs as Zyprexa
Diabetes drugs such as Diabeta and Diabinese
Hypertension medications such as Cardura and Inderol
Beta Blockers such as Zebeta
Even heartburn treatments such as Prevacid have been suggested to promote weight gain.
~ Jeff
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