Weight loss plateau

Question

I am desperate. I've always heard that when you hit a plateau you can adjust your workouts or your eating habits. I've done BOTH, and seen absolutely no progress in my weight loss. I started out at an all time high weight of 133, (I am a 5' flat female) and a few weeks ago I managed to get down to a very shaky 126, where I knew I would probably gain back a few lbs in the near future. I was stable at 128 for nearly 3 weeks, and now am back to 132. Here's exactly what I ate today, and this is what I always eat like, (Used to just be more of everything, and I used to eat a LOT of gluten) but lately I've really cut back on amounts in my attempt to lose weight. Everything in my house is made from scratch with very high quality ingredients. I actually wonder if I eat too well.

Brekki:

Oatmeal with honey. (Big breakfast, normally I just have toast)

Lunch brought from home:

cucumber slices

whole strawberries

chicken soup

I haven't had dinner yet, but last night I had the same chicken soup and strawberries. I haven't been eating any snacks between meals for the last few months, but today I was so furious with the scale I ate two slices of homemade bread and some chocolate. This is the first time I've ever done that. Its also the first gluten I've eaten in a month and now I'm feeling rather sick. I'm also in such a rotten mood I'm not working out right now, when I usually do for around an hour. This is a part of my workout from yesterday just to give you a taste of what I like to do:

front squat and weighted lunge 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1

2 rounds 250 single unders

modified WOD 5 rounds 30 pushups 40 butterfly sit ups 50 weighted squats

I also did a glute and arm workout. This was an easy day. I think that I work out HARD. What the @#$% is wrong with me??? I've worked out for years, not with the intent to lose weight, mainly in training for track, and never lost weight from any of that. Am I just destined to be one weight? I don't even think I've been changing my body consistency. No muscle gains or anything. Actually maybe a little bit in my arms, and maybe if I'm lucky, I'm seeing something in my stomach. I don't want to look like a supermodel (Gross) I just want to be happy with my body. My mom said I was fat, sparking all of this @#$$.

Answer 1

You're doing great! Keep it up! For your best health and fitness, don't worry so much about weight. Worry more about body fat and how you feel. Muscle weights much more that fat because of its density and water. Another factors contributing to your weight is how hydrated you are. The more active you are the more water you'll need. Because of these things you may actually gain weight from proper diet and exercise.

Oatmeal is great, bread and chocolate, not so much. Really, if you can see some shape in you stomach than you're doing great! Don't listen to your mom just laugh at her idiocy and tell her to shut up! Seriously, mothers should never say such things to their daughters. I don't want to start a conflict but really this kind of remark from a mother leads to insecurity and eating disorders.

Body Fat and how you feel: If you had a higher than your desired body fat and you keep up the good work, you may notice your cloths becoming looser and you skin may sag a bit (don't worry it will correct its self). Don't measure your progress by the scale but instead measure it with calipers and other methods of measuring body fat. Also, listen to your body and how you feel. You may notice that you can lift more, run longer, have more energy etc. Let these things drive you! But be careful not to over do it, only you can know what this means but in other words don't push yourself into injury. I'm not sure how new you are to working out but you sound like you know a bit about it. You may know that consistency is key to personal fitness. you're not going to become fit overnight. Any diet will not produce immediate results. Anyone trying to convince you otherwise is just trying to sell you something. Don't Buy it!

Diet: Whatever you do don't get sucked in to dieting fads. Many of these only produce short-term results and will wear you out. Like juicing diets that make you have diarrhea. This will make you loose water weight and result in short term colon damage, an short-term inability to absorb nutrients, and leave you feeling tired and unable to go to the gym. Don't starve yourself as your body need natural sources of nutrients to keep you going. Just eat healthy. Eat lots of vegetables, some fruits, less carbohydrate loaded foods, and plenty of meats as some dairy is okay. Meats and lower card veggies are loaded with great nutrients. Just 3 ounces of meat has more nutrients twice that of most fruits and veggies. (I'd post more links but sadly I cannot do this at the time. Use google to verify the info I stated.)

See Nutrient facts.org for more info.

It's okay to cheat once in a while and have some chocolate and ice cream and such. The point is don't make a habit out of it and go with out it at more often than not.

Fitness: Strength training will burn more kcals and sooner than cardio/pulmonary (Not vascular, this never made seance to me.) workouts. Keep your fitness routine well rounded. For women, it is important to do bone strengthening activities to prevent osteoporosis later in life. Track helps with this but weights and strength training should be utilized as well. You don't have to get big muscles and strength training will not inevitably do this unless you aim for it. You'll of course still want to do you're cardio/pulmonary workouts as well, just keep them balanced.

You're young, don't stress too much about this stuff. Sure, build up good fitness habits but don't let them get you down. Good luck to you!

Answer 2

You should do cardio exercises. If you build up your cardio fitness, you should be able to run for an hour or longer at a fast pace (13 km/h or faster). You'll then burn more than 1000 Kcal per day. You should actually eat a lot more to get there, try to eat a lot more whole grain bread, brown rice and whole grain pasta. The total calorie intake should be large enough to allow you to run fast for a long time. You should not worry about weight gain, as the focus should be on building up your cardio fitness. You'll find that even with a much higher calorie intake, your weight will not increase or even decrease a bit, provided you exercise hard enough and only eat healthy foods (only whole grain products, a lot of vegetables, at least 400 grams per day).

You can also think of it this way. If you start to run then the reason why your cardio fitness will improve is fundamentally because your body will do whatever is necessary to facility your new activity. The biochemical changes are not the fundamental reason because these mechanisms were developed as a result of evolution. Now, an activity like running would only be done by our ancestors or other animals because of survival needs. Running more switches on all sorts of processes that enhance the capability of an animal to be able to run well. And that includes weight loss too.