Weight Loss Plateau

Bigger Stronger Leaner Competitive Bodybuilding
1

Hey guys. I’ve hit a weight loss plateau. I started at 255, im down to 235 and i’ve been stuck here for about 2 or 3 weeks now. I get around 1500-1800 calories a day, and hit the gym 4-5 times a week, usually doing about an hour of cardio, and 2 of those days i throw in some heavy lifting. Can anyone point me into the right direction? If you need anymore info let me know. Thanks!

Ps- I only drink water, 95% of my carbs come from fruits, vegetables, and rye breads, i eat about every 2-4 hours, its hard sometimes with work and school getting in the way.

2

try eating more…ur starving yourself…females eat more than that…how much protein you getting in???

3

I’m just another noob, but I think the problem might be the kind of cardio you’re doing- what sort of stuff is it?

4

When I hit a plateau I switch to a week of higher carbs. Cycling my carbs has helped my body not become accustomed to any one diet.

Are your 1500-2000 calories clean?
Another suggestion is to increase your meal intake. I hit a plateau and switched from 6 meals a day to 8-10. That helped for an additional 15lbs.

Regards,
mp

5

I admit protien should be higher. I’m thinking about trying a V-diet’esque thing for a week and see how that goes. My cardio consists of a mixture of eliptical cross trainer, tredmil, stairclimber, and bike.

6

dude, 1500-1800 calories for a 235 lb dude on top of training and cardio?

That’s assinine

7

[quote]muscleted18 wrote:
I admit protien should be higher. I’m thinking about trying a V-diet’esque thing for a week and see how that goes. My cardio consists of a mixture of eliptical cross trainer, tredmil, stairclimber, and bike.[/quote]

NO,No,No,No,No!!!

You are not eating enough as it is, this would be a mistake. A protein shake would be a welcome addition to the current diet you are on.

Cycling cals as well as carbs would def. be a plus. One of the biggest mistakes most weight losers do is stay on a restricted cal. total for too long. Enjoy a cheat day. Maximize your post workout window to take in plenty of carbs and cals.

Weight lift more and cardio less. Shake things up. Whatever weights/reps you have been following, switch it around. Tabata’s. Shake it up dude.

8

I suppose that’s OK, but what kind of routine are you doing on those machines? If it’s mostly steady-state, then changing to ‘high-energy’ cardio could be the answer. I mean, you’re a big guy- your body might respond better to a more anaerobic form of exercise. Personally, I find hitting a heavy bag or sprinting a lot more fun.

9

carb cycling is always a great idea and you might wanna try that…its what im doing right now

in only 190 right now, but am eating upwards of 2300-2600 cals a day…and am still losing weight quite easily

like i said before…eat more…food is your friend

10

I’m a nub as well, but when my sister couldn’t lose weight I suggested that she stop using the treadmill and hit the track. it helped her lose a few pounds.

You might want to try to find a track and mix it up between sprints and distance running. And find some stairs or a steep hill you can run up and down.

For losing weight I’ve always been against treadmills, to me they are a cheating form of running. Actual running is a little harder on the joints though, you might want to consider a knee brace.

11

Search the site for “The Carb Cycling Codex” by TC. It’s the best method to get ripped.

Also, I think, in fact, I’m sure, you should be eating more calories than you are. For maintenance at a weight of 235 lbs you should be eating 3750 calories a day.

To cut, drop 500 or so. That’s about 3250 calories. From this, use the article above to split up your high/medium/low carb days. Adjust the number of calories based on progress.

Also, I’d change your routine. Do weights 3-4 times a week and cardio on the remaining 3 days. Look up IBUR type cardio, it does the job more than well and it only takes 15 minutes.

Good luck!

12

[quote]algian wrote:
Search the site for “The Carb Cycling Codex” by TC. It’s the best method to get ripped.

Also, I think, in fact, I’m sure, you should be eating more calories than you are. For maintenance at a weight of 235 lbs you should be eating 3750 calories a day.

To cut, drop 500 or so. That’s about 3250 calories. From this, use the article above to split up your high/medium/low carb days. Adjust the number of calories based on progress.

Also, I’d change your routine. Do weights 3-4 times a week and cardio on the remaining 3 days. Look up IBUR type cardio, it does the job more than well and it only takes 15 minutes.

Good luck![/quote]

Well his weight of 235 includes alot of fat, and I dont think your body needs calories to maintain the fat. So subtract the amount of fat you have and that is your lean body weight, and then see what your maintainance is.

13

im about 25% bodyfat so 180 give or take is my lean body mass.

14

I saw that you’ve hit a weight loss plateu and felt compelled to reply.

I hope that you’re now past this plateu. I’m there now. Well, it’s not that I don’t shed any weight - I do! But I’m shedding and gaining the same couple of lbs. It’s so frustrating!

I feel it’s stress related as a lot of things have happened since January that has knocked me sideways so I’m currently meditating to deal with the stress.

Good luck with your weightloss.

15

Increase the calories and increase the activity. You should be putting as many carbs and protein (try to keep a 2:1 ratio of carbs to protein) into yourself after every workout.

Try CW’s HFT. I’ve gained a ton of strength on it, and though I’m not supposed to do any cardio, I was doing 10 hours of dancing every week in addition to the 8 workouts. I was eating about 5000cal/day and overall I improved all my lifts quite a bit in 3 months and also lost about 5 pounds while trying to eat as much as I could.

Berardi should have a detailed article on g-flux in the future… for now though, all you need to know is that you should eat a ton and workout a ton. Eat just a little less at night and you’ll start dropping weight, then start cutting out a little every couple weeks from other meals but never reduce your breakfast size or post-workout meal.

Best of luck!
Ritchey

p.s. I was 235 last year… probably 35lbs of that being fat. Now I’m 190, eat a ton more than I did back then, and much stronger. Eat clean, workout more, taper a little then go to new maitenance levels, taper, new maitenance, etc.

16

if you are really over weight you DO NOT need to eat maint calories for a person thats your weight, think about it, why are you trying to maintain all that fat mass? you want to loose it, and im sorry but loosing 5 pounds in 3 months? you think thats good cutting? your eating too much and not doing enough

eat your BMR for your lean body mass, and check your lean body mass every few weeks to make sure its not going down, the SECOND it goes down bump up your calories by a few hundred and test again in a couple weeks. you want to eat JUST ENOUGH to feed your lean mass and keep you going and let the rest of the energy come from your fat stores.

you should be able to loose 2 pounds of fat every week if you eat good and exersize half decently. once again if you are loosing 5 pounds in 3 months you need to tighten up your diet a bit

17

Something else you may want to consider is checking your body fat %. Just because you are not losing weight does not mean you are not losing fat. Weight is only a small part of the equation. Case and point in the last 2 months I have hardly lost any scale weight… maybe 10 lbs… however I have gone from 26% bodyfat to 17.5%… and my LBM has changed drastically. I see the change in the mirror, the bf% is going down, but the scale hasn’t change much. Just from one noob to another. :slight_smile:

18

If you’re eating 1,500 calories on a workout day,then thats like consuming 1,200 or less.

Try eating more.
Also,try to cycle your calories.
For example:2,500 on weekdays,2,700 on weekends.
Make sure you’re eating atleast 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight.
If I were you I’d start eating about 2,200-2,300 and see where you go from there;and thats when you can do some good cardio on your off days from the gym.

19

Oddly enough I’m experiencing something very similar. I started at 260 lbs (6 feet tall) on May 1st 2006, and by June 15 or so I’d somehow managed to drop to 229 lbs. And, like you, I havent lost a single lb in two to three weeks. My training however is very different from yours. I hit the gym 5 times a week and each of those times I only spend a total of 25 minutes on cardio. 5 minute warmup, and 20 minutes post-lifting. The other hour I spend doing what I believe to be a very good lifting routine. Right now, I spend 1 day of each week on a different muscle group (Chest, Back, Shoulders, Legs, Arms) and am noticing extremely significant gains in not only the ammount of weight I am lifting, but also in the size of my muscles (newby gains, I’m sure, but I love them nonetheless). With all that said, enough about me. Might I suggest… HOT-ROX? In all honesty, I know I’m going to try it. It seems legit, I have a friend who has used it and it certainly worked for him. He was in a similar situation to you and I. Apart from that I may suggest more lifting and more protein. I currently take in about 200g~+ of protein per day, and with all my lifting I am sure that is doing wonders for my metabolism. I’ve done a fair ammount of reading on the subject, and it seems to me that most if not all sources preach that lifting (or in your case, lifting more) is extremely important in weight loss. Give it a try!

20

[quote]Dizzle wrote:
try eating more…ur starving yourself…females eat more than that…how much protein you getting in???

And other responses…

[/quote]

I would say that at 25% BF, and 235, you should be getting about 3150 maintenance without any exercise and moderate daily activity and assuming that by “student” in your profile you are under 30.

At 25% I would aim for a 1000 cal daily defecit, or a little more.

An hour of nice and slow cardio is only going to burn 450-600 cals. Stairclimbers and treadmills on an incline tend to jack up the calories, and actually avoid muscle loss because there is less eccentric stress on an incline.

My feeling is that an hour of cardio 4-5 times a week is too much. 4-5 times is fine but an hour is inefficient.

OK, that’s a lot. ARe you pushing up the incline on the treadmill? If you can jack the treadmill up to 12% at around 3.0 MPH you should be burning around 1000 cal/hour and at that pace will have some after effect as well. I would start at that level if you can for 20-30 minutes 4-5 times/week. Gradually raise the MPH. If you are already working at that level, you are doing way to much right now. Strive to increase the MPH even if you have to use intervals-say 2 minutes at 3.6 and 12% and 1 minute at 2.0 and 6%.

Anyway, 25 minutes at a high intensity will give you around 2000 cal defecit a week. That would mean that you still want to average 2400-2450 cals a day minimum. Whatever you lose above that is surely muscle in my opinion.

I would vary this over a 3 day period to total 7500, but you can go medium on one day (2450) higher the next (3000) and then lower on the third day (1900).

Are you sure about your calorie count?

If you are doing the treadmill on a high incline now, you may have picked up a couple of pounds of muscle in your hamstrings and calves.

Anyway, if you find something useful here, good, but look for your own answers.