An idea to break a stall, what say you?

(Scott) #1

I have been watching and waiting to see what happens next but now I am bored.

Started July 10th and rapidly lost going from 208 down to 184 lbs. Starting in November I gained a few pounds back and have maintained at 187 since. I have decided that I may be eating too much fat in the morning. This morning I only had two eggs with to strips of bacon and eliminated the cheese, heavy whipping cream, sausage patty and MCT oil in my coffee. The idea is to see if the fat reduction causes my body to burn more of my own fat. I have only about 10 to 15 pounds to lose but it is really my belly fat that is making me want to change things up. I don’t count calories so I wouldn’t call it a restriction but that is possible since I am reducing fat intake a bit.

Anyone think I am on the right track?

(bulkbiker) #2

What weight are you aiming for?
Why do you think 187 isn’t good for you?

(Scott) #3

I still have some belly fat that I want off. About three years ago I went from 228 lbs down to 173 by calorie restriction and lots of cardio (30+ miles a week) weights and planks. Family thought I went too far and looked gaunt but I was just slightly under my “normal” BMI. So I think my best normal weight will be somewhere between 175 and 180. I weighed 190 this morning so that is why I speculate that I need to lose 10 pounds. The mirror and belt loops is more of a guide than the scale at this point.

(John) #4

I agree with your approach in your first post. My typical breakfast is 2 eggs and 2 strips of bacon, with black coffee. That seems to satisfy me well enough.

(bulkbiker) #5

Know the feeling I just got out of a stall that lasted 18 months!
I did it by a bit of fasting in December and then eating beef only one meal a day for January but constant weight loss is hard.
I really really want to dip below 200 pounds but my body simply doesn’t
I have got to 200.8 a couple of times but always go back up.
I’m thinking of a series of 3-4 day fasts as I have done some 7 dayers but don’t really enjoy them.

(Frank) #6

Try “keto Roulette”. I managed to reset my homeostatic weight down 3-4 lbs in a month after a long stall and have kept it there easily.

(Scott) #7

Thanks, I kind of look at this an interesting hobby. I enjoy tweaking things to see what effect it will have. One thing I do know at this point is that maintaining on this WOE is effortless. My theory is if I can get to my optimal weight I can just keto on!

(Scott) #8

I also gained two pounds overnight which will likely be gone by tomorrow or the next day. So if I can shed a couple more hey, I’ll be halfway there.

Also started adding a magnesium supplement just for the fun of it too.

(Scott) #9

Interesting.I am not quite a OMD person…yet. I have often thought fasting will be my next challenge or step to reset but not really there yet either.

(John) #10

When you are maintaining (or stalled), you are clearly in balance between food energy intake and energy expenditure. Otherwise you’d be gaining or losing. However, it’s possible to be in a slight imbalance and just not notice it, because the signal - actual weight change - is lost in the noise of normal daily or weekly fluctuations, whether up or down.

For example, my long-term weight GAIN average was just 4.5 pounds a year. That is about 1.4 ounces a week. That would never show up on a scale. But over 30 years, that means I went from 185 at age 30 to 320 at age 60. That was not linear, of course, and not all in one direction, but it is interesting as a generalization.

So even little imbalances, if left to run long enough, can result in big changes. It just takes time. There is also research that implies that weight loss is also not the easy 1 pound = 3500 calories thing, but that a 10-calorie deficit maintained for THREE YEARS = 1 pound, so more like 11,000 calories.

So part of the issue is that our attention span is shorter than the time period it takes for measurable results. If you are losing 1/2 pound a week, that would still be 26 pounds in a year, but in a 1-month measurment horizon, that’s only about 2 pounds, which is well within the range of normal variability in a single day.

I think the trick is to set an “oh crap” number, which in your case is 190, and use that to re-focus your efforts to make sure that a year from now it’s not 195, or 200.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #11

On the other hand, my weight fluctuates quite a bit—according to my scale, anyway—and I recently found myself down ten pounds overnight on one day, then suddenly twenty-five pounds up a few days later, and then suddenly back in my normal range a few days after that. During all this time, my belt hole has not needed to change (part of the reason I was sceptical about the initial “loss”).

Now, granted, that scale can be manipulated, but not quite to that extent.

I believe that the body is well capable of handling those “little imbalances” you mention by manipulating our metabolic rate. Otherwise, to keep our weight stable, we would need, as Gary Taubes points out, to know our energy intake and our energy expenditure extremely accurately, and to keep them balanced to within 20 calories a day. Given the inherent inaccuracies in our knowledge (since most of us suffer from a serious lack of metabolic chambers and bomb calorimeters), that is an impossible task. For myself, I prefer to let my body handle such details, and so far it is doing remarkably well overall.

(Scott) #12

I kept moving my Oh Crap number as I started gaining so that was not effective for me. I have a wi fi logging scale so I look at a graph that shows trends or even drill down to a date that I hit my lowest or highest. I don’t pay attention to the random fluctuations or stress over them. The trend is where it is at and yes it can sneak up on you over the years. Unlike the calorie deficit diet I feel that keto will be much more intuitive in maintenance mode.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #13

Question: it is clear that the increased number on the scale is all fat gain? No muscle, no increased bone density?

(John) #14

Yes, that is part of the balance I referred to, and why just cutting calories back by some fixed amount does not yield the results expected unless maintained over a long time, because the body resists loss and prefers gains.

The deck is stacked against us, no doubt. And we may not be able to mentally maintain the equation between intake and expenditure, but our bodies still react, and will store just that little bit extra, or dial down the metabolism just a little bit, to make a difference.

On another note - I have no idea what is going on with you or your scale, but I almost never see more than a 2 pound variation day-over-day on my simple analog scale, either up or down. A 35 pound swing in a few days sounds more like a device malfunction.

(Scott) #15

I haven’t increased my miles running due to cold weather and rain. I also haven’t been back to the gym since I experienced sharp knee pain. So I doubt I am building enough muscle to significantly move the scale. I have been parked at 187 since my brief low of 184. Now that I am fat adapted I thought I would see if a minor reduction in morning fat intake would allow my body to use more fat stores for fuel. Only one belt loop to go!

(Scott) #16

I find that if I lean back I can spot reduce but I do that every day anyway.:stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

My biggest gain was a long weekend of the rails in Chicago. I got home and my scale said “welcome guest” I had put on ten pounds.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #17

The weird thing is that my father’s weight seemed to remain stable during that whole episode, so it’s hard to tell what was really going on. I should really have gotten to the gym to verify things on their balance scale; this one is consistently under-reading as well as variable, depending on how one stands on it. I try to be as consistent as possible, so that at least the trend is reliable, so I am convinced that my weight did shift during that week.

A ten-pound woosh is not completely implausible, but I doubt the subsequent increase was actually 25 pounds. More to the point, however, I am now consistently back getting readings in my usual range. So something clearly happened, and it did seem to be counter to the fluctuations in my daily food intake at the time. If this happens again, I’ll be much more invested in getting accurate numbers from the gym scale.

(Bob M) #18

If I fast, I commonly see 5-7 pounds loss (or gain) per day. Here’s a 5 pound loss, for instance (“blunch” = lunch but around 10-11am):

FastingLoss

(John) #19

I do try to place my scale at the same spot on the floor, and stand on it the same way every time I weigh in. But if I want to I can induce a fairly broad 4-pound swing by shifting my weight, or just by standing on it for a while.

I do a sanity check every so often on a big industrial digital scale at work, though I have to account for clothing. Whenever I do that, I calibrate the home scale by weighing on it using the same clothing when I get home (and without eating or drinking), and there is about a 10 pound difference - 8 of which is clothing and 2 is probably my home scale being off. So I probably weigh 2 pounds more than I claim to.

(Bob M) #20

Here’s another, this on a 4.8 pound loss the first day of a 3 day fast, but only a 2.2 pound gain (but only ate at night, normally eat twice after a fast):

AnotherFast

I could give you many, many more examples.