Long term stall

stall
(Joe Shelton) #1

My name is Joe. I’m a 38 year old dude who’s been eating keto since mid-February. I’ve lost roughly 65 pounds since then (280 --> 215 +/-). Problem is, I’ve stalled since about mid-June, early July. I haven’t cheated, not even once. I’ve been faithful in my WOE, but I don’t understand the stall. Lately, I’m even coming up “Negative” on urine ketone strips (I know, I know… they’re the worst indicator). I have taken to eating / drinking foods that are artificially sweetened, but I’ve even cut out most of that, wondering if even that could have caused it. Any help / advice would be much appreciated. Until then, I’m gonna keep calm and keto on! TYIA!

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #2

Hey Joe, I’m new here myself, but I have already found that the scale is not my friend. It likes to mess with my head. Not only that, but after a couple of weeks of reading posts on these forums, I have come to the conclusion that poundage is not always the best indicator of progress, in any case. Some people have been restricting calories for so long that their bodies put on lean tissue mass while melting off fat, leaving the scale to give a misleading picture. Other people encounter hormonal issues that interfere with weight loss–stress, lack of sleep, other factors, which I’ll let those with more experience discuss. Often, however, if you look at other indicators besides the scale, you can see continuing improvements even though your weight is stuck. What’s happening with your waistline, for example? And is your blood work continuing to improve, or have the numbers gotten stuck as well? It might help keep your frustration level to a minimum if you consider the bigger picture. Good luck, keep calm, and keto on!

(Carpe salata!) #3

Mix it up , try a few days of high fat then maybe skip lunch. Many have used fasting to get past a stall but I am trying one meal a day at the moment with extra eating on the weekend

(Joe Shelton) #4

I’ve fasted for up to 3 days. Often fasting one or two days a week, with or without exercise. Doesn’t seem to make any difference.

(Carpe salata!) #5

OK. Anyway, I’ve stalled for a few months, but I just feel better and think the pounds will start falling soon. I don’t track or exercise.

(Allie) #6

It’d be worth investing in blood testing meter to make sure you’re still in ketosis (throw the pee sticks out, seriously) and if you are, just carry on as you are because it will pass.

#7

I read somewhere that it is very common to hit a wall at around 15-20% weightloss. At that point, your physiology is just designed to put the brakes on it. The stall can last several months until your new, lower weight becomes the new normal. Then (so I read) your system will allow weight loss to resume, though probably not as quickly as before, and you will probably hit another stall after losing another 15-20% (though, in your case, that’s probably more than you even need to lose).

Not everyone experiences this, but it seems to be a common pattern, and it matched my experience. People at this wall are often advised to buckle down and give up various things, and sometimes that seems to work, but sometimes it’s probably just a coincidence. I gave up dairy and sweeteners when I hit the wall, and I lost a few pounds, but then I gained them back, and my weight just kind of bounced there. Adding dairy and sweeteners back in didn’t seem to make things any worse, but it did make me a lot happier.

One thing I found helpful was to log my weight daily in a spreadsheet and produce averages for the month. In July, for example, I gained two pounds, but my daily average for the month was actually down three pounds from my daily June average. That was enormously reassuring. If I had only weighed at the beginning and end of the month, I would have totally missed that trend and thought my entire month of hard work was for nothing. Three pounds down isn’t huge, but it’s progress, and, most importantly, it’s in the right direction.

But, of course, if you discover the magic bullet that gets you rolling again, we’ll all want to hear about it.

I hit a wall! what should i doo
(Deb) #8

Fat loss is not linear, but a step-down process. What you call a stall, I consider the next level down.

When you reach each successive level, (how I did it,and I am 7 lbs from my 3rd revised-down goal), recalculate your macros based on your GOAL weight, and adopt those new macros. Since your body fat percentage and LBM has changed, you can’t keep eating the way you have been all along and continue to lose. We like to think total calories don’t matter, and they don’t when you first start, but as you lose more and more, they do.
Combine daily IF with your plan to supercharge your loss, too.

(Sheri Knauer) #9

There is someone in one of the keto FB groups I am a part of that took waist measurements over the past 5 weeks using string. She did not lose any weight at all in those 5 weeks but the inches were incredible and so visual with the string. A lot of times our bodies are going through a recomposition and you are gaining muscle and losing fat and the scale will read the same or even more. Take measurements and that is a better indicator.

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Measuring the Fat Girl
(Adam Kirby) #10

I find the mechanics of a long term stall to be fascinating. If someone has been stalled for months while fasting and eating hypocalorically (not intentionally but because they are generally satiated on, for instance, 1500 cals), yet is not losing any weight on the scale how is this possible? Clearly they are not breaking the laws of thermodynamics and generating energy out of nowhere. They feel generally fine, and are clearly not taking in enough calories every day to power their body solely on diet. Yet the scale doesn’t go down for months. I still can’t reconcile how this happens. I understand that the body reaches a point where it wants to preserve the weight, but you have to get energy from somewhere.