Reached a plateau

[EquiPro]

Take a look at this post I wrote:

My Plateau Life - Wanna Join Me?

There is a poem by Antonio Machado that has a stanza that reads: " Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt—marvelous error!— that I had a beehive here inside my heart. And the golden bees were making white combs and sweet honey from my old failures." All of us tend to equate plateaus with failure. There are lots of posts about plateaus here. The over riding theme is: Ack!!! I’m in a plateau! What am I doing wrong? How can I fix this? How am I screwing this up? Maybe we need to al…

[MG1]

Just went through this. Not a quarter of a pound in four long weeks with around 23-25-30 carbs a day AND low calories. It was brutal,
I just lost six. It’s amazing to see the old doctor scales that you have to move yourself… keep moving back. ALL worth while. Do not stop! No matter what.

[MrKeith]

I won’t be stopping… 100% focused

[lfod14]

You’re severely over estimating your calorie burn man.

[MrKeith]

Why is that?

[lfod14]

How physical is feeding the animals? Heart rate way up sweating unable to talk at a normal rate? Takes that for at least 20min to burn 300cals on average. Almost 400 cals on a 2 mile (walk)? Weights burn very little calories vs cardio, but there’s an after burn effect which cardio doesn’t have, with that said most people doing weight training only burn around 150-200cals in a 1.5-2hr lifting session. 400 cals on a bike is clearly possible but that’s a real good pace at respectable resistance for 25-30min.

I can believe farm work throughout the day hitting 700-800 calories assuming lot of manual work.

What’s giving you those numbers?

[MrKeith]

The farm work is VERY physical! Carrying bales of straw and hey around sheep fields gets your heart rate up to 130 to 145 bpm, carrying 25kg bags of pig and other animal feed is very hard and time consuming (I don’t use machines or mechanical assistance) the morning farm tasks take up to 1 and a half hours early morning and the same evening. Not just walking around throwing bits of corn to the hens!
I wear a Apple Watch to track calories, (all day everyday) heart rate, steps, mileage etc
My bike work is minimum 45 mins at a good speed and cadence and do HIT during this time (heart rate up to 165 with an average of 135 to 140 bpm during.
The walk… I live in north Wales and surrounded by mountains so the 2 hour walk EASILY smashes 300 to 400 cals.
Like I said, I don’t do weights and cardio every day as need rest days since starting my vo2 max has really improved upto 47! and loads more energy.
Recommend any fitness watch as its been a fantastic tool for me and keeps me very focused and lost a lot of weight since. 4stone (56 pound) in 4 and a half months is a result in my opinion.
Took the advice of Edie, PaulL and robin and not weighed myself for a couple of weeks but my belt has had to have another notch put into it
so loosing weight again.

[MrKeith]

Just another thought Ifod… ****Known as the afterburn effect, this process is said to rev up your metabolism and torch calories for up to 24 hours after exercise. It’s a theory many HIIT -based studios tout as a major health benefit of their workout, promising you’ll reap the rewards of their one-hour workout for days.

[lfod14]

I’m aware of farm work burning a lot, but ultimately it’s all a guess because you’re RMR isn’t taken into acct and that can vary HUGE, Your watch has zero clue what your exertion levels is, it only knows your stats and heart rate, like BMI it’s making pretty huge guesses. I track mine as well, but not resistance training. It’s pretty known that there’s not an impressive calorie burn, that’s including seriously intensive heavy workouts.

If you didn’t get that v02 max from running on a treadmill or on a bike with a face mask on, with a machine measuring your respiratory weight, than ignore it. That’s the only way you’re getting it. No different than when a macro calculator makes blind assumptions on your RMR.

Took the advice of Edie, PaulL and robin and not weighed myself for a couple of weeks but my belt has had to have another notch put into it

And that’s why ignoring weight is a bad idea. Weigh daily, watch trends. Flipping out over normal water fluctuations is crazy but you need to spot a bad trend in progress. For me that’s +/- 5lbs. More than that somethings going wrong and I need to act. Less than that and I let it work itself out.

It’s true HIIT (and weight training) have an afterburn effect, but it’s not what people want it to be. Building muscle mass has the largest since maintaining more muscle is metabolically “expensive” because it raises your RMR. That’s why strength should always be a huge goal, it gets you the fat loss, raises RMR and for me the best part… let’s me eat more while maintaining or loosing fat.

[MrKeith]

Apple Watch Series 6 review | second best smartwatch SE

[MrKeith]

A company like Apple couldn’t get away with such an inaccurate tolerance like you suggest Ifod, yes I accept there will be a +/- tolerance (everybody is different) but it wouldn’t and couldn’t be massive imagine the law suits the research and trials done on these units have bee mind blowing.
Before I started on my weight loss & fitness journey, I tested everything from blood glucose monitoring over a number of days, including fasting, before and after food & exercise.
My current (then) RMR and my current now RMR 1867 cals.
I have always been a fit and active person, I’m ex armed forces until a bad injury put me out for a good few years and that’s when my weight rocketed. Also not helped by the “poor me” feeling sorry for myself! After a number of surgeries and extensive physio I’m now fit and back in the saddle and my weight loss over this 4 1/2 months has been pretty big and i for one is very happy with it! 0.43 pounds a week calculates = that my watch calculations are pretty bang on in terms of numbers, so again I’M VERY HAPPY WITH THIS.
Regarding my vo2 max I’m really not stressing on numbers either way as I know by how I feel when on the bike that the cadence in watts, speed and torque are also good.
Don’t go into motivational speaking Ifod…

[lfod14]

A company like Apple couldn’t get away with such an inaccurate tolerance like you suggest Ifod

Whatever you want to believe man, anybody that’s been in the gym, or fitness trained knows that you don’t burn those level of calories doing what you’ve described. Pretty sure your plateau is backing that up. The are far more accurate watches like the Garmin’s that are designed for that specifically and although they more closely reflect real numbers, when it comes to thing like any resistance training it’s near impossible to calculate with consumer grade trackers. I see gym grade Life Fitness elliptical telling the older lader beside me that she burned 400 cals barely walking for 25 min while reading a magazine. OK! That thing probably cost $8k. Apple Watch’s aren’t fitness trackers, they’re smart watches that can do some other things as well. You could do worse, you could do a lot better, but ultimately there’s certain things you can more or less go by, and many thing you don’t.

Don’t go into motivational speaking Ifod…

Not sure where that came from as I don’t do that. Think you should probably get over yourself. But don’t worry, you’re definitely doing everything right though… enjoy that plateau.

[MrKeith]

Correction** not 0.43 pounds a week, 0.43 pounds a day average loss!

[MrKeith]

See above… plateau only lasted a week

[MrKeith]

Whatever you want to believe man, anybody that’s been in the gym, or fitness trained knows that you don’t burn those level of calories doing what you’ve described.

Well the numbers speak for themselves! And the scales don’t lie!
Like I said, I’m more than happy with the progress… so far