Weight loss plateau... Tips

winter_combat_knight

So long story short, i've been cutting my body fat for about four months. It's been done healthy through weight training 4 times a week, and cardio 3 times a week. I eat extremely clean minus maybe sweets/cake on a saturday night.
For the last three weeks i've been lingering at the same body weight, and i think i may have reached a plateau. I'm just wondering if anyone else has experienced this and maybe they might have some advice on what I can do.

I've gone from 76kg to 69.3kg in the last 3 months, and have been lingering at the steady weight for at LEAST three weeks.


I sat down and wrote out a list of things which I can improve on.

I decided that areas I need to improve are...

A) More HIIT Cardio - a 2 mile jog 3 times a week isn't really enough
Push heavier weights, lower reps (atm its high reps, lower weight)
C) Cut out the 5 skinny latte's a week! (My ALARM BELLS just started ringing!)

Im also going to cut to just black pepper over my chicken. Carbs are completely out minus 1/2 cup of oats in the morning. And no more saturday night junk food.

I know I probably answered my own question above (especially with the skinny lattes!), but If anyone has any tips i'd really like to hear them.

Ruckus

You need to change up your workout too, find new exercises that target muscle groups other than the main ones you've been using. After a while, your body grows accustom to the regular use of certain muscles, and becomes very efficient, and resulting in less overall energy usage during your workout. By changing up your workout, your body will have to use different muscles that it hasn't built up.

As for your cardio, if all you're doing is jogging at the moment, high intensity intervals will probably help, but I'd also suggest cycling or elliptical trainer with high resistance intervals. My dad went from just regular jogging (~4 miles 3 times a week), added cycling to that on his off days, and actually found his running efficiency increased after only a few weeks with the added alternate cardio.

Blake T

What exercises are you doing for weightlifting.

MushroomStick

Perhaps you're losing fat, but gaining muscle?

sacreandprofane

I suggest that you change-up your weight training routine and up the cardio. For example, if you're currently at 30 mins of cardio after, up it to 40. If you're doing a lot of weights, one after the other, try spacing them out and upping your heart rate via circuit training, or cut something out. And don't overwork yourself. Take a day off every few days, but keep up the abs with basic crunches, etc., those days. I suggest you talk to a trainer at your local gym and set up a new program to nudge your metabolism. Based on experience, I can tell you there is a point at which you can be overdoing the weights, and though you might eat healthy and do awesome cardio it will seem as though you've reached a plateau because you're gaining muscle and you've adjusted too well to your cardio, which will cancel out the weightloss (though not necessarily the fat loss) when you're doing too much of it or not changing it up. This happened to me recently. We changed the routine and now I'm where I want to be, now I just have to maintain it!

Good luck!

Tube

Ruckus wrote: »

You need to change up your workout too, find new exercises that target muscle groups other than the main ones you've been using. After a while, your body grows accustom to the regular use of certain muscles, and becomes very efficient, and resulting in less overall energy usage during your workout. By changing up your workout, your body will have to use different muscles that it hasn't built up..

This is not true sir. It is a common misconception. You stop your body from becoming accustomed to stimulus by increasing resistance.

sacreandprofane

Tube wrote: »

Ruckus wrote: »

You need to change up your workout too, find new exercises that target muscle groups other than the main ones you've been using. After a while, your body grows accustom to the regular use of certain muscles, and becomes very efficient, and resulting in less overall energy usage during your workout. By changing up your workout, your body will have to use different muscles that it hasn't built up..

This is not true sir. It is a common misconception. You stop your body from becoming accustomed to stimulus by increasing resistance.

I agree with this to a certain extent. I agree with Tube in that you need to increase the resistance in some elements of your work out. I mention cardio as an example because I found that I grew accustomed to running a certain distance for a certain time and while I lost weight in the beginning my heart rate began to adjust after and all of a sudden my running became less of a "work out" for my body and more of a delightful habit. So I upped the time and/or resistance and it upped my weight loss.

Now, on the flip side, I don't know what weights you're doing, but they could be contributing to your inability to lose weight overall while they are helping you in toning your body and gaining muscle. If you find that you've stopped losing weight, you should evaluate other contributing factors, such as your eating habits, sleeping patterns, and psychology. If these other factors remain unchanged since you started losing weight, then you might certainly reconsider your weightlifting and try changing it up because you could just be gaining a lot of muscle despite the probability that you're burning fat. Don't ignore your core muscle groups though. Keep that up, while perhaps there are some others you could spend less time on. This is something that a trainer could help you with. I would share this same information with him.

Tube

The OP is doing essentially everything I'd already recommend. I'd actually recommend not changing any more, because manipulating too many variables at once is generally a bad idea. You need to know what works, which you can't do if you change 20 things at once.

Tube

Baed on my experience with people starting out in weight training though, I am absolutely willing to countenance the idea that your program is horrible however.

sacreandprofane

Upon evaluating Tube's recommendations - to merely up your resistance - I agree that you should do this first. I am reminded also that my body is of the female type and works a bit differently depending on the body types that we want; some want 'em delicate, some want 'em built, so we up or down resistance and/or change routines. It's a mix!

In general, upping your resistance should help you significantly to lose weight while gaining muscle and toning your body. So I'd go with Tube. Up it and see what happens.

TheBigEasy

Also - what weight are you targeting? I'd also agree with Tube - don't change too much. If you up the weight, don't do it on all excersises simultaneously. That got me a 3 week hiatus and pain in my back about a year ago.

Karrmer

Intermittent Fasting can result in some impressive fat loss (actual body fat), leangains.com has a lot of good info on this. I'd suggest just researching it yourself - it has been wonderful for me and everything that I've looked into about it seems to support it, but some people are a little wary of it. Note that this means you are still absolutely eating every single day and, in theory, eating the same amounts as before - just changing up the timing a little.

http://www.leangains.com/2010/06/intermittent-fasting-and-stubborn-body.html has some good info