The Dreaded Plateau

March 15, 2013

40.5 Pound to go

There is nothing like working hard all week with calorie counting and exercise then getting on the scale on Saturday morning to sing the “what the fuck?!>@*^%#$” song.   It doesn’t move.  Or the needle goes up.  What’s even worse is when 2 weeks go by with no movement.  Then if a third week or more passes by true frustration sets in.

When it’s only one week of no-scale-budging standard rationalizations get me through the morning.  I know I wasn’t as good this week or my period is coming and I forgot (again).   Every month I have at least one week of no movement with the scale because of the dreaded period bloat.  But at least I know (most of the time) it’s coming so it doesn’t make me too upset.  Although some days I still grumble and kick the cat.  It can’t be helped.  Mike can tell by the look on my face if it was a good scale day.

Like I said, it’s when those 2 or more weeks go by when I start to wonder what’s wrong.  I find the number-one-favorite-all-time excuse people use when they’re not losing is “oh, don’t worry, you probably just converted fat to muscle so you are still losing you just can’t tell.”  The thing is, after scouring the internet and trying to do some research with fitness gurus, how much work does it actually take to convert a pound of fat into a pound of muscle?  How long does it take?  The stark truth is that nobody seems to know the conversion.  They’re good at platitudes like:

“Oh, don’t worry just keep going, it will come off!” 

“You’re toning what you have.”

“You have to lose the fat before you see the muscle.”

Umm, thanks for the encouragement but none of these answers give me facts that I can work with and half of them don’t even answer the question I asked.  I want a straight answer like strength training twice a week for a half an hour will build a pound of muscle?  Or is it three times a week?  Cardio exercise in general four times a week?  How about major hiking on the weekend?  Still, no clue.

From my own experience, this is what I’ve found with the great fat to muscle ratio question:

1)          1) Extreme exercise: I’ve noticed when I go to the extreme with exercise where I hit under my net calorie goal by 300 calories or more every day for a week [Math: 1600 calories of food minus 500 calories exercise equals 1100 net calories for the day and 300 under goal] or more I don’t lose weight.  This also means for the week I’m somewhere between 1500-2000 under my net weekly goal. [9800 net weekly calorie goal].  My guess is I’m either building muscle or kicking my body into starvation mode.

2)       2)  Strength Training: I did do the P90X program going on 2 years ago now.  I did it faithfully, every day only taking 1 day off a week to rest.  I think I made it around the 70 day mark before I gave up.  My best guestimate is I put on 10-15 pounds of muscle with this program.

The other excuse I use a lot that I actually believe is true is a body recalibration.  There are many scientific math things happening with the chemistry of my body that I can’t even begin to understand, but I do know that naturally it wants to preserve fat “for later.”  The just-in-case survival situation so you won’t die if you can’t get to food.  I believe (again, I don’t have any facts to back this up, just feedback I’ve gathered over the years) if you begin to lose weight rapidly your body goes “whoa! Hang on a minute.  Not so fast!  This could be an emergency.  Put on the breaks.  No more fat leaves this body without level 7 security clearance.”

Technically, I think this is what they call starvation mode.

My proof to back up this claim is the weight where my body tends to plateau.  It happens suspiciously at weights I’ve spent a great deal of time at in the past.  In August when I hit my first plateau for almost a month but it was also the same weight I had been it for the previous 2-3 years.  My body was used to it.  In the past I’ve always plateau’ed at what will be the 26 pounds to go mark because I spent almost all of high school there and a big part of college.  Chemically, I think it’s the power of the familiar.

So how do you get past the hump?  Answer: change.  (groan.)  If you get into a routine where you eat the same exact thing every week – even if it’s at your goal, your body will adapt.  If you do the identical elliptical machine work out for weeks on end, your body will also adapt.  The change doesn’t have to be a butt-buster extreme workout routine replete with diet pills and 1100-calorie-a-day starvation but something small.  Switch up your vegetables.  Crack down on the MyFitnessPal tracking if you’ve been getting lax with not logging the extra cookies.  Try different proteins.  Cut out one food item you think may make a difference.  (My experiment recently is cutting back on red meat.  In August with the first plateau is when I experimented with cutting out gluten and it worked.)  If you walk every day try walking every other day and mixing it up with weight training.  Throw in sit ups and push ups before you go to bed.  Typically doing one small thing differently is what gets me past the hump.  That and pressing onward even though I’m frustrated.

The biggest thing with the “change” advice is when I say “change up your routine” oftentimes people hear “go exercise like a rabid monkey and stop eating.”  To which I say: never underestimate the power of lowering the bar with your expectations.

Put in another way, have you ever experienced something like this at work?

I've said both at work and gotten more praise when I said they were nuts.

When it comes to weight, I think we expect to act like rabid starving monkeys and lose 5 pounds in a week when in reality it’s almost impossible to do.  You either kick your body into starvation mode and it holds onto the fat or you couldn’t possibly cut enough calories in a week to lose 5 pounds.  However, normal weight loss is 1 pound a week and rapid weight loss is more than 2 pounds a week.  If you go into this journey expecting to lose 2 pounds or more a week consistently; honey your expectations are amiss.  Lower the bar.  It will make you happier.  And give you a goal you can achieve rather than chucking the whole thing.

Once in awhile there’s still a freak weight-gain when you’ve been good or a plateau you can’t explain.  A few weeks ago I got sick and gained 5 pounds but it came right off at the end of the week once the last of the congestion drained.  I had no idea it was possible to gain 5 pounds of boogers.  As I’ve said no less than eight hundred thousand times already keep pressing on my friend.  I know it’s a platitude and I mocked it earlier in this blog, but it’s the only option left.  These past 2 weeks I didn’t lose and finally did this morning.  So, take it from me – I’m living it right now.