Lost 22lbs in 4 months, but.......
 

I've lost 22lbs in 4 months and I'd like to drop another 12lbs, but it appears that I've hit a plateau at 183lbs. I've been stuck at 183 +/-2lbs for the past 3 weeks.

I lost most of the weight prior to the daylight savings time change by changing my diet and running 3-5 miles 3x during the week, then riding 110+ miles on the weekends.

Once the time changed, I started running less during the week and putting more time in on the bike after work. I've noticed a difference in my fitness and form on the bike, but now it seems like I'm not shedding the lbs like I was when I was running.

My diet has pretty much been the same. Breakfast is oatmeal w/ some brown sugar and a cup of coffee. Lunch is 2 turkey sandwiches, small bag of carrots, orange, yogurt, and cheese stick. Dinner is usually a chicken breast, veggies, white rice, and a salad.

Lunch is my biggest meal of the day, but I eat it throughout the day and not in one sitting. Note that I have a blue collar job, I'm on my feet all day, and I burning a lot of calories.

My question is..... is there something I can change in my diet or schedule, besides starving myself, to help get myself out of the 183lb plaeau and start dropping more lbs? I'd like to stay on the bike so I can improve my fitness on the road, but if running is the quickest way to drop the lbs, then thats what I'll have to do.

thanks for the help

You stopped losing weight because your body got stronger to deal with the added stress. Once it's strong enough to face what you throw at it, it's not going to improve any further. Your muscles are more efficient and can generate the same power with less energy consumed. You have to keep raising the level of stress just ahead of the weight-loss rate. Add sprints and intervals to your running and biking workouts. Then you'll have a faster average-speed and burn off more calories/hr. Each month add more sprints and more intervals to those days that you do them. Add more mileage on the weekend endurance rides. This kinda follows along the weight set-point idea.

It's also kinda like bodybuilding. Your muscle will increase in size only up to what's needed to lift the weights you're doing. To get bigger, you have to keep adding more and more weight to your workouts.

Also track everything you eat... eat less than you burn off... :)

Danno and Poshizzo,

Posh, your original post could have been my own. I have gone from 218 to 203 sine Thanksgiving. I'm stuck on the 203 plateu and can't get off.

Danno, your advice is truly ugly. The REALLY ugly part is that it's probably true!:(

Tyson

+1 for Danno, he and about 5 others here should be moderators or at least commended for their contribution to this awesome site. As for you guys, go check out sandySwimmers thread. We are all over that one. Ive lost 27 pounds since late march, early Feb. Poshizzo, 183 must be a certain thing for you and I, went from 211 to 183, this morning 183 and holding. Danno is correct, you have to introduce your body to a new level so your body will say "wtf?" is he doing? Its tough, I have been training hard. I look and feel great. I have 8 measly pounds togo and its hard as heck to get it off, keep digging.

Heres Sandys thread, warning, its huge but read it.

http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...=163776&page=9

phoshizzo - your diet sounds great. However you didn't mention what you drink during the day and evening. Are you a soda drinker or a water drinker?

Another thing to consider is the breakfast. The oatmeal does a great job but what I found worked even better for me was a 50/50 mix of oatmeal and brown rice. I also added flaxseed oil, blueberries and splenda.

One other thing I have found that actually helps is increase the # of meals. Not necessarily the amount you eat but spread it out.

I eat

Breakfast
Part of my lunch at 10am
rest of my lunch at noon
Small snack at mid afternoon
Small dinner.

By doing this you keep your digestive system working almost continuously throughout the day, which actually helps burn more calories as well.

-D

I'll second dropping the sugar, heck I finally dropped the splenda as well.

My morning oatmeal has a handful of walnuts, a tablespoon of fresh ground flax seed, 1/2 c of blueberries, a dozen cranberries and a bananna, Non-fat vanilla soy milk, lots of cinnamon. Oh, and some rolled oats of course. Now that it's getting warm out I don't even cook them - I just go Museli style and add some sunflower seeds.

Some seem to be gung ho about eating meat; but I use it very sparingly - usually just as a seasoning to a main dish. Along with that, find ways to put more vegetables in your meal plans. Especially leafy greens; spinach, kale, chard are some of my favorites. Eat yer grains, but find ways to make them less processed than putting them into breads and pastas. My boy's (1 1/2 & 3) now love barley because its so much like the pasta we used to give them.

The only other thing I'd question is all the dairy; if you're eating your vegetables you'll get enough calcium, what you don't need are the cow hormones - designed to make a baby animal big as quickly as possible - you don't need that working against your weight loss efforts (even if it's non-fat).

It may take a week or two for your palate to adjust to the new flavors, but once you do adjust you'll wonder why you took all your life to get there. And the best part is that you never have to be hungry again; the vegetables take up more volume per calorie, so at the end of every meal you are full and continue to loose weight. I started mid-January, and am down 30 lbs. Our weight loss comes in cycles, if you track carefully over the long haul you'll notice patterns to the drops or plateaus you've been experiencing.

Good luck!

Increase number of meals eaten to 5-6 per day - your body will burn extra calories just digesting the food that it wouldn't eating only 3x/day.

Increase protein intake - get some every meal. Make your breakfast bigger. Add in some healthy fats like fish oil. All these things will give you extra energy for your day and put your body in a more metabolicly active state.

How tall are you? With that much weight loss my guess is that you may actually be eating too few calories for your body mass plus all the exercise. You may actually lose weight by ADDING 250 calories per day to your diet. I used to be fat, and ropped a bunch, and hit a plateau at 225. When I slowly started adding more food and calories to my diet (as protein and healthy fat) I dropped another 30 pounds to where I sit today at 195.

I would also shock your body a little more. I'm not sure how tall you are, which can also explain why your body is plateauing at the current weight state. I remember being at a plateau of 200 when I was sheddding weight at 231 pounds. The eating through out the day is very critical at this stage of the plateau.

Regarding your meals:
Breakfast is oatmeal w/ some brown sugar and a cup of coffee.
Lunch is 2 turkey sandwiches, small bag of carrots, orange, yogurt, and cheese stick.
Dinner is usually a chicken breast, veggies, white rice, and a salad.

I would split up your lunch into two meals, it seems like a lot of food at one sitting. Perhaps, orange, yogurt and cheesestick as mid-morning snack, the sandwiches and carrots for 1:00 or 2pm lunch. Also, it would help to increase the protein intake, which will help keep you fuller and keep the water intake steady at 1 gallon a day.

Lastly, I would encourage more intense aerobics, anything will helps as long as you are aerobic. Running, right off the top, is more aerobic then cycling, which is why you lost the significant weight. It will help you to use the same perceived exertion from running for your cycling routine. The 110+ miles are just miles if you are riding leisurely. Its about quality, not quantity when you want to lose weight.

I hope this helps.

Your diet seems sparse enough without removing any more . Its already below what I consider long term sustaining, and it sounds boring :P Switching from 3 meals to 6 meals a day while having an effect of a slight metabolism increase and better to curb hunger, isnt a huge change to calories in vs calories out equation.

Id concentrate on increasing your calories spent, the amount of cycling you do. Try to get in a few days a week, an hour a day, with sprints, intervals, hill repeats. Something that pushes you. And your weekend rides sound good, but instead of 2 rides of 55 miles each, try increasing one more and more. Try to get 3-4 hours on the bike for the one day. Dont overdo it and neglect recovery though.

My weight loss seems to stair-step. It seems that what breaks out of the plateau is counter-intuitive: eat more. Exercise a bit less. Take a break and put on a pound or three. After a week it seems my body gets it's fill and back down the slope I go.

I want to thank everyone for your replies and advise. You've given me a lot of good info to go off of. I've already started interval work and will modify my diet.

Thanks again :)