Hey, all. New to the thread. I am 6 foot, 332 pounds. My wife and I have been trying to lose weight and have been struggling. I’ve been in an on and off calorie deficit for a few months now. About a week an a half ago I started doing IF OMAD eating around 1000-1500 calories. a day and working out 6 times a week cardio and weight training. I am not losing weight….neither is she. Towards the beginning of the year 2022, we had lost a large amount of weight. I lost about 50 and she lost about 30 pounds. We were doing 16/8 fasting and pretty much eating chicken and broccoli for a bit. Id say we were eating around the same amount of calories. I eventually hit a wall where I couldn’t pass 50 pounds and gained about 15 pounds of that back due to frustration. Now I’m stuck at 332 and I can’t go down. I’ve worked out really hard these past few weeks and its very demotivating. We are trying to lose as much as we can by July specifically, but continue the path after that as well. My wife specifically is having trouble due to her having PCOS. you’re probably asking “why are you not going back to what you did in the beginning of the year?” I don’t want to hit that wall again. I feel like I was doing something wrong due to me hitting the wall. I don’t know what to do…PLEASE HELP!
I suggest getting a tape measure and tracking bodyfat percentage once a month. My weight hasn’t changed a lot, maybe 12 pounds in 5 months, but my bf% has dropped significantly. Just wanted to put it out there that there are a few ways to track progress.
Moderate amount of healthy fat (EVOO/butter/coconut oil/avocado) and protein are what you need.
Cut carbohydrate as much as possible and avoid sugar at all cost. Avoid excessive snacking also helps (you can add healthy snack like nuts and cheese into meal).
Don’t be afraid of saturated fat because it helps you to stay filled and get off snacking. Yes, it works on me and it helps me on 15 hours fasting
I recommend staying out of the gym and go walking low stress low intensity I went from 300 to 195 if your work out is too tough you to hungry. I work through lunch if that’s possible. 2 hours of walking a day, i even stopped driving.
It’s possible that you are eating way too little. Just plugging in your height and weight into a TDEE calculator results in about 2900 maintenance calories just being sedentary. Add in the cardio and weights you are doing and the maintenance calories will go up even higher. It appears that you are in a 1500+ calorie deficit with your current strategy. For sustainable weight loss, 500 calories below maintenance is recommended for 1 lb per week and 1000 below for 2 lbs per week. Losing more than 2 lbs per week is possible but there is higher risk of losing weight due to muscle loss when you go that low. It can also cause your metabolism to slow down drastically. My suggestion is to adjust your strategy to be less aggressive with a smaller deficit.
I don’t know the answer, but I have a couple of thoughts.
Are you sure of your calories. I would check this. Portion size can affect calories more than you think
Also you are doing a lot of exercise so will be converting fat to muscle. As muscle weighs more than fat you should track your measurements because you are likely losing cm/in. I find it hard to see these changes and am often surprised at what the tape measure is showing
Weight loss is never linear. Some weeks you will lose more than others. You need to look at the trend over a longer time
You have a very low calorie diet. It may have triggered starvation mode, which is a thing where your body will change hormone levels and metabolism to try hold onto weight. Healthline.com has a great in-depth article on this https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/starvation-mode