Hello everyone, Just a quick question. Has anyone of you experienced a phase in their journey where the scale isn’t moving after an initial successful downward decline of the numbers? I have stuck to the same regimen of OMAD that has had me shed 16 kgs within four months but the last 7 kgs to my goal weight don’t seem to be going anywhere. Any suggestions that might help me get a breakthrough will be highly appreciated.
No advice, but same. Last 4kg is not budging. However there are things I know I’m not doing that would probably help. I’m still eating a carb-heavy diet (just less food overall) and not drinking enough water. I also don’t do much exercise. I’m pretty sure if I made more of an effort on these things then more weight would come off. These are lifestyle changes which are harder for me than simply having a cut-off time for eating and especially over the holidays I wasn’t eating healthily.
First of all, if you haven’t already, ensure that what you are witnessing is indeed a fat loss plateau, as opposed to “random” swings of fluid levels making the overall trend harder to discern. One straightforward method that may help tell the two apart involves tracking 7-day moving average weight (sum of last 7 weigh-ins divided by 7) over time. If that number is still trending downwards, even if really slowly (fat loss is supposed to be slow, think 50-100 grams per day), then there isn’t anything to troubleshoot. Only when the indicator has virtually flat-lined over the past several weeks can you be reasonably confident that fat loss has halted.
If the latter indeed seems to be the case, then it’s time to rule out potential overconsumption. Take a close look at your intake calories, portions, food choices and physical activity levels. Maybe you’ve routinely added butter or some calorie-dense sauce to your dishes, yet have disregarded its impact as “negligible”. Perhaps the seemingly innocuous square of chocolate or slice of bread sometimes accompanying your meal has also been spiking your appetite, causing you to eat double the portions of everything else on the table without realizing; healthy foods have caloric worth as well. Perhaps your exercise routine has been making you hungrier, or your fitness tracker is to blame for overestimating your exercise-specific energy expenditure, tempting you to eat those calories back. Or you could as well have neglected to reassess your TDEE as your mass declined. As a rule of thumb, to get a feel for the change in sedentary expenditure, subtract 12 kcal/day per kilogram of mass lost; now that you are 16 kg lighter, you must for better or worse live with expending ~192 fewer kcal/day than you formerly used to.
Worst-case, your energy expenditure might have been lower than predicted all along. To a degree this is to be expected – after all, online calculators merely spit out the median of a normal distribution indicative of a population rather than any individual in particular. If nonetheless it appears that you’re at a considerable disadvantage (say, more than a couple hundred calories beneath what’s considered normal), perhaps it would be worth seeking expert counsel so as to rule out pathological conditions known to detrimentally affect energy expenditure (e.g. nutrient deficiencies, hypothyroidism, hyperinsulinemia).
TL;DR: