Weight Loss Plateaus

[Guest guest]

Tollison writes:

I know someone that has lost about 70 lbs on a 1200 kcal diet and

with exercise of about 2 hrs a day 5-6 days a week and she lifts 3

times a week. She has not lost any weight for the last 1.5 months.

She is concerned and she feels really bad that she is not losing

anymore. I have suggested to her to pump up her calories over the

next few weeks. Take a week off from her aerobic exercise and then

when she restarts to only go about 45 mins tops but go higher

intensity. I was hoping that someone has some good ideas and some

experience in overcoming such plateaus and what she should do to

overcome this and start losing her body fat at a good rate.

Hi ,

If you look at some of the data provided by the indirect calorimetry of Body

Gem, then you can see that as one begins a training program, the BMR

increases after roughly six weeks (and if all one does is cardio, it decreases).

As

you surmised, there is a point where one needs to increase calories. I don't

think I'd worry if you've written a good training program about her reducing

her cardio; you might think about if she's capable of this, doing some

interval type training.

What is important however, is that we being within the limits of error,

testing for BMR, not using equations any longer. There are too many gross errors

using the given equations and they don't predict diet plateaus.

Setting up a diet is extremely complex and I suggest your client seeks the

advice of a qualified nutritionist where they can make sure that she's still

eating healthy and ensuring an adequate number of calories. That includes say a

diet of 15-35% protein, 40-65% carbs and 20-35% fat. Bear in mind that fat

isn't the evil it's made out to be; it's saturated fat (which shouldn't be

more than 10% of your total fat intake) and trans-fatty acids that should be

watched. (Do remember that we need cholesterol for a slewload of biochemical

processes.) Your client needs to add in healthy fats (mono and polyunsat fat --

esp. omega 3/6/9/DHA/EPA). The best source of these fats (as is all the

bodies needed micro and macornutrients) is through one's diet not supplements.

Also, being that your client is a woman, I'd be careful to make sure she's

still ingesting adequate Ca levels (depending on age between 1000-1200 mgs)

given her restricted diet. (Ca is not as straightforward as one might might want

to believe because of differences in absorbability, formulation, its form

such as carbonate etc, and the dose of Ca [the recommendation now is that that

one takes Ca more frequently during the day and in concentrations less than

500 mgs to increase absorption]). Moreso, there's some evidence for an inverse

relationship between Ca levels and obesity; it appears Ca plays a key role

in activating those hormones that break down stored fat.

Another problem that occurs to me is that 1200 calories seems off the top of

my head way too low for her and that the number of calories is far below her

BMR. When that happens, the body will store calories as fat; or you said,

one has to eat (properly as opposed to perfect practice making perfect) to lose

weight. As a rule of thumb, one needs to reduce consumption/day by 500

calories to lose weight (or by 500 to gain weight). What your clients needs to

calculate using indirect or direct calorimetry, her BMR and then add into that

number the number of calories she burns through her daily calories. Add these

up and then subtract say 500 to put her into a caloric deficit.

But in the end for someone that has that much weight to lose, I'd really

recommend she see a qualified nutritionist to ensure that she's losing weight at

a safe rate (you didn't say over what time period she lost the 70#) and that

it's kept off. If you believe in the set point theory, then it's really hard

to keep weight off and the studies tend to show that people who lose weight

and keep it off do so by following a vigorous exercise program (of course, any

retrospective studies are hard to intepret!).

Myles Astor, PhD

Equinox Fitness Clubs

NYC, NY US