what happens when metabolism plateaus?

[fett_arsch]

weight: 184 lbs (83.4 kg) - height: 5' 7" (1.7018 m) - age: 40s - sex: male - activity level: sedentary mostly; but i consistently ride 14 miles/day on my bike, 1 hour/day, 5 days/week - weight goal: 135 lbs.

 

hello forum,

 

5 months ago i started a bicycling workout regime to lose weight. for approx 1 hour, i ride for 14 miles at approx 14-16 mph on average. i meticulously monitor and record every calorie i consume and expend. without boring you with the details, i pretty consistently have a daily calorie deficit of between 1000-1100 kcals.

 

for most of the past 5 months, i've lost on average approx 2 lbs/week. sometimes my metabolism plateaus. when it does, i "zig-zag" my daily calorie intake so that i don't take in the exact same number of calories everyday. another way that i sometimes break plateaus is to tweak my macro-nutrient intake. i've found that low-carbs, high-protein works wonders for breaking a metabolism plateau. for example, 3 weeks ago, i reached a plateau. i had a pretty sizeable calorie deficit as usual that week, but i didn't lose any weight that week. not a single pound! so for 1 week after that, i consumed a daily average of 1600 kcals, but with a very low %-age of carbs and a fairly high %-age of fat and protein. in that 1 week, i lost 7lbs!

 

however, the next week after that, i went back to my normal way of eating (avg 1600 kcals/day; for a 1000-1100 kcal/day deficit). whereas in previous weeks, with that same formula i'd lost 2 (sometimes 3) lbs. but that week i actually gained 0.22 lbs! i repeat: i gained weight even though i had a deficit of 1000-1100 kcals! i should have lost at least 1 lb! right?

 

so please, can you explain to me:

 

1. what exactly is the body doing when the metabolism plateaus?

 

2. since i definately had an average daily deficit of between 1000-1100 kcals, why in the heck did i gain weight?

 

3. isn't my metabolism defying some law of physics (or thermodynamics) or something by not losing weight when i have a calorie deficit?

 

thanks in advance for your time and expertise.

 

sincerely,

fett arsch

Edited January 24, 2011 by fett_arsch

[Mr Skeptic]

Well one of the major components of your weight is water. You can lose a lot of weight by getting dehydrated, and gain it back by drinking water rather than calories.

[fett_arsch]

Well one of the major components of your weight is water. You can lose a lot of weight by getting dehydrated, and gain it back by drinking water rather than calories.

 

thank you mr skeptic,

 

water weight was - in fact - the first thing i suspected i'd lost when i weighed in 7 lbs lighter a couple weeks ago. although i dismissed it at first because i drank an avg 110 oz (3.25 ltr) of water everday that week (because i read you should drink a lot of wah-wah on low-carb/high-protein); i've also drunk the same amount everyday since then. so i am aware that water has something to do with weight.

 

that said, i should make it clear: i did not gain the 7 lbs back. but the week after i lost the 7 lbs, i did gain 0.22 lbs back (for a net loss of 6.78 lbs in 2 weeks).

 

i have a reasonable basic understanding of some of the "why" aspects of metabolism plateaus (body gets more efficient at using calories over time; body's survival mechanism kicks in when it suspects food is becoming scarce, and so forth...).

 

what i hope somebody here can help me understand, is the "what" aspects of metabolism plateaus. as in, "what is the body doing when metabolism plateaus?" as opposed to "why is the body's metabolism plateauing?"

 

if you don't have time to go into details, maybe somebody here can give me an analogy expressed in layman's terms that would shed some light on the "what" aspects? if there is a another forum that can better answer my questions, please point me to it?

 

thanks in advance for any knowledge anybody can share.

 

many thanks,

fett arsch

Edited January 25, 2011 by fett_arsch

[fett_arsch]

...maybe somebody here can give me an analogy expressed in layman's terms that would shed some light on the "what" aspects?

 

 

after googling "+metabolism +plateau" i now have a better understanding of what the body is doing in the situation of a weight loss plateau.

 

while on my daily cycling workout, i digested what i'd googled the night before and thought of an analogy: as i understand it, the situation of a weight loss plateau is analogous to the situation of joe consumer having to cut back when the economy is in a recession; much like joe consumer adjusts his spending so that he can "live on less" when he realizes the economy is on a down turn, the body - analogously - goes through biological adjustments that make it necessary for it to "live on less".

 

in economic boon times, joe consumer earned $2200 a day. and he spent every penny of it (say, $1600 on "essentials" like his mortgage, food, and whatnot; and, the remaining $600 spent on "luxury", "non-essentials" like, gadgets from the sharper image, cigarettes, hookers - or whatever).

 

analogously, under normal circumstances my metabolism might need to burn every single joule of 2200 kcals. except in a plateau - when my body detects that fewer kcals are coming in - my body makes adjustments in such a way, that it learns to "spend its money" much smarter. where it once needed 2200, it's adjusted it's spending habits so that now it can get by (and very comfortably, thank you very much) on just 1600; and because it's "spending smartly", that 1600 stretches just as far as the 2200 once did.

 

i look at the body hitting a weight loss plateau as being analogous to the once shop-aholic joe consumer turning into a penny-pinching miser during a recession.

[lemur]

after googling "+metabolism +plateau" i now have a better understanding of what the body is doing in the situation of a weight loss plateau.

 

while on my daily cycling workout, i digested what i'd googled the night before and thought of an analogy: as i understand it, the situation of a weight loss plateau is analogous to the situation of joe consumer having to cut back when the economy is in a recession; much like joe consumer adjusts his spending so that he can "live on less" when he realizes the economy is on a down turn, the body - analogously - goes through biological adjustments that make it necessary for it to "live on less".

 

in economic boon times, joe consumer earned $2200 a day. and he spent every penny of it (say, $1600 on "essentials" like his mortgage, food, and whatnot; and, the remaining $600 spent on "luxury", "non-essentials" like, gadgets from the sharper image, cigarettes, hookers - or whatever).

 

analogously, under normal circumstances my metabolism might need to burn every single joule of 2200 kcals. except in a plateau - when my body detects that fewer kcals are coming in - my body makes adjustments in such a way, that it learns to "spend its money" much smarter. where it once needed 2200, it's adjusted it's spending habits so that now it can get by (and very comfortably, thank you very much) on just 1600; and because it's "spending smartly", that 1600 stretches just as far as the 2200 once did.

 

i look at the body hitting a weight loss plateau as being analogous to the once shop-aholic joe consumer turning into a penny-pinching miser during a recession.

I've heard this logic regarding both metabolism and economics. It makes sense to me in terms of a fire, which consumes more as it burns hotter and consumes far less as it burns colder. I don't think the economics analogy works as well, at least not in the sense of a high-spending economy being more efficient because unlike a healthy individual with coordinated organ systems, the global economy consists of multiple individuals engaged in a variety of local and trans-local interdependencies. So while these interdependencies can increase efficiency of resource-usage in some ways, they can also result in unnecessary resource-expenditures in others. And unlike an individual with essentially limitless food-resources, the global economy has to deal with various forms of scarcity. If you were actually starving for lack of food, you probably wouldn't want to cycle 15 miles/day. Instead you'd probably be working on sitting still and burning as few calories as possible to fast in a way that would lead to health-problems as slowly as possible. You'd be happy with your extra weight/body-fat because it would be extra time on your countdown to starvation.

[fett_arsch]

... if there is a another forum that can better answer my questions, please point me to it?

 

who needs the Anatomy, Physiology and Neuroscience forum's "experts" when there's google?

 

• Definition of Weight Loss Plateau
• What Causes a Plateau in Weight Loss?
• Getting past a weight-loss plateau
  

[SMF]

Fett_arsch:

 

Let me get this straight-- You came to this website to ask a question and you now wish that we all should have just referred you to the internet? If you are an honest poster, the least you could do is summarize and post the information you have found for others to learn.

 

SM