Hit a wall with the diet!

I've been on a diet for a couple months using a calorie counter app on my phone, called Noom. Basically it gives me about a 1700 calorie diet and "credits" me extra intake based on exercise. As I lose weight, the base intake is adjusted downward.

Following the app's guidelines closely and combining it with very regular exercise (I'm following the transition phase of Training for the New Alpinism), I managed to lose all the weight I'd gained last year after a knee injury, and then a few pounds more. At the start of the diet I was about 10 pounds above my "normal weight" (BMI 23.5) and now am about 3-4 pounds below it, at a BMI of about 23.0 and on the way to my goal of 22.5. (If you want to see some of the reasoning behind that goal, it can be found here mountainproject.com/v/bmi-a… and also in the fact that I'm guessing that will land me in the vicinity of 8% body fat, which seems like a good target, which I will then get estimated more accurately with a Bod Pod measurement.)

Up to this point, the diet has been very easy from a "suffering" standpoint, not really too hungry. But suddenly about a week ago, coinciding with arriving at the "4 pounds below baseline", the diet has become MUCH harder, with a ton of junk cravings and a lot more hunger. Weight loss has plateaued also. I hit a plateau once before during the diet, but without significant hunger pangs...upping the exercise (including some HIIT workouts) a little bit resolved that prior plateau.

My question: have people run into something similar in trying to get below their weight "set point"? Any thoughts on how to break through it? Some options:
1) Just deal with it, dieting is hard.
2) Take a week off from calorie restricting, and just go up to a "weight maintenance" level of intake (about 300 cal more than I'm currently doing) and then start the same diet again.
3) Leave the diet the same and up the exercise
4) Something else?

Note, not really looking for input on whether or not I should be trying to get to a BMI of 22.5 or not...I'm really curious to see how it'll affect my climbing. I know that getting down to 23 has felt really, really good, both on and off the rock.

Up the intake a little and continue through your alpine climbing program. The .5 BMI (and then some) will be gone by the end of the 8 months, for sure.

How much do you weigh/how tall are you? 1700 calories seems pretty low, how much have you been crediting yourself for the training time?

Have you been including a cheat day in your diet? I've seen it recommended to have a cheat day every week and just eat whatever otherwise your body will adapt to the caloric restriction.

"Just dealing with it" is pretty much guaranteed to fail. Hunger is a primal urge, and unless you are a monk, you will succumb to hunger.

Start eating low caloric density foods (generally high fiber vegetables). A LOT of them. Your stomach tells your brain it is full when it begins to be physically full. You won't be physically full off of pizza or coke or even just plain steak until you've eaten way too much. Your stomach has no idea how many calories you've consumed: only the volume of food you've consumed. Thus modern processed foods, with their high caloric density, are a real problem for a largely sedentary populace.

So you must shift your eating habits to consume lots of unprocessed foods of low caloric density. You can have the processed stuff, too, it just can't be the majority of your diet.

Keep exercising, and try to make small, gradual reductions in caloric intake. Quick weight loss rarely lasts.

Eliminate 100% of liquid calories: juice, soda, alcohol, if you can. At the very least, make them rare treats, not daily staples.

Look up info on the Pritikin method of healthy eating. Note: it's not a diet. A diet fails, pretty much universally. You have to make sure you change the way you live,

I've definitely hit "plateaus" where I had really strong cravings, strong enough that I rationalized burning 1500 cals on a treadmill afterwards. It's tough, specially when you eat crappy food with a high glycemic index like I do. I try to follow simple plans like, never have more than 1 cheat day in a row. No beverage calories. I also weigh all my portions to try and keep them manageable.

Also, if you really want to get your BF down super low you should look into carb cycling. Protein, Creatine, and BCAA's are your friends

Alexander Blum wrote:Up the intake a little and continue through your alpine climbing program. The .5 BMI (and then some) will be gone by the end of the 8 months, for sure.

That could be part of the issue...wanting to just continue the prior speed of loss, which may be hard as I get down towards a low body fat %...maybe just need to be more patient.

MarktheCPA wrote:How much do you weigh/how tall are you? 1700 calories seems pretty low, how much have you been crediting yourself for the training time? Have you been including a cheat day in your diet? I've seen it recommended to have a cheat day every week and just eat whatever otherwise your body will adapt to the caloric restriction.

6'2", 179-180 (ie BMI 23 as mentioned above).

I don't know what Noom's exact algorithm is, but it lines up pretty well with a rule of thumb I've seen previously: your weight in pounds times 11 kcal/pound will give you a good sense of your basal metabolic rate, and subtracting 300 cal from that will give you a pretty sustainable caloric deficit.

As I said above, 1800 calories (plus partial credits for activity) was perfectly easy to sustain when I weighed 193 and on down to 179, when it suddenly got very difficult.

The app does credit you for activity...most the app has given me thus far is about 2100 cals on days when I do a long Zone 1 run.

I have done some cheat days here and there, and am open to that, but the ones I've done, I've found that a) my appetite is pretty ramped up on the following day, sort of a hangover, and b) I REALLY cheat, getting up into the 3000-4000 calorie range with dessert and beer and steaks and such, and feel kind of bummed about all the miles of running that I've undone as a result. So I guess in the 10 weeks that I've been doing this I've had about 4 cheat days.

teece303 wrote:"Just dealing with it" is pretty much guaranteed to fail. Hunger is a primal urge, and unless you are a monk, you will succumb to hunger. Start eating low caloric density foods (generally high fiber vegetables). A LOT of them. Your stomach tells your brain it is full when it begins to be physically full. You won't be physically full off of pizza or coke or even just plain steak until you've eaten way too much. Your stomach has no idea how many calories you've consumed: only the volume of food you've consumed. Thus modern processed foods, with their high caloric density, are a real problem for a largely sedentary populace. So you must shift your eating habits to consume lots of unprocessed foods of low caloric density. You can have the processed stuff, too, it just can't be the majority of your diet. Keep exercising, and try to make small, gradual reductions in caloric intake. Quick weight loss rarely lasts. Eliminate 100% of liquid calories: juice, soda, alcohol, if you can. At the very least, make them rare treats, not daily staples. Look up info on the Pritikin method of healthy eating. Note: it's not a diet. A diet fails, pretty much universally. You have to make sure you change the way you live,

I'm pretty much doing all this, except for Pritikin... Have been doing what for ME personally was a fair amount of salad/veggies, but will try overcompensating and see how that goes!

Definitely no liquid calories...in particular I find that even a small amount of alcohol gives me sugar cravings very similar to cake/cookies/sugar, so I am not drinking at all for the moment. This is fine, because when you rarely drink, even one drink will make you feel kind of crappy.

josh villeneuve wrote:I've definitely hit "plateaus" where I had really strong cravings, strong enough that I rationalized burning 1500 cals on a treadmill afterwards. It's tough, specially when you eat crappy food with a high glycemic index like I do. I try to follow simple plans like, never have more than 1 cheat day in a row. No beverage calories. I also weigh all my portions to try and keep them manageable. Also, if you really want to get your BF down super low you should look into carb cycling. Protein, Creatine, and BCAA's are your friends

Would you call 8% "super low"? My thought is not much need (at the paltry level I climb at) to get much below 8%. At that point, I'm pretty sure I'll be able to confidently say that whatever is the issue, it won't be my weight! (It's probably not the issue NOW, but dropping to a BMI of 23 just feels like a different universe, so I want to peek just a little further down the road and see how that goes...)

Try not to expect immediate results, especially once you're looking to go below a BMI of 25, eh? Realistically, it might take months to go that last distance.

And as you get more into an average BMI range, your body had less fat reserves to make up any caloric deficit, so you actually need to start being careful about your caloric deficit.

Beware orthorexia.

And eating 3500 calories a day once in a blue moon is fine. It just can't be every day, or even every week.

So I didn't read the other posts cause I am lazy. Some of my points might have already been said and if so, sorry!
You said your BMI, which for athletes is not accurate. You also need to think of losing weight as much more complicated than calories out>calories in. While this is what makes you lose weight, there are a lot more factors that work with this. The biggest thing that will help you is to figure out when to eat and how much. Your metabolism is what you will have to work with the most. If you don't eat breakfast your metabolism will never reach the same peak as it would if you had. This means that if you eat right after you wake up, you will burn more calories through the day without doing anything. In the same way, make sure you eat every 2-3 hours to keep your metabolism up. The biggest way to lose weight though is just to stay active. Through the day do small bits of exercise or at least something. Walk to lunch, crank out some push ups in the bathroom, whatever isn't super weird. Then make sure you don't eat within a few hours before going to bed. It is also important to note that you should always think about what kind of calories you are taking in. If you are doing a lot of athletic things and trying to build lean muscle. You will need a lot of protein to help your muscles recover, carbohydrates to fuel your work outs, and fat to not die. On rest days, eat a bit more protein cause you aren't having to do as much but you need to recover a lot. There are a bunch of small things that can add up to huge effects. Once again sorry if I am repeating other people or if this is not what you are looking for. The best way to lose weight is to learn everything you possibly can though. Grab a nutrition text book from the library and go nuts! Health>scales

Michael G. wrote:So I didn't read the other posts cause I am lazy. Some of my points might have already been said and if so, sorry! You said your BMI, which for athletes is not accurate. You also need to think of losing weight as much more complicated than calories out>calories in. While this is what makes you lose weight, there are a lot more factors that work with this. The biggest thing that will help you is to figure out when to eat and how much. Your metabolism is what you will have to work with the most. If you don't eat breakfast your metabolism will never reach the same peak as it would if you had. This means that if you eat right after you wake up, you will burn more calories through the day without doing anything. In the same way, make sure you eat every 2-3 hours to keep your metabolism up. The biggest way to lose weight though is just to stay active. Through the day do small bits of exercise or at least something. Walk to lunch, crank out some push ups in the bathroom, whatever isn't super weird. Then make sure you don't eat within a few hours before going to bed. It is also important to note that you should always think about what kind of calories you are taking in. If you are doing a lot of athletic things and trying to build lean muscle. You will need a lot of protein to help your muscles recover, carbohydrates to fuel your work outs, and fat to not die. On rest days, eat a bit more protein cause you aren't having to do as much but you need to recover a lot. There are a bunch of small things that can add up to huge effects. Once again sorry if I am repeating other people or if this is not what you are looking for. The best way to lose weight is to learn everything you possibly can though. Grab a nutrition text book from the library and go nuts! Health>scales

I think the calories have to be accounted for, especially at the level I was eating, probably well over 3000, or even 4000, most days. I have no idea how I kept my weight stable at 193! And like I said, calorie counting has been a home run for me up to this point, so I'm sure not going to stop doing that because of a 1-week hiccup!

I eat at least 4, usually 6 times per day.

BMI seems to track well for me and tracked well in the thread I cite in my original post, I'm going to stick with that one. As I said, will be correlating with Bod Pod once I get to the BMI target. Even if BMI has issues globally, it works well for me specifically.

I like the idea of throwing in a few sets of pushups here and there to boost metabolism, thanks for that idea!

What would you estimate your BF% to be at right now? As you approach single digits and get closer to your goal of 8% the rate of fat loss will slow down.

The complexity of dieting increases greatly for every percentage point below ~10% for males, unless you hit the genetic lottery. You may actually need to up the calories and reduce activity to get more consistent fat loss. Check out some of the writing on this subject by Lyle Mcdonald: BodyRecomposition.com

kerwinl wrote:What would you estimate your BF% to be at right now? As you approach single digits and get closer to your goal of 8% the rate of fat loss will slow down. The complexity of dieting increases greatly for every percentage point below ~10% for males, unless you hit the genetic lottery. You may actually need to up the calories and reduce activity to get more consistent fat loss. Check out some of the writing on this subject by Lyle Mcdonald: BodyRecomposition.com

I'm guessing (based on a year-old Bod Pod measurement when I was at about the same weight) that I'm in the 10-11% range. Interested to learn more about this "more food, less work" diet, sounds like an awesome improvement over what I've been doing! Thanks for the link, I will check that out...

+1 spending some time on Lyle McDonald's Body Recomp site. Lots of good info if you are interested in learning about the nuances of fat loss and maintenance.

Some of these may have already been mentioned but some tips that helped me in the past:

- calorie cycling. Basically you have a certain number of "high" calorie days and " low" calorie days, such that your average calorie intake is lower but you still get to feel "full" on the high days and on low days you can deal with the suffer fest because you know you will get to eat tomorrow
- lean gains style meal planning. Google for more info but that part I found useful was having small meals during the day and a bigger meal for dinner. Same psychology as the low and high days -- you deal with the suffering because you know you will be "full" later
- eat tons of veggies. They have minimal calorie content but help you feel "full". Also allegedly good for you.
- cardio. Lots.

Look into an app called nutri-timing. It prevents one from going too far into caloric surplus or deficit (fat production or catabolism which come into play with a lean gains/surplus+deficit approach).

The discussion is a bit of a moot point without definitive BF percentages.

If you are truly within 10-11% BF range you're at the so called crux of our adventure. Do you have decent abdominal definition?

One thing you can do to kickstart the process is fasted walking or jogging in the mornings. I am personally not a fan of fasted training though.

Carb cycling may prove helpful, but people tend to underestimate their BF% and it is really only useful sub %10.

You can and should absolutely be able to get to %8 on a whole food diet. I would not recommend supplements at this time especially if your diet is not %100 clean.

Opt, your profile indicates that you are on the older side of climbers. Good on you for taking your training and diet seriously, but remember that recomp at your age will take longer especially if trying to drop weight AND expect your alpine training to progress.

From your replies in New alpinism
I am also definitely having some issues with recovery...kind of shuffling and adjusting as I go. I've settled on feeling like I shouldn't be a slave to the actual days I have scheduled, and if a particular body part is saying "I'm worked!" I flip what's scheduled forward and do something else. But I discovered that Z1 is harder than I thought when I realized that I was running late for something and turned my Z1 bike ride into a Z3 bike ride...and found I had very little to give in my quads!

The main thing I'm noticing is actually not a great thing at all coming into spring climbing season: because I'm doing less in the climbing gym, my fingers are getting weaker. Current thought is to add a little hangboard workout to the strength training days. Another thought would be that doing the this pullup workout might make a lot more sense to start in January!

Food is key to recovery. I think you may be trying to take things a bit too fast and rush the process. Dropping to %8 from %11 should be a long slow process in order to retain the most muscle mass. (A month/% bf to drop would be a fair estimate). I would bump up your caloric intake a bit to improve your recovery and lengthen your time-frame a bit. If you don't you'll be in for a long sluggish process when you start your max strength phase which will be a serious CNS drain.

source:CSCS candidate

Ryan Watts wrote:Some of these may have already been mentioned but some tips that helped me in the past: - calorie cycling. Basically you have a certain number of "high" calorie days and " low" calorie days, such that your average calorie intake is lower but you still get to feel "full" on the high days and on low days you can deal with the suffer fest because you know you will get to eat tomorrow - lean gains style meal planning. Google for more info but that part I found useful was having small meals during the day and a bigger meal for dinner. Same psychology as the low and high days -- you deal with the suffering because you know you will be "full" later - eat tons of veggies. They have minimal calorie content but help you feel "full". Also allegedly good for you. - cardio. Lots.

I was going to mention calorie cycling but Ryan got to it. Basically it takes a lot of stress offs of your diet since you have days you "go for it" (low calories/low carb) then you have days you take it easy and "refeed" (higher than maintenance calories).

This helps your thyroid not shut down which it probably is if you've been in a caloric deficit for a long while now.

5.samadhi wrote:This helps your thyroid not shut down which it probably is if you've been in a caloric deficit for a long while now.

5.sam, it's a bit more complicated than that. The thyroid is very responsive to stress, but adapts accordingly. New blows to the metabolism (lack of sleep, change in diet, change in exercise plan, etc). All these factors can lower thyroid function, but after a longer duration the thyroid seems to adapt and return to baseline ( ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?te…). A severely restricted diet can lower thyroid function, but that is due to reduced metabolism in general, and is not true across the board ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/234…

Further, similar to insulin, the body becomes more efficient at absorbing TSH during an exercise regimen. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?te… --> a lower need for TSH

Again, calorie cycling works for some, but for someone on an alpine style training protocol I wouldn't personally recommend it especially if recovery time is an issue.

WillamR wrote: 5.sam, it's a bit more complicated than that. The thyroid is very responsive to stress, but adapts accordingly. New blows to the metabolism (lack of sleep, change in diet, change in exercise plan, etc). All these factors can lower thyroid function, but after a longer duration the thyroid seems to adapt and return to baseline ( ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?te…). A severely restricted diet can lower thyroid function, but that is due to reduced metabolism in general, and is not true across the board ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/234… Further, similar to insulin, the body becomes more efficient at absorbing TSH during an exercise regimen. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?te… --> a lower need for TSH Again, calorie cycling works for some, but for someone on an alpine style training protocol I wouldn't personally recommend it especially if recovery time is an issue.

Thanks a lot for all the replies...

Seems like there is a lot of consensus around the "eat more" approach, which makes sense: it's logical to me that trying to recover from a training stress would be hard if I'm eating less than my basal metabolic requirement (ie, less than my body needs to maintain its current (rather than improved and stronger) state). I think WilliamR's advice to be a little more patient is probably very wise also...

The other issue that's coming up is that the level of cravings are such that in the past week or so there have been multiple days where, for the first time since the diet started, the diet keeps getting jettisoned altogether. Not good.

So I think what I'll try to start is:
-add back the basal deficit I've been maintaining, ie, eat 300 calories more than Noom is recommending for me, in addition to whatever "credit" Noom gives me for exercise.
-really crank up the salad!

The advantage of these modifications is that I can just tack them onto the system that I'm already using and that (up until a week ago) was working well, as opposed to getting into a whole new system with the cycling and such. If those changes fail, I'll make a bigger change. Seem reasonable?

Again, I really appreciate the input...I'll report back in a couple of weeks.

WillamR wrote: If you are truly within 10-11% BF range you're at the so called crux of our adventure. Do you have decent abdominal definition?

Could you expand on that "crux" comment a little?

Also, how do you define abdominal definition?