Cutting progress plateau

@amandal Make sure you're getting enough sleep.

It's common for weight to fluctuate. If you weigh yourself daily, average the numbers every week and you'll see the downward trend.

If you're starting to plateau or hit diet fatigue, I sometimes fix that by boosting my calories up to maintenance for a couple of days.
 
@jujus I’ve been sleeping enough luckily my sleep is pretty dialed in. Thankfully I was just holding water and have lost weight so I’ll continue doing what I was doing but I will keep that in mind
 
@amandal Wait 1-2 more weeks and see if the scale goes down. If not, it’s time for a diet break. Also, do not incorporate extra cardio. It’ll do you more harm than good.
 
@dawn16 I don’t do cardio at all. I walk sometimes but other than that my only exercise is hypertrophy training. I did start to see the scale weight go down and based on how much I weighed I think I’m close to 154lb (weighed in at 156.4 after eating a big meal and drinking water) so I think I’m gonna keep doing what I’m doing and if I stagnate for 3 weeks or more then I’ll incorporate more cardio
 
@amandal I was around that low of calories I think though I didn't track super hard at 5'9.5 and 160 lbs at 12% bf. I wanna say I was targeting 16-1800 or less than 2k and at the end I had an arbitrary end goal I wanted to hit so I did some really low calorie days and basically fasted but had protein shakes sometimes to keep on track if I needed a boost. Or if I could handle it might do a 1200 calorie day once in a while. Thats not recommended and arbitrary date goals are kind of dumb for optimal Hypertrophy, but it was challenging and motivating and I wanted to prove I could do it, so I did. And I don't compete, so it doesn't really matter if I wasn't optimal. It was fun.

I took daily weigh ins and weekly averages and didn't put a ton of stock into a single weekly weigh in because if you for some reason held more water or were bloated or constipated 3 days of the week and it made you look like you hadn't lost fat when you had, then you may change something preemptively. I usually would give something 2 or 3 weeks at least before making big changes. If I can tell how it's going based on feel I may also just cut like 1 piece of cheese here and there, or lower a portion size a bit, or have less milk in my coffee or things like that out of kind of a general understanding and feel and experience.

I think I also usually end up seeing maintenance periods during bulks and cuts where body composition improves and eventually weight loss starts again without major changes, although minor changes may be needed to Kickstart it but usually that period helped to even things out so you don't gotta do a huge drop in calories afterwords to start it again if that makes sense. Just a small Deficit is usually more effective after a maintenence period. They are also recommended by some every like I think 6-8 weeks on bulks and cuts.

But even if you were eating at maintenance, that just means you'll be building muscle more optimally than you did on your cut and won't be gaining fat by definition, so you'll recomp some. Then once you have the data and make the change to the diet you'll start losing fat.

How committed are you to the cut? I'm curious if you'd considered getting about where you are now or like 15-18% and then maintaining and recomping some before deciding how to proceed?
 
@sehnsucht9 Yeah I have started to lose weight again so im gonna stick with what I’m doing while adding more cardio and go from there. I am pretty committed to the cut tho Im planning on stopping during mid June if im where I wanna be body fat% wise but if not I’ll just keep going till im where I wanna be.(within reason)
 
@jcreigns That’s fine. I wasn’t able to train for a while so I lost a lot of muscle (partially tore bicep,tricep tendinitis,rotator cuff tendinitis) and gained some fat so I wanted to lose weight before I started bulking and training really hard.
 
@amandal I'm almost 56 yo and have been in a recomp since late October of last year. At 20 yo, I honestly think you've cut calories too far.

With a BMR of roughly 1700, I started my recomp in the 1500 calorie range. That worked for a couple of months and then I hit a plateau. I had gone from 207 to about 185. I sat there for a three or four week period with not much changing.

I started focusing on steps in January and at the same time increasing my calories a little bit at a time (reverse dieting). I have gone from about 6k steps a day to averaging 15.9k per day last week plus my PPL split 6 days per week. My calories have gone up gradually to 2,400 per day with a TDEE of around 2800 to 3000. I'll be adding more calories soon. My average bodyweight last week was 177.5. I'm far leaner and more muscular by eating more calories and making sure I get my steps in each day.

You can only starve your body for so long before your metabolism starts working against you and you will lose hard earned muscle mass along with it.. If your goal is to be leaner and you're not in a rush, start adding calories a little bit at a time (50 to 100 per week, IE go from 1500 to 1600). Let your body acclimate to the extra calories. Once the scale starts going down again consistently, add another 50 to 100. Repeat this process until the scale is moving downward in smaller increments.

I've been at 2400 calories for about 3 to 4 weeks now. On average, my bodyweight drops by about 1/4 to 1/2 pound per week and I am seeing very good bodyfat changes in the mirror without feeling fatigued or looking flat. It's a slower process for sure, but will help preserve muscle mass while chipping away at the bodyfat.
 
@runningfromlawlessness Will try this. I’ll bump up to 1600 calories and stick with that for 2-3 weeks and see where I’m at. Thank you for the reply. Also gonna start walking more I’m planning on walking about 4 miles a day.
 
@caliqt I did recalculate and I should still be losing over a pound a week. I’m assuming it’s water weight after reading a lot of these replies
 
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