What do you do with the rest of the dessert / cookie??? 
Iâd be happy if I could just have one danish / croissant at the buffet, let alone just half of one! 
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Has anyone here plateaued in their weight loss journey? Iâd love to hear your experiences.
Iâve dropped over 5kg (78kg to 73kg) over the past year through calorie counting and cycling as my primary sport. My body composition has improved significantly, but I just canât seem to break through the 72kg barrier. My target is 68kg (recommended for my height), but Iâve been stuck for a while now.
I donât drink alcohol and maintain a caloric deficit during the week. However, the weight keeps seesawing, especially with strength training and creatine supplementation. Iâll hit 71.8kg one week, then after a big ride or strength session, Iâm back up to 73-74kg.
I understand thereâs water retention and glycogen storage at play, but the fluctuations are confusing and a bit discouraging. Has anyone dealt with similar plateaus? What strategies worked for you?
Yep, Iâve been there. How are your sleep and stress levels? Sometimes those can stall progress. A deload week might help?
That said, if your body composition is still improving, it may just take more time. More muscle and less fat will help with hormone signaling and further weight loss. Dropping 5kg already is a huge achievement.
If youâre data driven, it can also help to log all of your weight fluctuation trends. It is almost certainly water retention and inflammation which is expected after big efforts. You could log your water consumption if you really wanted to know, but I think the key is to zoom out on trends and recognize that these are normal physiological processes at work.
Have been there too. Good weight loss progress over many months then, bang, plateau & nothing for 8/10 weeks.
Thereâs only one bit of advice I can give you- stick with it! Whatever youâve been doing has been working and will work again. The next bit to lose is just âstickyâ.
One bright point on all this is Iâve found that if you do stay consistent, when you get through that plateau things start to move quite quickly again.
Ha, good question. Save it for tomorrow or my wife eats it because she was gifted with an incredible high BMR and can lose weight while eating cake. I sometimes buy an ice cream dessert and it lasts me 4 days or so.
Macrofactor say they donât integrate with activity trackers because âdonât seem to do a particularly good job of estimating energy expenditureâ.
So when you do a 2000+ kcal workout, it simply doesnât know about it and recommends to eat rest day amounts of food? How do you deal with that?
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I believe the setpoint theory has merit, from watching myself and others, over the past 25 years. Sorry if this is obvious and basic, but the pattern I see goes as follows:
The initial pattern is weight loss, because the stressor (cycling) is novel. You are wildly inefficient and simply thinking about the bike burns calories.
Over time you become more efficient, but you maybe go further and âharderâ so the stimulus is still strong.
At the same time in your journey, you reduce excess calories so everything goes swimmingly!
But, eventually we become efficient, we develop patterns, we max out our time/intensity, and our body (which is an amazing adaptation machine) reduces our energy expenditure for a given ride.
We eventually hit a weight âsetpointâ from which our body doesnât really like to move, without a substantial and sustained stressor. Or a novel stressor.
And all this time, typically, our focus is on âweightâ as the metric vs looking at fat loss and body comp. This is, in my opinion, similar to looking at speed as your only metric for performance on a bike ride (I know, terrible analogy but I think you get my point). So once weight loss stops we feel like we arenât accomplishing our goal.
Whatâs my point? Adding in granular metrics like fat free mass, fat mass etc can help you feel like you are still making progress. Introducing resistance exercise to build or maintain muscle is, in my opinion, a necessary thing and while it may not help you lose âweightâ it will help your shift the balance.
Anyways. Not sure what Iâm getting at beyond, this is the pattern that all cyclists with a focus on weight loss follow. The body LOVES to find homeostasis and will find sneaky ways to reduce energy expenditure to maintain its setpoint. Hair growth, bone density, nail growth etc⌠I think RED-S is a perfect example of the body doing just that.
Do I have any real suggestions?
Weight isnât a great metric, body comp is likely more useful.
Donât drink your calories (I think Dan John said that).
Fuel your exercise, donât starve it, because your body will balance it out and you will likely just lose muscle.
Set point isnât immutable fact, it just makes it tougher to move the needle once the ânoob gainsâ are gone.
Your body is fucking amazing, so approach it with curiosity and respect. Itâs a dialogue and continuous experimentation.
Donât let your âtrainingâ lead to a reduced amount of movement through the rest of the day.
Lift something and move in novel patterns. Getting really good at a very specific thing doesnât typically lead to weight-loss.
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Iâm curious that weâre almost 50 replies in here and noone has questioned âwhyâ yet. Everyone has just gotten on with the assumption that âweight loss = goodâ.
OP, Iâm not saying you need to justify your circumstances to anyone, I just want to make sure that as a community weâre not just leaping straight to answers without understanding the initial situation and the goals.properly Remembering that half of any group is going to be âabove averageâ, and individuals tend to have a natural BMI that they will gravitate to.
Iâm not a dietitian, nutritionist, psychologist, physiologist, or any sort of sports professional, I just want to know that the advice is healthy and constructive. So Iâd echo the advice to see a professional in the space rather than use an internet forum.
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Thanks Matty, the thread definitely spiraled into a nice discussion and lots of opionions on how to achieve goals.
For me personally I like seeing how others do this. my experience with weight loss professionals/dieticians the ones I have seen in the past just recommend a bog standard meal plan without taking cycling into account.
Hi Frank,
As a coach and previously Elite racer, Iâve been in this situation myself and worked with plenty of others who have as well.
A few key rules:
- Never try and shift weight too quickly as that will not be sustainable
- Ensure itâs fat not muscle
- Most people think they need to get lighter than they really donât need to
- Donât fast or go low carb when intensity is high
- Gym work is your friend
- Sugar is not the enemy
Elaborating on those, the main one really is donât have the focus of shifting fat, have the focus of building power as this will increase W/Kg anyway and make you faster on all terrain.
The key things Iâve found work with athletes are how you tailor your fuelling and periodise it. For example, 100g of sugar during a ride goes to fuelling the efforts and glycogen replenishment after. 100g of sugar 1hr before bed messes with sleep and ends up stored as fat. Same energy intake, very different outcome.
High protein and no alcohol are good measures youâve already taken. Iâd say itâs then a case of cutting simplified sugars from your diet outside of training. Pre, during, and post ride easy to digest carbs are essential for performance. Greater performance and fitness gains also enhances ability to cut fat. Hence why often itâs a long term process.
If you ever want to go lower energy on rides, easy endurance rides are key. You likely donât need 120g/hr carbs for those unless you do a Tadej and ride at 320w for Z2. 40-60g is often more appropriate and enough to reduce cravings after, but this is a case by case basis. Fuel the training well, you wonât crave sugars and such later in the day. Plus you will be better recovered for the next training session.
But never go low energy on high intensity or you compromise the session and the training adaptations.
Also gym work, it maintains muscle mass when doing calorie deficit work, enhances metabolic rate, and has both a host of training benefits as well as longevity, health, and injury prevention benefits.
Happy for you to drop me an email if youâve got further questions (andy@atpperformance.uk) not plugging the business, just happy to help.
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Thanks for asking the question, Frank! I am struggling with all of these issues and it is encouraging to hear all the strategies discussed in such a balanced and detailed way.
I love this! And I love the other comments here that ask us to question our motivations and our perceived need to lose weight.
I struggle with lifelong body shame and fear that is inherent in the culture, and I also use food to self-medicate for things that food doesnât fix. I donât want to be motivated to weigh less by a desire to look a certain way, but having excess weight and binge eating donât lead to happiness either. I think I will feel better and stronger if I can find a healthy weight for myself that I can maintain without too many mental structures to keep track off. Weight loss/managing is a physical thing but it also an emotional and psychological journey with myself. Thatâs why I the point about curiosity and respect for the body. Thanks!
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That is just going to nail recovery. âsome youtuberâ says it all really.
Fantastic and realistic advice. It echos a lot of what has helped me remain at a healthy weight for over 2 years. And it all came from my FiancĂŠe who has a masters in dietetics.
My personal experience, as someone that is usually the biggest in any group ride at 90kg, is you will not see any appreciable power loss when losing weight. Youâve built the power and your FTP will still be there. You will positively see an increase in w/kg.
as for actually losing weight, the only way Iâve been successful is tracking calories. Learning when to eat is as important as what to eat. But any diet, fasting, etc, always just comes back to eat fewer calories than you burn.
I try to fuel rides better, then have a super healthy snack immediately after to try to take away the appetite asking for a huge feed later in the day.
This is huge and under appreciated. Eat on the bike - pretty much as much as you want. Youâll end up eating less.
Yup. I try to have a healthy post-ride shake or snack waiting in the car(or the fridge) for immediately after the ride. That helps me make better choices later.
Too much time in Tempo/Threshold is whatâs causing the ravenous hunger after rides and neutralizing your weight loss. Add some lower intensity zone 2 rides on top of 1-2 higher intensity rides to maintain top-end power. I was in this same position quite recently, it was challenging to hold myself back and stay in Zone 2 (I do allow for Zone 3 on the hills, so itâs not all boring and plodding), but it was shocking how much less hungry I felt after these rides.
I also set up a specific page on my head unit for endurance rides that hid power data and focused on heart rate (current and average), I realized the period of my cycling career that I saw more weight loss was early on when I didnât have a power meter, once the power data was available, I put too much focus on maximizing those numbers and pushed myself into those higher zones that spur the hunger and limit weight loss potential.
Youâre doing a lot right, and some small tweaks will get you where you want to be!
In regard to target weight according to height:
I think if you are as close as a few kg / 10â
, canât you claim to have basically reached the goal?
I believe there is too much natural variation between individual bodies to make weight according to height such a precise metric. Personally I would shift the focus to other fitness targets at this points.
I decided to use the the Athletes Food Coach app. Started in mid December and I have lost 12lb since. FTP remains the same.
It gave me really good advice. And it is easy to follow the recommendations.
Another perk of the App is that my partner can now mock me about the omnipresent scale.