Veterans, PLEASE share with all of us how you broke your weight loss stall! I know that everyone is different but it would do us good to hear EXACTLY what broke YOUR stall!


Thank you for taking the time to share.

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271/214/150

Truth: No one knows what breaks their stall.

Ways I think I've succeeded: Upping Water Intake. Upping Exercise amount. Eating more food.

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Sven
305/218/200
Start Date: 1/1/06

Welcome to low-carb eating.
The food's not bad here.

Patience, lots and lots of patience! And faith that what worked before will work again with a few tweaks.

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my blog

I wonder if I will get into trouble for saying something as evil as this: I ate junk (twinkies - you name it) to break my stall. It is crazy but I think when I did that it shook up my system and I started losing again. Of course I had been stalled for a month, drank lots of water, had enough cals/carbs and exercise. My body was just stuck in a rut.

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After about a year of this WOE, I stopped at 137 lbs for months. I decided that this (down close to 30 lbs from where I started) was a great improvement - and a bit more than I had hoped for anyway. Since I felt so good, I just kept doing what I was doing. Over the next year I dropped another 25 lbs.

Been in that neighborhood since.

I can't say anything about what I was doing changed. It just sort of happened.

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i have to watch for carb creep, too much of the "just a little bit" syndrome, and foods i'm eating with high cals. so for me, watching what i eat more closely, adding more exercise, and upping that water, eating more veggies--along with patience and faith, like rob mentioned--are the most helpful.

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Fat Baggage- Is Yours Packed?

Patience has always been the number one thing for me...

Second would be looking for "Carb Creep" like was mentioned above...

YMMV but what "always" (take lightly) works for me is avoiding red meat. I do not know why (cause FAT content does not matter to my body as long as I'm LCing) but if I eat something like chicken for more than 3-4 days.. my weight loss starts back up again...

The only reason I'm not at my goal weight nowadays is cause of "cheats"...

Every time I get close to my goal weight.. I simply lose my mind and go back to eating "whatever" (fried chicken/beer-fried fish/french fries and "real" beer)... I balloon up 5-15 lbs and then it takes forever to lose that weight... (One week of eating...many months to lose the weight I put on..)

But (as I have mentioned many times in past posts...), I have come to the conclusion that Flour (gluten?) and/or sugar just totally destroys my stomach for 3-4 days after consuming (gas, cramps, etc). So avoiding most carbs (breading) has become extremely easy nowadays... so if I "coast" to my goal weight..I'm cool with that!

PS- Sorry for weaving off topic... Just had not posted in awhile so my mind is full of stuff...

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:silly:
Wolfman
207/178/175
Top Weight: 220 (Oct 2000)
Lowest Weight: 178 (Oct 2003/Dec 2006)

I don't know of many stall breakers but this is what I think.

I think when you are in a stall its good to think of how "maintaining" at a certain weight is much better than "gaining".

Seems after a long time at the diet I think the rate of weight loss get slower and slower. I think its because the body has less and less fat to actually lose.

I think that even 1 pound lost every 2 months is better than gaining 1 pound every 2 months. That's what keeps me going most times.

It's already been said... patience!!! Lots and lots of patience. And the fortitude not to get discouraged and use your stall as an excuse to eat off-plan.

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Katie
275/238/150
Restarted 01/08/2007
37 pounds lost!
http://justanotherfatgirl.blogspot.com

I am not in the camp of "have faith and keep doing what you've been doing". If one is see-sawing or in a long stall, say 6 weeks or more, there's probably something that needs to change to get back losing weight. It could be carb creep or it could be something else.

One thing that's easy to forget is that as you get smaller, your body's calorie requirement drops. It takes way more energy to maintain the metabolic processes and move an overweight body than a streamlined one. If you are no longer carrying the equivilent of a 30-lb backpack everywhere you go, you are burning fewer calories. So, what worked before may not keep working as you get closer to goal.

That means you may need to change things even if they worked well before. In my case, I would say things like, 'oh, yogurt doesn't stall me.. I was eating yogurt for months and still losing weight'. Well, uh... gee guess what? It did stall my weight loss when I was close to goal, because my body needed less fuel to run.

Losing those last 10 lbs took a lot of doing in my case - months. I kept going over the same territory - a vacation would come up, a special event, or I'd just go through an "indulgent" period. I finally realized that if I really wanted to break the "stall", I'd need to:

A. stop 'giving myself a break' by indulging more if it was a special occasion or out-of-town trip.
B. re-examine my food habits
C. stay consistent with exercise

B. was the hardest; it took tweaking, re-tweaking, and more tweaking... These are some of the tweaks I tried, one-by-one (and not necessarily in this order):

• Eliminated marginal foods - those high in fat and calories, but relatively low in nutrition: e.g., pork rinds, bacon, LC chips, LC candy (homemade).
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• Substituted a lower fat food for some high fat foods: e.g., half-and-half instead of cream, soy nuts instead of peanuts, flaxseed meal instead almond meal, etc.
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• Reduced meat/cheese portions by about 25% and replaced that with more low carb veggies.
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• Re-examined the foods I was buying everytime I went to the store. Some were habits I picked up along the way during OWL: e.g., LC tortillas, TJ's soy/flaxseed/corn chips, yogurt, LC shakes. I quit buying those foods weekly as staples and only bought them on rare occasion.

I must say that without the support of the LCE community, I don't think I would have made it. We had a thread going for those with only 10 to 20 pounds left to lose. There were 5 or 6 of us who posted regularly, shared our tweaks (it was easier to know I wasn't the only one giving up bacon that week, ya know?), and generally cheered each other on.

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~~~Teelbee
Back to GOAL!!!
start weight: 176/goal range: 137-134/now: 138
Reached goal in Aug. 2003 - 4rd year of maintenance.

Thanks to each of you for your input. This forum is always a big help!

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271/214/150