How many calories are in one point, is there a clear ratio?
Just looking at your foods, I'd say the opinions above are right... you're most likely not eating enough. Throwing exercise into the mix only worsens the situation.
Your body can only handle so much "stress."
Stress comes in many forms, but for the most part, your body handles it all the same. Examples of stress include:
- Dieting (you're deficient, energetically speaking)
- Exercise
- Job
- Freaking out about plateaus
When you're body's ability to manage stress is outpaced, funky things can happen. For instance, your body can hold the hell out of water which will really throw off accuracy of fat loss. While you might lose 1-2 lbs of fat in a month, you might be retaining 3-4 lbs of water which would completely mask any loss of fat.
That's why the scale isn't always an accurate tool for assessing fat loss. Which by the way, is what you should be most concerned with. Losing WEIGHT and losing FAT require two extremely different mindsets... and you should only concern yourself with the latter.
Another way your body can adapt once it's ability to handle stress is outpaced is screwing with metabolism. Various hormonal loops come into play such as insulin, thyroid, leptin, gherlin, peptide yy, etc all having an impact on metabolic rate and satiety.
I could ramble on and on, however the moral of the story is quite simple:
You have to manage stress according to a) your ability to handle it and b) your current environment.
As an example, think of your body's ability to manage stress a a 5 gallon bucket. You have some stress from everyday life which takes up a gallon. You're stressing about your weight which takes up another gallon. You're dieting which takes up another gallon.
Then, you cut calories (which has a powerful influence on all this) to a point that's very low given your stats, and you're adding 2+ gallons of stress to the bucket.
Once that things starts overflowing, the adaptations I discussed above start to show up.
B/c you stress more as time goes on about the scale, you throw exercise into the mix now to fight against the plateau. Unbeknown to you though, you're already overwhelming your "bucket" so adding more stress (exercise) is only worsening the situation.
So what do you do from here?
First we need to get a firm grasp of WW points and how they play out in terms of calories. Maybe WW isn't the right plan for you anymore... it has you too focused on points and not focused enough on real nutrition and providing your body with the right amount of energy (calories) for your body and environment. When is the last time you took a break from "dieting"?
Once we get those things figured out... alleviating some of the stress would be the logical progression. That would entail taking some rest from exercise and bumping up your food intake. We'll cross that bridge when we get there.
Also, an important question would be, how consistent are you with 18 points? Are you very rigid, as in, you don't eat more than that hardly ever? Even on weekends and such?
I only ask b/c the problem is one of two things:
1. You outpaced your body's stress management system, as mentioned above.
or
2. You're eating more than you realize or you aren't 100% consistent with 18 points every single day.
You could throw clinical issues into the mix too, like screwed up thyroid and such... but I wouldn't concern yourself with that just yet.
Sorry for the drawn out response.
