Plateau-ing??

[03gt]

Ok, I have been at the same weight for about 5 years. Luckily, I have lost some of the fat and added some muscle, but have always hovered around 200lbs, but a healthy 200lbs. I have gone to about 80% cardio lately to jumpstart my fat burning. For the past few weeks I have been on a 500 cal deficit, but can't seem to drop below 195. My goal is to lose weight before November, but if I can lose the fat and replace it with muscle over time, that would be fine also.

As far as cardio, steady-state, I can run up to 12 miles. I have recently switched to HIIT, and that seems to work.

Should I start lifting hard and work more on building lean mass now that I have hit a semi-plateau?

 

[mdawson2]

first of all i think 12 miles is impressive so congrats, im a runner so i know what that means to be able to do that I used to run 10 everyother day but it use to take me about 65min, whats your time on that by the way? as for the plateau have you been coming back up to mantenance at least once a week because your mbr might have slowed down to keep up with youeven though 20% is a good deficit our bodies always catch up w/ us eventually unless we change once in a while, also how many days of cardio are you doin and how much time each day especiialy with the HIT, a plateau just means you dont have a deficit anymore for what ever the reason, if your doin a lot of cardio I'd suggest lookin at your diet whats that like by the way?

 

[03gt]

I haven't been doing much distance running lately, but my 10-12 milers were about 80-90 minutes, nothing impressive. I definitely come back to maintenance a few times during the week. Diet consists of:

Breakfast: Egg whites, bagel, yogurt, protein shake (combination of these)
Snacks: Apple, almonds, bananas, clementines, cottage cheese, PB, protein shale, mixed berries
Lunch: Whole wheat bread with deli turkey, tuna
Dinner: Chicken breast, mixed veggies, broccoli, salmon, tilapia

Above is a combination (not everything on the list I eat everyday) what I eat on a daily basis. I eat the meals with healthy snacks in between. The weekend are semi-healthy, but they keep my sanity. I am just a hard gainer/loser.

 

[ChrisJG]

I'm curious. What exactly is a 'semi-plateau?'

If you've recently implemented a 500cal deficit into your diet and lost 5 lbs in a few weeks, where is the plateau? Your post seems to suggest this is the first time in 5 years you have tried reducing calories and you've lost weight.

Doesn't sound to me like you've hit a plateau at all, it sounds like you've started to see results.

Either way, hit the weights and post more info...you've confused me.

 

[mdawson2]

have you been taking your bf% you can not lose weight but still lose bf% which is whats important and that would actually be more better because it probably means your holding on to your muscle but im sort of confused to I reread your entry post and it said that you just started 2 weeks ago if you had a 500cal deficit and you went back up to mantenance on the weekend then that would be under 2lbs so nothing big anyway, a plateau normally comes after a while of repeating the same things over and over I'd say if you really wanna get picky take your bf% every week at the same time, your diet looks pretty good so as long as your portions are ok and your not binging onthe weekends the give it some time.

 

[03gt]

Sorry for the confusion. I'm not using plateau like it should be used. I've tried cutting many times before but cannot seem to dip below 195-197. I need to get some calipers and start taking my bf%.

 

[mdawson2]

i think calipers are a great idea, so as i understand it youve been kind of tryin to cut for a while but have always hit a similar plateau so ill give you some suggestions . you said before that you were spending 80/90min of cardio per session right? I tried to find an article i had read about cardio sometime ago but couldnt for some reason but in sum, cardio has a bell curve on fat loss, individuals who had the most fat loss were in the 40 to 50 min range/session after about 55/60min fat loss actually leveled off and decreased by some, the conclusion was that it simulated something like starvation mode for people trying to lose weight so even though at 90min you were burning a hell of a lot of calories your body was storing everything it could plus at 90 min your body can actually become aerobically adapt especially at steady state this would explainwhy HIT probably helped so much. my second suggestion is that for some off us decreasing bf% is hard (im one of them) so you may try carb cycling in addition to your 20%deficit. you may also try bulking up a bit and trying to cut again. For me this didnt work so well but ive seen it have great results for others, i'm one of those people who can easily put on muscle w/o much fat, but has alot of trouble cutting, so im tryin to cut to 8%bf then bulk but everyone is different.