I need tips to beat this plateau!

[sweetheart]

I've been loosing weight since New Year and have lost over a stone so far which is great. I have half a stone left to shift and I am finding it very hard.

Does anybody have any good tips to shock my body into continuing my weight loss? I'm doing lots of exercise but it's just not working - I haven't noticed any lean muscle building so I don't think it's that (my clothes would feel looser if it was!).

I haven't been an angel food wise I suppose but I have been making up for it with extreamly low food intake days (but like the Wendy method)

Please help - I am stressing out big time, especially as I have next week off work with the kids and I can see my diet going to crap. I'm really panicing about loosing control!

Your body has probably gotten used to what you are doing, exercise wise and with your eating.

What exercise are you currently doing? You need to step it up a notch and try something new! If you don't run, try it. It's a great calorie burner. If you are already running you need to up the intensity and distance. Try a running club whether you are a complete beginner or a regular runner. It's amazing the difference it makes!

Re: food. My main bit of advice is weigh everything. Portion size is key to weight loss or gain. You may well still be slightly over eating, as portions ate much smaller than we think!

Good luck with your final 7lbs. I know how hard it is (have about the same to go myself) and I had one plateau that lasted almost a month! Then I started running and it started shifting again. You'll get there!

Yes agree, change exercise maybe even change diet? I started with tesco diets totals (i guess like ww) and then changed to dukan when I got to plateau.

Agree re: running or try commitment to do 30 day shred every day for a month?

I have thought maybe I should change things up a bit but it's hard because:-

1. I am quite short of time and
2. I am training for a specific event at the moment and I HAVE to do a certain amount of the same exercise a week in order to prepare and
3. I also play a team sport which is unchangable

I did think for some of my training rather than working on distance I could try interval training and see if that works.

Food wise to be honest during the week I don't eat much at all. Weekends I do eat more but I know from years of dieting that if I eat more I won't shift the weight. My body requires very little in the way of food and all this eat more to get your metabolism stuff just doesn't work for me.

As an idea on average I do about 5 hous exercise a week, at the moment that is increased to about 7.5 because of the training I'm doing.

On a weekday I eat:-
breakfast - fruit
lunch - either fruit or crispbreads with light philli and ham
dinner - chicken salad / omlette & salad / low fat curry with 60g rice (which I do measure) etc.

Weekends are more hit and miss!

Well, taking your training circumstances into account, I would agree with interval training. Upping intensity like that should yield results. Try googling HIIT (high intensity interval training) sessions for ideas. You should find that interval training will help you with your event training too (bonus!). I would say, make sure you're eating enough to train. Strange as it sounds, your body needs the energy in order to work hard (so long as you don't over do it and it comes from good sources - protein, low fat dairy, low GI carbs). Hope that makes sense!

I think you need to eat more! Sounds like you are starving yourself. Try cutting carbs (and fruit) but eating more veg and protein. Limit fruit to one piece a day and see if that gets you off plateau. For me I don't lose when i eat fruit.

eg I eat (in weight loss phase)
2 egg omelette & 100g low fat natural yoghurt with 10g linseeds breakfast
Lunch salad with mackeral / cottage cheese / salmon / tuna (today was 80g salmon and 150g cottage cheese plus loads of salad)
Snack at 6pm 25g cashews.
Dinner meat / chicken and veg. Big portion. If you need carbs due to training weigh out 30g dry weight unless training very heavy (eg I did 10km run I'd eat more carbs). 60g dry weight rice is big portion.

On days where I do my long training session (usually about 3 hours) I do eat peanut butter on toast and a banana before I train and I am less strict about what I eat the rest of the day - a training session usually burns off about 2300 calories so I do let myself relax a bit on these days.

I have tried the high protein low carb thing before but I'm such a carb freak that I just can't hack it. I don't think a 60g portion of dried rice / pasta is much at all - given the oppertunity I could easily eat double that. I could say I'd give no carbing a go but I know myself and I know that I'd feel so restricted in my diet that I wouldn't be able to stick to it.

I agree that with your exercise regime that no-carbing is not a good idea, but its a common mistake for those doing high levels of exercise to eat too many carbs to compensate for the exercise and end up on a weight loss plateau.

I also think that its not a good idea to starve yourself all day and fruit not good weight loss food. Better to have bigger breakfast and lunch and smaller dinner.

60g of rice or pasta is over 200 calories, doesn't leave a lot for the rest of the meal (on non exercise day) assuming you've eaten proper breakfast and lunch.

If you don't want to low carb, how about porridge for breakfast? And cut the evening carbs down or out.