Details of my (35m) routine and progress at the end. My eventual goal involves both losing weight and gaining muscle.
I have been on a weight loss journey since roughly the New Year, and my progress was very good up to about April, but throughout May I feel like I'm plateauing hard. My goal is more about body fat percentage than weight per-se (and I am carefully tracking the difference). But I've had multiple days in May where I took in almost exactly my measured BMR, worked out, and still gained body-fat-percentage.
So I'm finding that I'm cutting calories to what feels like the minimum sustainable, I'm stepping up my exercise, and I feel constantly exhausted and my weight, BMI, and body fat % have all oscillated within a pretty narrow band rather than actually moving.
I assumed that my journey would look like: step 1 - lose weight until I'm safely out of the "obesity" range and then step 2: bulk/cut cycle gaining muscle and losing fat until I like the way that looks. Today I find myself asking myself "Is it productive to 'go around' a plateau in step 1 by just saying 'Okay, I'll bulk now' and shift focus for a month or two to muscle gain?". I get the impression it's what the new personal trainer I just got would recommend, although I know for him success is more about the pounds I can squat and press than the pounds I weigh in at.
But even more than the decision about whether to focus on muscle gain (and accept that some limited fat gain will come with that) is the meta-decision. How do I know if I'm thinking this because it's a good idea, or if my decision-making is being affected by just the fact that I'm tired and hungry all the time? If I had set numerical goals for myself ahead-of-time it would be easier to judge. This sounds like a good idea to me right now, but I have enough self-awareness to know that it's suspicious that what seems like a good idea is also what feels like it would be more comfortable and easy. And I don't know how to know if I should pivot, or just try harder at the "how to break a plateau" steps. How do you know when to listen to your body vs when your body has different goals than your mind?
I'm 35m, 5'9.5" (~175cm) starting weight of 250lbs (~113kg) at about 34-35% body fat in Jan 1, current weight of 206lbs (93.5kg) at 26.2% body fat.
Most of the progress has come from caloric restriction, I don't eat anything I can't count the calories on, keeping at roughly "as low as possible" while not dipping below BMR. And been maximizing protein intake within that as well (lot of proteins shakes, chicken breast and tuna). Being going to the gym consistently ~5 days a week, but at low-to-medium intensity, just trying to keep the metabolism from dropping too much and from losing too much muscle mass (I've lost only 7.2lbs of muscle to the ~44lb total weight loss)
I'm using a Renpho scale/body composition monitor that is (at least supposedly) giving me my weight split out by body fat%, water weight, etc so I think I'm already correctly accounting for the normal fluctuations of water weight. And I measure consistently daily first thing in the morning after the restroom before consuming anything to eliminate variables as much as I can. That's also what's giving me my estimated BMR.
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from loseit - Lose the Fat https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/13ulqmo/when_to_trust_myself/
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