Do you believe in stalls?

x-no-archive: yes

Quoted message said:

I mean like this:

A human person goes on a diet. They are thrilled to see they are not
in fact going to have to buy two tickets every time they travel by air
after all. Encouraged, they continue to watch their scale weight
tumble happily downward but at some point the weight loss stops.

Or has it just paused?

Do you believe that this situation means that a persons' body is just
resting and trying to achieve homeostasis at that weight, and when it
fails miserably at this it will drop more mass? Inevitably? Or do you
believe that there are stuck points regardless and without heroic
efforts a person could conceivably sit there forever waiting for his
muffin top to deflate?

What is the standard amount of scale-gazing one should do before
staging some sort of attack?

What sort of horse is recommended lately for such attacks?

c
The above is figurative. I will not eat a horse.

In the past, I've experienced stalls of 6 weeks in length, usually
happening first after the first three weeks of rapid loss. Sticking
with my plan eventually led to breaking the plateaus, with a sudden
whoosh of a few lbs at time til the next plateau.

Think marathon, this is not a sprint.

Susan

Jackie Patti said:

Yes, it'd be annoying if all the toilets were just out in the open.

I gather that you don't wilderness hike then. Well, there are neigher
stalls nor toilets.

Yes, it'd be annoying if all the toilets were just out in the open.

--
http://www.ornery-geeks.org/consulting/

Jackie Patti said:

Yes, it'd be annoying if all the toilets were just out in the open.

--http://www.ornery-geeks.org/consulting/

😉. Thanks Jackie.

c
hadn't quite looked at it like that.

Starting off on Atkins, etc., people tend to lose a lot the first couple
weeks and then little or nothing for the remainder of the month. You just
gotta be patient.

How much did you weigh when you started, when did you start (specific date),
how much have you lost so far, and what is your goal? I think it'd be good
to put some background info in your posts when asking ?'s. Just a thought.

Mike

fat/not as fat/not fat

em said:

Starting off on Atkins, etc., people tend to lose a lot the first couple
weeks and then little or nothing for the remainder of the month. You just
gotta be patient.

How much did you weigh when you started, when did you start (specific date),
how much have you lost so far, and what is your goal? I think it'd be good
to put some background info in your posts when asking ?'s. Just a thought.

Mike

fat/not as fat/not fat

🙂. Hi Mike:

I wasn't asking for specific advice about my situation. I was asking
what the conventional wisdom was about stalls and plateaus. Years ago,
there was no such thing, DrA was a WOE and you had to be committed to
THAT BOOK FOR LIFE, and the only deviations allowed involved either
some kind of illness or being attacked by giant beetles.

Then later, when people got more sophisticated and body builders got
on board, we got a whole lot more information on stalls, tweaking, and
legal drugs. We had tons of stackers on the board, some bodybuilders,
fat fasters, and people who were doing something like Kimmiekins to
beat the scale. The bodybuilders seemed to bend the meme a little,
since they were early adopters to lowcarbing and they were always on
some deadline or maybe they just stared in the mirror at the gym a lot
and had a lot of time to ponder their biceps, I dunno.

Anyway. There are two schools of thought on the matter ( well, at
least two). One is that a plateau is a natural phenomenon that should
not be f'd with because it will eventually resolve. Two is: dammit
this is my body and I'm not going through all these contortions, swamp
breath, shopping all weird, enduring candida die-off and so forth to
STILL not fit into the gold lame' bridesmaid's dress. I've tended
toward the latter but this is only because I get bored kind of easily
and I seem to enjoy bossing my body around.

Some people actually think that there is no way to get to a particular
goal weight without a little bulldozing. They think metabolisms are
essentially dumb eyeless creatures that need to be starved, burned and
beaten to produce a good days' work. Other people...don't think that.

c
Just don't put the gold lame' *on* the horse *in* the stall..

Quoted message said:

em said:

Starting off on Atkins, etc., people tend to lose a lot the first couple
weeks and then little or nothing for the remainder of the month. You just
gotta be patient.

Quoted message said:

How much did you weigh when you started, when did you start (specific date),
how much have you lost so far, and what is your goal? I think it'd be good
to put some background info in your posts when asking ?'s. Just a thought.

Quoted message said:

Mike

Quoted message said:

fat/not as fat/not fat

🙂. Hi Mike:

I wasn't asking for specific advice about my situation. I was asking
what the conventional wisdom was about stalls and plateaus. Years ago,
there was no such thing, DrA was a WOE and you had to be committed to
THAT BOOK FOR LIFE, and the only deviations allowed involved either
some kind of illness or being attacked by giant beetles.

Then later, when people got more sophisticated and body builders got
on board, we got a whole lot more information on stalls, tweaking, and
legal drugs. We had tons of stackers on the board, some bodybuilders,
fat fasters, and people who were doing something like Kimmiekins to
beat the scale. The bodybuilders seemed to bend the meme a little,
since they were early adopters to lowcarbing and they were always on
some deadline or maybe they just stared in the mirror at the gym a lot
and had a lot of time to ponder their biceps, I dunno.

Anyway. There are two schools of thought on the matter ( well, at
least two). One is that a plateau is a natural phenomenon that should
not be f'd with because it will eventually resolve. Two is: dammit
this is my body and I'm not going through all these contortions, swamp
breath, shopping all weird, enduring candida die-off and so forth to
STILL not fit into the gold lame' bridesmaid's dress. I've tended
toward the latter but this is only because I get bored kind of easily
and I seem to enjoy bossing my body around.

If scale doesn't move for 6 weeks in any meaningful direction, think
about
changes you could make. If you eat 3 meals, try 6. If you eat 6, try
3. If you're
bent this way, look into intermittant fasting (that feels too much
like dieting to
me, but to each his own). If you're doing slow cardio, up to
intervals. If you're
not lifting weights, lift weights. If you are lifting weights, move to
circuits. If
you're doing circuits, switch to something hypertrophic. If you're not
drinking
green tea, give it a shot. If you eat a lot of cheese, maybe try less.
If you're eating
low calories, eat more. If you're not watching calories, maybe look
into it (that
feels too much like dieting to me, but to each his own). I forgot. If
you're doing
bike, drop it for treadmill. If you're doing elliptical, drop it
entirely.

If you want new results, shake things up.

Quoted message said:

c
Just don't put the gold lame' *on* the horse *in* the stall..

LOL

Quoted message said:

A human person goes on a diet. They are thrilled to see they are not
in fact going to have to buy two tickets every time they travel by air
after all. Encouraged, they continue to watch their scale weight
tumble happily downward but at some point the weight loss stops.

Or has it just paused?

The first and most important thing to do is review how Dr Atkins
defined a stall (this really applies across the board not just to
folks on Atkins) and see if you ARE on a stall and not just
impatient. Every dieter in history has been impatient near as
I can tell ...

Dr A defined a stall as 4+ weeks (anything shorter than a
month is NOT a stall, like it or not the time scale for fat loss
is month to month) without a new low (the scale gives numbers
that are often meaningless but each new low is a meaningfull
number), without a lost inch (a majroity of dieters really diet
for size loss and the scale is a secondary effect on that that
just happens to be easy, lost inches are more a victory than
new lows for most), in ketosis the whole time (really ketonuria,
on other plans this means no cheats and no major lessons
learned).

Quoted message said:

Do you believe that this situation means that a persons' body is just
resting and trying to achieve homeostasis at that weight, and when it
fails miserably at this it will drop more mass? Inevitably? Or do you
believe that there are stuck points regardless and without heroic
efforts a person could conceivably sit there forever waiting for his
muffin top to deflate?

Set points happen, but folks do stall because they are eating
too many or too few carbs, calories, whatever. So it's hard to
know if heroic efforts are called for at all and so often folks
want to do the wrong thing as well as do it too soon.

Quoted message said:

What is the standard amount of scale-gazing one should do before
staging some sort of attack?

It is crucial that before the 4 week time nothing is wrong and
no action is to be taken. And after that 4th week it is crucial
to measure to make sure inches aren't being lost.

Quoted message said:

What sort of horse is recommended lately for such attacks?

My recommendations -

1) Recalibrate CCLL by spending a week out of ketosis to make
sure you aren't driving hormone levels down by insufficient carbs.

2) Check for carb creep by measuring portions. Too many carbs
is as bad as too few.

3) Check calories against some reasonable guideline. As folks
lose their caloric requirements drop so habitual portion sizes
might need to be reduced. Also the appetite suppression of ketosis
leads some to put themselves into staravtion modes by undereating
so sometimes portions need to be increased.

4) Junk food vs veggie check. Brocolli good.

5) Possible leptin reset or possible swing of fat to protein ratio.