How do I get the scale to move???

I've been working out consistently since January and I've lost 25lbs so far. My goal is to lose another 35lbs by my wedding in November. I eat healthy, including whole grains, veggies, fruit, lean protein. I practice portion control on what I eat. Drink lots of water and combine cardio and weights in my workouts. The problem? The scale won't move and hasn't moved in the past 2 weeks. What am I doing wrong? How can I get it to start moving again? I'm getting depressed.

first congrats!

you hit a platuae ( spelling)- it happens to everyone

you need to change up your rountine and what you eat to get the scale moving again

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Posted by Beth1210

first congrats!

you hit a platuae ( spelling)- it happens to everyone

you need to change up your rountine and what you eat to get the scale moving again

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Thanks! Someone told me I should try HIIT. Anyone have experience with this?

This may sound a little strange, but Ive gotten through plateaus with what I call 'going to bed hungry'

If your schedule permits, stop eating by 7:00 the LATEST. This will prevent you from late night snacking. It will also cause your body to burn fat overnight as fuel rather than calories you've consumed.

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Posted by melbalalala

This may sound a little strange, but Ive gotten through plateaus with what I call 'going to bed hungry'

If your schedule permits, stop eating by 7:00 the LATEST. This will prevent you from late night snacking. It will also cause your body to burn fat overnight as fuel rather than calories you've consumed.

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Right now I stop eating at 8PM. I don't get home from work until 7:30 so it would make it difficult with my schedule. I think I may start eating lighter at dinner and making lunch my main meal again. I just want the numbers to keep moving south!

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Posted by craigshunny

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Posted by melbalalala

This may sound a little strange, but Ive gotten through plateaus with what I call 'going to bed hungry'

If your schedule permits, stop eating by 7:00 the LATEST. This will prevent you from late night snacking. It will also cause your body to burn fat overnight as fuel rather than calories you've consumed.

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Right now I stop eating at 8PM. I don't get home from work until 7:30 so it would make it difficult with my schedule. I think I may start eating lighter at dinner and making lunch my main meal again. I just want the numbers to keep moving south!

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I hear ya!! Yeah, I definitely eat the most at lunch and find that that helps. Hang in there, you are doing great!

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Posted by craigshunny

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Posted by melbalalala

This may sound a little strange, but Ive gotten through plateaus with what I call 'going to bed hungry'

If your schedule permits, stop eating by 7:00 the LATEST. This will prevent you from late night snacking. It will also cause your body to burn fat overnight as fuel rather than calories you've consumed.

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Right now I stop eating at 8PM. I don't get home from work until 7:30 so it would make it difficult with my schedule. I think I may start eating lighter at dinner and making lunch my main meal again. I just want the numbers to keep moving south!

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there is absolutely no reason to stop eating after a certain time at night.

try the HIIT.
what are your calories for the day? how much do you weigh? maybe you aren't eating enough?
what do you eat on a good day, and when?

what is your workout schedule currently?

these are all important questions to determine what you should change for you to loose fat.

thank god for google- b/c I didn't know what HIIT is

yes that works for me

and I agree with snowboardgirl- it' s not what time you eat- it's what you eat

eating after a certain time does not make you gain weight- if you already ate your calories for the day it does

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Posted by Beth1210

thank god for google- b/c I didn't know what HIIT is

yes that works for me

and I agree with snowboardgirl- it' s not what time you eat- it's what you eat

eating after a certain time does not make you gain weight- if you already ate your calories for the day it does

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EXACTLY!

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Posted by Snowboardgirl

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Posted by Beth1210

thank god for google- b/c I didn't know what HIIT is

yes that works for me

and I agree with snowboardgirl- it' s not what time you eat- it's what you eat

eating after a certain time does not make you gain weight- if you already ate your calories for the day it does

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EXACTLY!

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I wasnt implying that not eating after a time does not make you gain weight. What Im saying is that after dinner, its tempting to think 'ohhh I could go for a cookie' or 'Im in the mood for a little ice cream'. If you simply cut out those options you can save hundreds of calories a week. Its rare your body needs much fuel late at night when you are most likely winding down. These cravings are just that, cravings.

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Posted by melbalalala


If your schedule permits, stop eating by 7:00 the LATEST. This will prevent you from late night snacking. It will also cause your body to burn fat overnight as fuel rather than calories you've consumed.

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I have heard a doctor speak about this before. Not eating after 7:00 pm is very helpful when it comes to losing weight. Your body goes into an overdrive at nights which helps to burn more fat. I have being doing this for the past 2 months and believe me I do see a significant amount of changes in my body. I do workout 5-6 times per week and also monitor my calorie intake very strictly.

Here is an article I found on late night eating. I hope it helps.


I want to reiterate that I don't advocate going to bed feeling starved. If you are voraciously hungry, it means that you didn't do a good job of managing your meals throughout the day. Perhaps you skipped breakfast or another meal, or maybe you just skimped on calories all day long. Either way, you may feel virtuous, but it just means that you missed a number of opportunities to give your metabolism a boost by eating. It also means that by allowing yourself to get ravenous, you may be setting yourself up for a binge. What I want you to feel instead is slight hunger. That feeling is your brain saying, 'Feed me or I'm going to dip into your fat stores for energy.' That, of course, is exactly what you want to happen. It's your guarantee that your body is burning the fat you are working hard to lose.

If, on the other hand, you follow your brain's directive and eat close to bedtime, your body will not dip into the fat it has stored away, and will probably even store some more. Every time you eat, your metabolism increases slightly. But this effect is lost or minimized late at night. You don't get the same metabolism-boosting benefit when you eat just before bed, because a couple of hours after dinner, your body begins preparing for sleep. This natural slackening of your metabolic rate overrides any metabolic boost you might get from eating. So once you hit the pillow, the only calories you're going to use are the basic calories you need to keep your heart beating and your lungs breathing and allow your eyes to move in REM sleep. And that, all told, is a minimal number of calories.

You also won't take advantage of the energizing effects of eating. Had you eaten 300 calories in the morning instead of just before going to sleep, you'd feel invigorated and would move more throughout the day, burning those calories. But when you're downshifting into bedtime mode, you're going to feel too sleepy to increase your activity. The opportunity to burn off those 300 calories is lost.

Believe it or not, eating late at night can also inhibit your calorie-burning potential the next day. Say, for instance, that you treat yourself to a big bowl of cereal topped with sliced bananas at 10 P.M. one night and are fast asleep by eleven. When your alarm goes off the next morning at seven, the last thing on your mind is going to be breakfast -- you're still full from the cereal and bananas you ate the night before. Chances are, you're going to skip breakfast and lose all the metabolism-boosting benefits you'd get from eating a morning meal.

During sleep, digestion all but shuts down so that the food you've consumed has extended contact time with your digestive tract. That may increase your risk of various ailments and disease, including certain cancers. Consider, too, that fat and protein take longer than carbohydrate to digest so if you snack on a bowl of ice cream or a steak sandwich before bed, the contact time may be even longer. Eating late can also just make you feel plain lousy. It's harder to get a good night's sleep on a full stomach, and it makes you more susceptible to heartburn.

If your day goes according to plan, you'll expend more energy than you consume. And that's great -- it means that you will burn body fat. It also means that, at least in the beginning, you will feel a twinge of hunger at night. If you're not used to it, it can make you very uncomfortable. This is a time when you really need to hang in there. As you become used to adhering to an eating cutoff time, your body will adapt and the uncomfortable feelings will pass.

It's just like training your body through exercise: the first day that you laced up your sneakers, put the treadmill on a hill setting, and began walking, you probably felt uncomfortable (and probably didn't like it). But that's what exercise training is: the gradual introduction of slight discomfort in order to make changes such as enhanced cardiovascular efficiency, greater muscle strength, and a stronger body overall. Another of those changes is increased tolerance. After jumping on the treadmill many times, it's going to feel less taxing; your body has adapted to the positive stress. You'll think back to the time when you were walking on a flat treadmill at a much pokier speed and wonder how you could have ever thought it was hard!

There are many other areas of our lives where we start out feeling uncomfortable with something, only, over time, to get to a point where it doesn't bother us -- we may even come to like it. I remember once going out to dinner with a client who raved about the restaurant's asparagus soup. It was very rich and creamy, but since this was her last hurrah before we started to work together, she decided to order it. And she wasn't disappointed. To her, it tasted great.

Fast-forward to a year later. By this time we had weaned her from a diet of mostly rich, high-fat foods, but when we went back to the restaurant, she decided to order the asparagus soup again. Only this time she found it totally unappetizing. Her palate had become much more sensitized to fat, so that what used to taste delicious now tasted too rich.

It works this way with a lot of foods. Switch from heavily salted dishes to lightly salted dishes, and after a while, you'll probably find the heavily salted versions too hard to take. You'll be so sensitive to sodium that you'll even start tasting the natural sodium contained in foods such as broccoli. It works the opposite way, too. Keep adding salt to your food, and you'll eventually become desensitized to it -- you won't taste the salt even though it's there in abundance.

There's a word for the process of going through a period of discomfort, then adjusting to what's causing the stress; habituation. When continually exposed to just about anything we have the ability to adjust and develop a tolerance. That's what going to happen when you begin nixing late-night eating. You'll find it uncomfortable at first, but you'll adjust. Yet even though your body has this remarkable ability to adapt, I still suggest that you take it slowly. Start with a two-hour cutoff time and honor it. Then see how much further you can cut back. Go to two and a half hours. If you can make it to three, great! Have patience, and you will prevail.

Replace a late-night snack with a cup of herbal tea. This, as you know, is my personal strategy, but I find that it also works for a lot of other people. The warmth of a cup of herbal tea (I find chamomile especially calming) is comforting, and the liquid helps give you a feeling of fullness. And if it's boredom that is driving you to eat, the tea will help keep you busy until the urge to eat passes. The ritual of tea drinking also gives you time to reflect on your day and set your personal goals for tomorrow.
Write! You might even combine writing with tea drinking, since tea can put you in a contemplative mood. But even if you're not a tea drinker, writing is a good way to foil late-night snacking. Jot down what you're feeling -- it may convince you that maybe what you need is not a bag of potato chips but a phone call to a good friend to talk about what's bothering you. Write about the ways you want to improve your life and what you think can help you do so.
Keep yourself busy. Boredom is the enemy of all late-night eaters. Read a book, watch a movie (though not if you're the kind of person who associates TV with snacking), take a bath, challenge someone in your family to a card game, listen to music, put pictures in a photo album, surf the Internet. If it's safe, go for a walk by yourself or with someone else. Choose something that enriches your life in some way so that it's not simply a substitute for eating that you will ultimately throw aside. If the activity you opt for is absorbing and enriching, your cravings will most likely dissipate.
Close the day by renewing your commitment to yourself. You did it first thing in the morning; now do it again at night. Review your day. What did you do right? What needs to change?
Four tips to end late night snacking

1. The more frequently you eat, the more often you'll give your metabolism a boost. You might think that you're doing yourself a favor by skipping meals. You might even feel as though you're doing yourself a favor by not eating until dinner. But physiology dictates that eating -- and eating often -- is actually a better strategy. Eating has a stimulating effect on the metabolism, increasing the rate at which you burn calories for some time after a meal. Eat often, and your metabolism will operate at its maximum speed all day long.

2. Calories eaten earlier in the day boost the metabolism more than calories eaten later in the day. When you eat, you increase the rate at which you burn calories, but your metabolism still has a natural arc to it and it declines as it gets closer to bedtime. For that reason, it may be that the food you eat in the evening doesn't increase your calorie-burning ability as much as the food you eat earlier in the day. Once it's settled into its resting mode, your body is resistant to being revved up at night.

3. Eating makes you feel more energetic during the day but not, typically, at night. Have you ever finished dinner and thought to yourself, 'I feel as if I could run a few miles! ' I didn't think so. Most people feel fairly lethargic after dinner. One reason is that they've usually eaten too much and their bodies are hard at work digesting the food, leaving little energy for anything else. (This is especially true when the meal is high in fat and protein, which take more energy to digest than carbohydrates.) Another is that the body begins to wind down in the evening, preparing you for sleep.

4. Eating the majority of your calories at one meal can create an insulin spike, causing the body to store fat. When you take in a large number of calories -- and, in particular, carbohydrate calories -- a signal is sent to your brain, which then sends a message to your pancreas to pump out more insulin. That big dose of insulin is going to cause your body to store many of those calories as fat (insulin, you'll remember, is responsible for taking glucose out of the bloodstream and depositing it into fat storage). The majority of people eat their biggest meal at dinner time, but having an oversized meal any time of day can cause an insulin spike. If, however, you spread out the calories over many hours, your insulin level will stay steady and your body will be less likely to hoard fat.

You should eat three meals -- breakfast, lunch, and dinner -- plus two snacks -- midmorning and midafternoon -- a day. I suggest that you try to make each meal 25 to 30 percent of your total daily calories, with snacks making up the remaining 10 to 25 percent. The size of the portions will vary according to the number of calories you individually need to eat in a day. If you're inclined to make one meal bigger than the others, make that larger meal lunch. That way you'll still have half a day to burn off the extra calories.

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Posted by melbalalala

Great info!!! Thanks!

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You are welcome.