Tag: gaining muscle

A Good Plateau

On By Michel McDonaldIn Cycling, Diet, Exercise, Health, Noom, WeightLeave a comment

Noom Logo I’ve complained before about a plateau that I was stuck in when I was 197lbs, but now I’m stuck again, but this time for good reason.  Here are my Noom weigh-in’s for July.

  • July 1 – 195.0
  • July 6 – 193.6
  • July 13 – 193.8
  • July 20 – 193.6
  • July 27 – 193.2

From the July 6 weigh-in to the July 20th weigh-in, I believe the reason for the halt in weight loss is because I’ve been eating the Michelina’s frozen dinners and not the Weight Watchers Smart Ones.  See, I thought that because they had the same amount of calories, fat and sodium that they would basically be the same thing, but I guess not.  We recently bought 40 of those too, so when we are able to burn through those, I will start buying the Weight Watchers again.

The reason we bought all those Michelina’s was because they were on sale for .50 cents each.  You can’t beat those prices, especially when we were broke this month.  I had no idea this was going to cause a plateau or even weight gain.

I think I might have an explanation for my current week’s plateau.  On July 20th, I finally started riding my bicycle again, so it has only been 1 week and I have only been out on the bike maybe 4 times, but I’m assuming that this week the reason I haven’t lost any weight is because I am gaining muscle.  At least that’s what I think is going on.

We have a scale which has a Weight Watchers logo on it and it can tell me my body fat, water, bone and BMI, and this week my body fat percentage went down from I believe it was 30.9 down to 29.6, so even though I am still basically the same weight, my body fat percentage has gone down and I believe it is because of the bike.  So, perhaps I think that I am losing fat, but gaining muscle and we all know that muscle weighs more than fat, so therefore, the scale isn’t very helpful to me in determining my weight, but it is helpful in telling me my body fat percentage and BMI.

However, my waist has gone up by 1/2 an inch.  Last week it was 39.5 inches and this week it is 40 inches.  I mean who really knows for sure what is going on.  All I know is that I am going to continue riding the bicycle and I am going to continue to eat a proper healthy diet despite what the scale says because I know that I am going to lose fat even if I gain muscle.

Gaining muscle is actually a very good thing because men who have a lot of muscle will burn more fat when they sleep, so I need to get plenty of rest, exercise and eat a proper diet and I will be on my way to losing more weight.

I’m not expecting that my weight will go down next week, but I hope it will.  We shall see I guess.  Here are my profile, weight graph and exercise summary for the week.

week_30-1 week_30-2 week_30-4

Plateau

On By Michel McDonaldIn Diet, Health, Noom, WeightLeave a comment

A couple of days ago I mentioned that I had hit a plateau or that I thought I might have hit a plateau, well, today was weigh in day and it confirmed that I indeed have hit a plateau.

Last week I weighed in at 197.0 lbs, but the very next day I weighed in at 196.6 lbs.  I’m not exactly sure why I weighed in, perhaps the app suggested that I weigh in again, who knows, but today I am 197 again.

That’s okay because I have come this far and this is my first plateau since January, so I think I’m doing pretty good considering I have lost 66 lbs in just 24 weeks.  I’m totally fine with the plateau.

I love my body now, before I couldn’t stand looking in the mirror.  I couldn’t stand looking down and seeing a fat belly.  I couldn’t stand how fat my face was and how fat my neck was.  The chin was just so horrible.  But I couldn’t be happier with my body and my neck and my chin lol.  I just feel so happy now.

My partner suggested that we go on a walk this morning and so we did.  It wasn’t a very long walk and I was in a lot of pain.  I touched my back where the pain was because I wanted to rub it, but it was completely numb.  I mean, I could feel the pain, more like agony, but my skin and muscles were numb.  That seems to be what happens when I have back pain.

When we came home I immediately had him put a Salonpas patch on my back and knowing that it usually takes half an hour to activate, I put ice on it so that it’s like an icy hot thing lol.

So back to the plateau.  I don’t know why I am in a plateau.  I have been eating the same exact way this week that I have been eating in the last 24 weeks and I have been eating under 1400 calories per day.  I have also been going for walks more in the last couple of weeks than I have in the last 24 weeks, which is probably why I have hit a plateau because I’m probably gaining muscle, and we all know that muscle weighs more than fat.

Although this week I was eating popcorn with oil but no salt and no butter, and I was eating those Lean Gourmet meals which have a lot of sodium in them, so perhaps that might be adding to the problem.  I am out of the popcorn and I will try to eat the Smart Ones instead of the Lean Gourmet to see if that will help.

I hope next Saturday I will have some progress.  No matter what happens, I will continue eating healthy and entering all of my food into the Noom app.