Weight loss plateau & healthy eating vs calorie counting?

[NayaAbouzaid]

For weightloss

I mean if a person eats junk food but keeps their calories low , will they still lose weight ?

Or is healthy eating a must for weight loss ?

I spent an entire year of healthy eating ( no calorie counting )

I lost 60 pounds ( I also worked out like a mad woman)

But I'm on a very very LONG plateau , its been over 5 months since I lost a pound

I don't know what to do ?

Btw I want to lose exactly 30 pounds in the next 5 months

I am so done with being over weight

so , any adivce on

[somnambulated]

The problem with junk food is that it's high calorie, low nutrition, and not filling. A 1500 calorie diet full of junk food is going to leave you hungry and hurting. Therefore, while someone could lose weight on a low-calorie but junk diet (which is really hard to do because you would have to eat so little to keep it low-calorie) there's no way it could be maintained for long.

Healthy eating is great, but it is possible to gain weight on health food if you eat too much of it, which is why even when you eat healthy you need to watch that you're eating all the food groups in moderation and not too much of one thing. For instance, avocados are so delicious and good for you, but they are fat and calorie dense, and eating many of them would be unhealthy and could make you gain weight. There are also a lot of people who think they are eating healthy and actually aren't, or who think that eating healthy means you can eat as much as you want or splurge at the end of the week, which could set you off track.

I actually think that calorie counting or keeping a food diary is a great way to track what you're putting in your body and getting a grasp on the general amount of calories that are going into you, and what you write down my surprise you. Try to find a site where you can easily log foods and that keeps track of nutrition and percentages (for instance, you ate ___% fat, ___% protein, ____% carbs today...). It doesn't have to last forever, but even trying it out can be very eye-opening.

[madmisskelly]

They will see some weight loss at first eating a small amount of junk food but keep in mind the person would probably be eating a very very small amount of food all together. Especially if they had a calorie limit of 1500 or less. The person should be exercising and the blood sugar drop after eating all of the foods (it will rise really fast and then drop just as fast) will make it difficult to exercise.

When you are at a plateau you should reexamine your caloric intake and your workout routine. After a 60lb weight loss, your body is going to work a lot differently. Your metabolism has actually slowed down- the less you weigh th slower it is because there is not as much body weight to maintain. So your calorie intake should have lessened as well. Chances are you are going to need to push yourself even harder in the gym- faster running pace, longer cardio workouts, different machines, interval training, etc.

Now is the time to be nitpicky and see what works. Calorie counting is a good option for a while and it will help you get into the mindset of your new calorie limit.

[WoIIie]

Eating healthy and making your workouts more intense will break the plateau. The kind of workouts you were doing might have been enough to get your heart rate to that fat burning threshold, but now that you're slimmer the workouts are easier and less effective.

A morbidly obese person would benefit a lot from brisk walking. Someone who is 10lbs overweight might not, so that person has to start running and sprinting to get the same effect.

The key is maintaining a HEALTHY diet (no excuses) and raising the intensity of your workout.

[martyfellow]

Junk food doens't provide the nutrients you need, so if you limit the total calories, sooner or later you'll go a binge to get them, no matter how hard you try not to. Junk food is fatal to any effort to lose weight.

[aMuse]

Change your type of exercise. If you were walking before, then try swimming. You body becomes conditioned to do exercises that you do often very efficiently. By changing your exercise type you will switch muscle groups and it will become challenging again and you will likely begin to lose weight again.