I have been exercising for a year now. I have dropped from 389 to 350 currently and this last number is my main topic. Despite my best efforts, following weight watchers and exercising daily for one hour at 70-80% of my maximum heart rate, varying exercises every day, drinking 4.5 Liters (19 cups) of water daily, eating 6 small meals a day, despite all of that my weight has been oscillating between 350 and 356 for the past 3 months. It dropped once to 348 but then went up again.
I have been losing inches (from size 60 to 53 right now) and I have also been gaining muscles, everywhere. I lived my life without knowing that oblique muscles can flex when you do exercise or that your bi and tri muscles actually flex when you move your arms. This part of my weight loss plan has been wonderful and encouraging but my weight puzzle is really demoralizing at times. I weigh every Sunday and this past Sunday I was at 353.6 pds this morning I weighed and it was 356.6. The scale is accurate and I tested it for that.
If anyone out there has an answer and/or a solution to this puzzle please please let me know.

What's your body fat percentage at? That'll be a better gauge of your fitness and trends than anything else, although (no offense) at your weight, you shouldn't really be plateauing on the weight loss. Are you still eating junk foods/snacks between those meals? How does your sodium intake look? What's your calorie intake like?

I know you said "small" meals (quotation marks because "small" is subjective), but you didn't mention snacks or quality of your calories, if you're still eating a lot of empty calories and snacking on junk food on a daily basis, that will contribute a lot more than people seem to give it credit for... I'm convinced that eating is about 90% of weight loss.

Honestly, as long as you're losing inches, feeling better and, once you start tracking it, your body fat % is going down, don't sweat the scale so much, but if you're really doing "all the right things", it is pretty puzzling that your weight has stabilized that high...

If you are losing inches, you are losing fat. I highly recommend getting your BF tested. I have only lost about 7 or 8 lbs so far but my BF has gone from 37% to 27%. There are several times in there that I may have quit if not for the encouraging BF numbers.

the part i get hung up on is "weight watchers." i don't personally know anybody who has been a success following that program. can you tell us more about your eating habits? post a couple days' worth of what you're up to?

Well, here is what I have been doing as far as food.First I assure you that I have been totally honest with the size of my meals so small is small. For example
Breakfast: 1 Smoothie cup with a whole wheat toast and a TBSP of Labneh (fat free yougurt drained to be harder to spread like cheese on toast but it is fat free PLAIN yogurt)
Snack 1: Handful of nuts or a whole wheat toast with one slice of turkey breast
Lunch: Usually whole wheat toast with turkey breast or ham or a wrap with the same OR Sardines with one loaf of whole wheat pita. Sometimes, maybe once a week, I do a couple of overeasy eggs with a loaf of Pita.
Snack 2: Kashi granola or oats bar
Dinner: Salad with no more than a TBSP of dressing (usually Vinegrette or greek dressing or TBSP of Olive oil and vinegar). Other things might include some fish, chicken or bison meat with Coscous (moroccan wheat pasta), rice (basmati)

I drink about a quart of water every 3 hrs for a total of 19-22 cups a day.
I do not drink, smoke or do caffiene (no coke or soda) I use Piligrino or Perier with a lime for drinks. I have my vitamins daily. I sleep about 7 hrs per night.
After reading the YOU on a Diet book I rid my house of anything that has hydrogenated fats or high fructose corn syrup. I check the labels of everything I buy, including breads, to make sure they have none of that.

I hope that this expanded information will help.

Here is a synopsis of my exercise regiment to help you guys further. I have been varying my exercises every 6 weeks but I alway always make sure that I exercise at 70-85% of my heart rate (breathing hard, can talk but rather not to). I alternate upper body and lower body days. I exercise in Supersets where I use resistance bands , swiss ball, setups, etc
each upper body day is different than the other (Mon: Chest & Back. Tue: Legs and Abs, Wed: Abs&shoulders, Thu:Legs & Abs, FRI:Biceps& Triceps. Sat: Legs & Abs. Sometimes on Sunday I do light Swiss ball exercises for 30 minutes or so but not intense). For cardio I do 10 jumping jacks or run up 3 stairs up and down for 30 seconds after each exercise in the supersets. I also have been doing a very gradual 16 weeks jogging program where I started with a 30 minutes walking program where I introduced jogging gradually starting with 2.5 minutes and increasing that by 2.5 minutes every 2 weeks. I am now at running for 10 minutes. I started doing 1.5 miles in about 35 minutes but now I am down to 25 minutes.
I hope this gives you an idea. Everything I read and know tells me that this should be intense enough (but not an overkill since I do around 1-1.5 hrs a day). The goal is to be able to do the mile in 12 minutes eventually. What do you think?

I just noticed in one of the responses a question about Sodium intake. I HATE SALTY FOODS. My wife likes salt so when we cook I take my food out before she adds salt. As far as calorie intake I was told that at 350 pounds I need to be consuming 3000 calories a day. I used to do that but then I went down to closer to 2500 and that has not done anything yet.
I will have my wife help me measure my body fat percentage tonight and I will report on it tomorrow.

I just found an online guide to measuring body fat percentage and measured myself. My current result is 30%. How often should I measure this number?

Hi, Gabe,

Here's one thing you might want to try to get the weight-ball rolling again and that is, "calorie cycling", which, if you're not familiar is basically doing low-diet-level cals for 3 days, (always clean eating, always good carbs, with the greener ones eaten later in the day and always macro balanced meals), followed by one day at maint. levels, (upped most easily and enjoyably by increasing the good carbs that day), rinse and repeat.

It's one of the tools used by many bodybuilders to lean up, pre-competition and it's certainly worth a shot seeing as how frustrated you are.

Those online BF% charts don't work very well. You need to use calipers. I get this done at the gym.

And one number isn't really going to help a whole lot. Take it today, then take it again in a month or so and that way if you are still kinda stuck in the weight loss area, you will know if you are gaining muscle and losing fat. Like I said, I've only lost a little actual weight, but the last time I got my BF measured, I had lost about 20 lbs of fat and gained about 10 lbs of muscle.

Normally a plateau occurs when your body adapts to a routine. In order to shake that off you need to shock your body. Try doing exercises that are completely different from what you are doing now. If you are jogging/walking then try biking or swimming. If you can, take up a sport, it's more fun than exercising if you're keeping track of the score instead of the time. I would throw in a long walk (2+ hours) once or twice a week. If there's a park somewhere you could go for a long hike.

As for eating I would suggest sticking to what you are doing but maybe toning it down towards the evening. Make sure your last meal is no later than 4 hours before you go to bed and is about the size of a light lunch. Normally I'm starving by the time I get to bed but you get used to it.

Other than that all I can say is stick to it, it seems like you're making progress even though the scale says otherwise. Slow and steady is better in the long run since by the time you lose all the weight you want you will have developed good eating and exercising habits that should prevent you from gaining everything back.

Keep up the good work and don't ever quit the fight.

I do not recommend going to bed hungry. There are many sources out there on both sides of the argument, but I think that it is important to eat before bed if you are hungry. Sleep is when your body does significant recovery work. If you have no food to fuel the recovery, you may be losing muscle mass. Now don't get all crazy and eat a bag of cookies or something, but a healthy, macro-balanced snack before bed can actually be beneficial.

Thank you all for this valuable input and I hope that you will add whatever you feel would be important. I will keep posting my progress to this thread. I have a question and I need someone to set my mind at peace regarding it.

The question is how many calories a day should someone like me consume a day? I am 5'10" and 39 years old.I weigh 353 right now. I read several books and the rule of thumb from all of these has been to multiply your weight by 10. I looked at several internet calculator and the numbers were either the same or even higher. I consider myself lightly active because I am a writer and a language trainer. Other than my one hour of exercise a day I am either sitting or standing in a classroom.

If someone feels that they have an answer that will assure me that will be great. What I have been doing is sticking to my 34 Weight Watcher points and stay on or below the 3000 calories a day (which is about 500 below what others recommend). As I said earlier I eat the 'good carbs' and lean meats (look at a sample of my eating day above).

Thank you again for your answers and your patience with me

Here's a useful link. But keep in mind that everyone is different. One person may need more calories than another with the exact same size and body composition. Go with something and see what happens. Make changes accordingly.

Thank you Rachael.You are very helpful. DO you want to be my buddy to help me through this battle?

Sure Send me a message and I'll accept.

I would suggest you mix up your workout. your body might have gotten used to what you are doing. you always have to get a "burn" so push harder.

a trainer once told me that arnold swarzenneger when he was training for mr universe never did the same workout twice so that his body wouldn't adapt.

it helps to continue to challenge the body in different ways.

also, you have to believe that you are amazing and that you can do it. from the things you've said and your commitment, it sounds that you are, and that you can do it!

also, i don't know why that one person had to put down weight watchers- i know people who have lost lots of weight on that (up to 90 pounds) and i think they have a great method.

keep up the work, mix it up and rock it out!

Yeah isn't Weight Watchers supposed to be one of the most successful programs in the world??? They certainly promote healthy eating, exercise and motivation so they can't be that bad As long as you don't mind counting points that is...

Whatever works, works.

I have no probs with WW aside from the way they teach folks; all this points biz, instead of using actual terminolgy and educating people in the correct language, ratios, amounts, etc...

problems with weight watchers:

first and foremost, what i said was true: i have never seen a successful user of the program. by successful, i mean weight lost and a maintained weight for three years or more. plenty of people lose a lot of weight on the program, often. when they get off the program, they are uneducated as to how to maintain, thus establishing a co-dependency. that is because:

secondly, "points" are an abstract and quite random term that have nothing to do with nutrition, and macronutrients, micronutrients, food combinations, when to eat, etc. are not properly defined in a single point.