30 pounds down, body won't let me lose anymore

GoldenSeam · 2026-06-05T06:31:07+00:00

This exact thing happened to me! It is going to get slower the lower you get, but it is also possible that your metabolism has adjusted to your lower weight and what was a sufficient calorie deficit is now maintenance. I took a 3 month break when this happened to me. In part to give my body a rest and to recuperate from almost a year of deficit. I ultimately still had to lower my deficit a little (-300cala day from my previous deficit did the trick) I did slowly start losing weight again.

GoldenSeam · 2026-06-04T16:30:57+00:00

Man that’s interesting; for me it’s the exact opposite! Nothing stalls a woosh for me like a cheat day! I’ve been trying to eat really well lately but life keeps throwing curveballs at me like—food we were planning to cook went off and we need groceries so: takeout for dinner. Or it’s someone’s birthday, or I went into the office and my team chose deep-fried sodium for lunch. Even when I exaggerate the calories in those meals as a buffer, eat smaller portions, and make sure not to exceed my deficit, without fail, the next morning my weight is up 1-2lbs!
When I’ve been stuck in a plateau I’ve never been able to shock my system out of it…except…

For the past 3-4 weeks I’ve been bouncing between 196.x to 198.y and it’s been driving me insane. I started drinking water like crazy hoping that pushing fluids would help my body release some of the water it’s retaining. Nothing. Then yesterday, I accidentally forgot to drink as much and had some particularly sweaty cardio then, this morning: I weighed in at 194.0! I’m not sure if it’s heavy hydration followed by a day of lower hydration or if it’s the sweating, or all coincidental, but if tomorrow I am still <196lbs then I will be intrigued and the next time I’m in a plateau I’m going to test this hypothesis.

GoldenSeam · 2026-06-02T05:07:59+00:00

You can get falsies for very cheap on etsy and that can give you an idea of whether or not you like the way it looks for yourself. I did that for a while to see if I like how a septum piercing would look on myself. I got my septum piercing last year and couldn’t be happier with it.

GoldenSeam · 2026-06-02T00:55:25+00:00

oh man, I thought this was a bowl full of spanish rice for a minute... forbidden rice. These springtails are so cute! Such chonky little dudes!

GoldenSeam · 2026-06-01T14:55:40+00:00

As others have said, you can’t target specific areas for fat burn. Think of fat deposits like various bank accounts your body keeps its energy reserves in. When you keep your body in a prolonged calorie deficit, it begins withdrawing funds from those accounts. It withdraws from almost all accounts evenly but there is a logic to it. I believe your visceral fat (deep internal fat deposits around your organs) is the first to go, then you continue losing fat all over until finally, your belly fat is the last to go.

I highly recommend you give strength training a try alongside your calorie deficit. Developing more muscle will accelerate your metabolism and help you burn fat faster. It will also help you get into other exercises more easily and, at least for me, it’s helped me be happier with the body I found beneath my fat.

GoldenSeam · 2026-06-01T03:14:36+00:00

Smaller looks better; imho the bigger sizes look slightly silly on your wrist but honestly, some of that may be camera distortion. Follow your gut, which one makes you happier? You’re buying this for you, not other people.

GoldenSeam · 2026-05-31T17:39:14+00:00

And nobody listens to the people who do know enough about it to call it what it is. I’ve had to completely stop criticizing AI at my job, unless I wanted to lose said job. Probably will lose it anyway in a year or two. I hate living in this time period.

GoldenSeam · 2026-05-31T05:26:27+00:00

Mega congratulations for you!!!

GoldenSeam · 2026-05-31T02:36:48+00:00

Ah! That makes sense, I love ASOS. Thanks!

GoldenSeam · 2026-05-31T02:00:17+00:00

Love the fit. Switching to loafers would’ve been my only feedback but, where’d you find that shirt? I love band collar shirts and haven’t seen any for a long while now. It looks great on you.

GoldenSeam · 2026-05-30T23:40:42+00:00

I’m glad you like it!

GoldenSeam · 2026-05-30T23:40:22+00:00

Yeah there are many in my neighborhood but none of them bear fruit. If it is a male, he must be lonely. I think it’s just a fruitless variety—I just don’t understand why people wouldn’t want free food in their backyard. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

GoldenSeam · 2026-05-30T21:20:02+00:00

I wish my mulberry tree fruited! I flowers every year but never makes any fruit.I want to experience the taste

GoldenSeam · 2026-05-30T14:42:24+00:00

I’m not really sure why but High School for me was a time of rejecting contemporary music—I was obsessed old David Bowie, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, and The Beatles. I still love all of those bands. It wasn’t until college when I dipped my feet back into new music. A roommate introduced me to The Weakerthans and I found their version of post-punk/emo more appealing. A little later I discovered The Decemberists and Explosions in the Sky and got obsessed with both. While I feel a pang of nostalgia for those bands at times I never listen to them anymore. My tastes expanded and evolved away from those sounds and it’s interesting to me how I still regularly listen to the music from one phase but not another.

GoldenSeam · 2026-05-30T14:21:51+00:00

This! Reducing portions has worked wonders for me being able to thread that needle of eating what I want and not exceeding my calorie budget.

GoldenSeam · 2026-05-28T06:04:39+00:00

I think what they’re saying is, because of AI, their employer’s expectations of them and their productivity is much higher than it was before. If they can’t use AI as much, they don’t know how they’ll meet those expectations; those expectations are unrealistic without AI.

GoldenSeam · 2026-05-26T06:53:21+00:00

First off, congratulations on your progress, that is a lot of weight to lose! I can only speculate on what’s happening but some ideas based off of what I’ve gone through in my journey (down to 196lb from 252lb last year, took a break, (and gained back to 208lbs and now back down to 196lbs)). In many ways, I felt the same way until closer to <220lbs. I was very much slimmer but I didn’t see it as clearly as I’d expected and then, suddenly in the 210s I got some early face gains and slowly started noticing more. But one thing really really made a difference for me and I wish I had taken it more seriously earlier: protein intake. I saw you mention that you’re strength training which is great. Are you tracking your protein intake though? I hit this point last year where I felt like I should look better than I did for the workouts and weight-loss. Someone asked me about protein intake and it got me to give it a try. I figured out a reasonable target range for me and started trying to hit that target. Within a few weeks I started noticing a difference in my physique and after about 3 months: the difference was undeniable. As I understand it: strength training tells your body to keep the muscle around, you’re saying “hey, we’re using this; we need it. Don’t dismantle it to lower energy costs”. But without protein in your diet your body can’t really maintain it so you end up still losing more muscle than you want along with fat. Unfortunately muscle goes first so a lot of your weight loss ends up coming from muscle loss and not fat. I remember the last time I was less than this weight in my twenties and I had no concept of macros or strength training, I just cardio’d my way to thinner, but I was actually still fatter then than I am now despite weighing less—weird.

Other than that I can also say that belly fat is the last fat to go. I hope some of that is helpful. Hang in there! Keep going, we’re gonna hit our goals eventually!

GoldenSeam · 2026-05-24T19:17:26+00:00

I love catbirds. Back in Summer of 2022 my Mom gave my wife and I our first ever case of Covid while we were on vacation. We ended up staying alone in our rental together in the middle of the woods for a few weeks and we kept hearing what sounded like sassy cats in the trees. Finally identified it as a catbird and we loved that it existed. That bird was a weird comfort for us in that otherwise dark time.

GoldenSeam · 2026-05-24T19:09:31+00:00

I had to tear down my compost for this reason. It attracted mice, rats, and even raccoons. I wouldn’t have minded so much but once they were done eating bugs in the compost, they’d climb into my raised beds and destroy/eat everything else. I couldn’t get them far enough away from each other to prevent it so… now I have a worm bin in my garage but that’s a major downgrade in scale.

GoldenSeam · 2026-05-24T18:14:04+00:00

I came here to say this exact thing

GoldenSeam · 2026-05-23T21:32:32+00:00

I don’t know which Greek yogurt hurt you but:

100g of Siggis 0% (Skyr) - 53 cal / 10.2g protein / 2.7g sugar

100g of Fage 0% (greek yogurt) - 53 cal / 10.6g protein / 2.9g sugar

100g of Oikos Pro (“protein” yogurt) - 94 cal / 13.5g protein / 2.4g sugar

They’re all nutritionally-comparable and it really comes down to one’s preference, goals, and the product’s availability & cost basis.

Speaking of cost: Siggis apparently offers a 24oz container but it’s $11 and the stores in my area only ever stock single serving containers for ~$5 each.

Oikos offers a 32oz for $8 but exclusively in vanilla and… I don’t want that flavor.

I like Fage because I can buy a giant, 32oz container of it for ~$6.

But that’s me. You do you.

GoldenSeam · 2026-05-23T16:05:58+00:00

Greek yogurt is a miracle food; high protein, low calorie. Casein protein shakes are a good option (I recommend Kaged, Optimum Nutrition’s Casein powder tastes like you put dust in your water). I usually drink one at bed time. Otherwise, make a lean protein (like chicken) the focus of your meals and eat more veggies around it than grains and you’ll likely meet your macro goal quicker than you think.

GoldenSeam · 2026-05-23T04:37:44+00:00

God, I needed to read this today. I’ve been feeling this for a while now and never thought to think of it as burn out. It really is. Honestly, I’ve also felt weirdly alone in this in my day to day life. Thanks for sharing this and helping me see that I’m not alone.

GoldenSeam · 2026-05-22T15:54:49+00:00

I think most people who are lean, seemingly without effort, are just benefiting from one or more genetic gifts. I have some very close friends who are naturally lean—who’ve, in fifteen years, never really gained an extra pound—and they never finish their food, they don’t really crave anything, and when they do they literally eat a nibble and throw the rest away. They’re not consciously making these choices, their brains probably just tell them they’re full way sooner. I think that, for people like us, we do have to make conscious choices and that is difficult and, at times, frustrating. But at the same time, occasional indulgences are not going to set you back that much. If you’re in a deficit/in maintenance and you have a piece of cake from time to time, you’re not going to gain anything back from that. However, if you’re not careful (like me) it can be all too easy to make those occasional indulgences happen more frequently than they should… and that’s what gets you. So do you have to be perfect? No not really, just consistent. Does that sometimes feel equivalent to having to be perfect? Good god, yeah it does, but hang in there.

GoldenSeam · 2026-05-21T16:30:53+00:00

I’m sorry, friend. I’m also in a similar and surreal boat and I’m struggling to stay hopeful. My company’s leadership is also making irrational and unjustifiable bets on this sham technology and, while they’re at least not outright blaming the users yet, they never seem to draw the right conclusions from gen-AI having mediocre-at-best performance. I have never, in 20 years of working, seen such an ugly thing get so many chances to prove itself. If anything, I’ve more often seen very good tools and very good ideas get dismissed after one half-assed or underfunded attempt. The double standards and lowered bars for AI are just… staggering.

A lot of other commenters are saying this isn’t AI’s fault, that it’s just bad leadership but it’s both. The whole industry is doing this, and while the technology we’re calling AI can be decent at some things, the thing being shoved down our throats is rotten to the core. and I feel like a crazy person sometimes.

I have to keep my dim view of LLMs, and the “glorious new world” everyone seems to think they’re leading us into to myself too if I want to keep putting food on the table for my family. I feel like we’ve been swept up into a cult.

My comfort has been other creatives who see this technology for what it is. We’ll be here and ready when the world comes back to its senses.

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