So I've been a heavy person my whole lift.  My highest weight was around 245.  Quite a few years ago I went on a Keto diet.  I got down to around 158.  I since put on some weight and am around 177-178 consistently.  I'm 5' 8".  I was trying to get down to 165ish to fit comfortably in medium shirts.  I've been rowing 30mins a day 2x a day.  1st thing in the morning and in the evening.  On weekends I usually got for 2mile jog instead of one of the rowing exercises.  I'm eating 2 meals a day on most days (lunch/dinner) and on occasion I eat once a day.  I'm around 1500 calories per day or less if I do OMAD.  Yet no matter what I do, I just keep hovering at 177-178.  I was able to do that while NOT exercising.  So I guess I'm pretty frustrated after about 3 months.  I don't see any "physical" signs of muscle gain so thats part of thinking nothing is actually happening.  

I have one of the garmin watches and their scales so I'm tracking all my activities and weight.  The scale just fluctuates all over the place in terms of why my weight is what it is.  Sometimes my BMI just goes up.  Sometimes my muscle mass goes up/down, my fat % goes up/down, water levels...etc, but I always remain the same.  Plus the garmin watches makes it appear as if I'm burning 2500+ calories a day based on exercise, steps...etc which would seem to indicate I should be losing weight and not maintaining.  

I guess some of going completely OMAD which I don't feel is sustainable, I've read where certain things like a slow thyroid or lack of testosterone were possible reasons for not being able to lose weight.

Venting and looking for ideas.

You've reached a plateau. Time to mix it up. Lift more. Go on longer walks. Fit the bike, etc.

I know this is probably not what you want to hear...but don't worry about the #.

If you are eating, exercising, and living healthily be happy with that. It's all in the perspective.

It's easy to fixate on the scale. The key is consistency in good behaviors and improvement in results. The results can be things like stamina, weight lifted, and recovery time. If your weight has stayed the same but your lifts are increasing, you're putting on muscle. Muscle has mass. Don't let the scale convince you that what you're doing doesn't matter and you can make poor decisions, because every day matters.

If you focus on Cardio - and that's what you're doing - this will happen.

My suggestion is pull way back on the Cardio, and go into a muscle building phase to build up your metabolism. A simple 5x5 program would probably do wonders for you.

As you build muscle, you'll need more calories* to maintain weight. Eat them. Build up until you need a lot more calories just to maintain your current weight - and then you can cut down.

*-Focus these calories on Protein, if possible. No need for a full Keto diet, but make sure your muscles have enough protein to grow.

The first big question, is how many calories are you really eating each day?

Without actually measuring and tracking, you'll never know exactly what your daily energy intake is. If you aren't using your food scale and volume measures every day, you are only really guessing.

If you eat say 2,000/day consistently, and your weight doesn't move....time to take it down to 1,500/day and adjust as needed until a goal weight is reached. You say you're at 1500/day...take it down to 1200 and see what happens.

It's the one method that works every single time as long as the tracking is done accurately.

What worked?
KETO

Go back to KETO
Stop “taking a break” from it.

As I stated, I'm around 1500 calories a day.  My lunch today was around 600 calories.  No breakfast.  My dinner and/or lunch varies but again I'm around 1500 calories not including the OMAD which would be much less.

Did you weigh it to make sure?

I know thats what I really should do.  I was never able to actually lose weight doing a standard diet. Even my current diet extremely restricts carbs but my body just doesn't process them correctly and never has.

Also, I agree with the person that suggested lifting heavy regularly.

Drop the cardio for awhile and start moving heavy weights around daily.

If they are lying to me, I'm lying to you.  The #s would also have to be WAY off to account for any significant deviation.  
Example side.  A bag of protein chips = 140cal = 1 serving, the servings would have to get to 3x to get to the point of being so far off my #s. And I did a check of another bag and it was 32g as specified in the servings.  

It's just a pet peeve of mine.

You said your meals are "around" a certain amount....but do you know for sure?

I'm going through this with my wife right now, we have her on 1200 calories a day....so I need to measure everything I make in meals, and she needs to be honest about tracking anything else she eats that day. We also ignore her lunch time exercise, not relevant, we just consider it a bonus for the day if it gets completed.

Lately I've been asking when she gets home "How many calories do you have left?"...if she says 300....then I make a 300 calorie dish for her.

It requires being rather meticulous about weighing and tracking...but it works.

I say around because not all meals total out to be 1500.  They vary based on the main dish.  Fish vs Chicken vs Eggs vs Steak vs Pork...etc.

OP. Please look into 18:6 intermittent fasting.

It has been working great for me. Takes a week or so to get used to. IF on top of not drinking anything with sugar in it since Dec 7th, My clothes have started to get very loose.

I eat 2 meals a day, whatever I want and I'm losing weight

eta: I don't count calories either. Intermittent fasting is literally a no fucks given way to lose weight. I'm sure I could lose more if I gave half a fuck

It's pretty similar to what I'm doing now.  I eat lunch between 11am and 12pm (depending on my workday) and then eat dinner between 4 and 5pm.  Then nothing else until next lunch.

I don't know if this is your problem, but when I have been losing weight, I will plateau after about 10 days. Once I plateau, I lose very little if any weight, even if I further restrict my calories. My trick has always been when I hit the plateau, it's time to go out to eat and knock back a 3000 calorie or so supper. My weight goes up for the 2 to 3 days following, but it breaks the cycle of my body adjusting my metabolism to the calorie intake, and I will loose weight like normal for another 10 days thereafter.

Dunno.  I'm pretty much the opposite.  I eat OMAD.  Lose a couple lbs and then go back to 2 meals a day and gain 3 or 4 back and slowly lose it.  

Just as a check in, I may have broken through my plateau.  When I made my OP, I was 177.2.  Every day since I've dropped weight.
2/20 - 177.2
2/21 - 176.8
2/22 - 175.2
2/23 - 174.4
2/24 - 173.5

No change in diet.  Again must have just been quite a long plateau period.  Fingers crossed but I've never been this low since exercising nor had this many days in a row drop of weight.

Rowing and jogging are things your body adapts to and gets efficient at very quickly. It may be helping your fitness, but is probably doing virtually nothing for your body composition at this point. I doubt you are really at 1500 calories a day, but if you are then your body burns almost nothing. You need to lift weights, you need to lift until the weights are heavy, and you need to keep going. 5x5 for 6 months and then 5/3/1 or something like that. Eat a ton of protein, and lift more. You will eventually increase what your body burns by a lot. For reference, I am 6'2" but I burn 3500-4500 calories a day, depending on activity.

You will never get what you want with Oprah diets and housewife exercise routines. If you want it bad enough, you will either do Keto and get skinny, or lift weights and eat protein and get strong.

I say this in this way because I used to be like you, and because I've known a lot of people with the same mentality.

Solid advice. But depending how long he's been at or around 1500 cal a day, his body probably adapted by slowing down his metabolism.

Might be good to reverse dirt up to a point where not still not gaining weight on a weekly basis and add weight training to boost metabolism.

A few thoughts:

1. Your body adapts to calorie restrictions over time. I would not go lower than 1500 calories. I may even add some back in (like 200 or so) for a week and then drop it back down.

2. I have a garmin scale. I like to use it daily, at the same time when I first wake up, wearing the same birthday suit to have as few variables as possible. Sometimes, like you say, strange things like bone mass fluctuate. Look at your weekly trends and focus on that, not specific days.

3. What heart rate are you achieving with your rowing and jogging? I honestly recommend that you limit your cardio above 140bpm. I suspect you’re running and rowing put you above that. Higher heart rates make your body prioritize burning glycogen. If you’re keto- that’s ok because you probably don’t have stored glycogen so you burn fat. If you’re NOT, your body will burn the glycogen first. If you’re not doing cardio for more than 20-30 minutes, you’re probably not burning thru that glycogen.

Conversely, low heart rate cardio (walking up a hill, walking briskly, rucking, or easy rowing) can be done at a heart rate where your body prioritizes burning stored fat.

This is why folks on keto benefit more from HIIT or sprints for a short duration, whereas folks who aren’t carb-restricted can run for 30-45 min a day without cutting significantly into stored fat.

4. Add some heavy weight training (safely, use a trainer if you’re new). If you can build more lean mass, your basal metabolic rate will increase (aka you burn more calories without doing anything) and the extra workouts will help burn calories. An added benefit is heavy weight training stimulates testosterone production which will also help with weight loss.

5. Sleep. Your body needs sleep to recover, build muscles, and also de-stress. Stress and the related increased cortisol levels are terrible for fat loss.

6. Take a minute and appreciate the progress you’ve made, and know this is about persistence and the process, not instant results. The discipline you build benefits you in all areas of your life.

I'll have to review all these when I get on my computer.  Most of my rowing is done sub 140bpm except the last 2-3 mins I try to go all out.  Then it jumps to over 150.  

Here is some examples of the past activities (Walking, Jogging, Rowing).  Hopefully thats legible.  The Calories burned for the rowing differs from what the rower says so this is on the lower end.  Who knows which is more accurate.




Using the Garmin Scale

What I did to lose weight was track macros and lift weights.  It was a long slow process.  I got close to my goal but I was really plateauing so I did a bulk for a bit then another cut.  You can't always lose everything in one run and sometimes you got to reboot your metabolism.  I did not do keto because I wanted to retain as much muscle mass as I could and keto definitely hampers gym performance.  I did not want to look skinny fat when I was done.

Is the Garmin scale commercially available?  I use Garmin smart watches and love how they link up to Strava and an app on my phone pretty seamlessly.   A scale that would do that too sounds compelling!

This is the scale I have.

https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/679362/pn/010-02294-02

Even if you don't want to bulk consider going to maintenance for 6 weeks before further restriction.  You will gain some water weight going to maintenance.  It's unavoidable and you can't let it psych you out.  Your body will be primed for more weight loss after that.

Are you going to do that cardio and eat 1200 or 1500cal in perpetuity? Seems like you're just setting yourself up for failure.

Reduce cardio, lift weights, reverse diet. The muscle you build will help you to lose that last little bit of fat.

In reality, no.   I can probably keep the calories down but I'm 43 and reality is that my cardio is likely to shift at some point.  I imagine the impact of jogging is going to take it's toll at some point on my knees.  So that would likely go to a walk vs jog.  The rowing is low impact and will likely continue for awhile.

I'd love to get a nice weight setup but I just don't have the room in my house.  Basement is the only place that I could possibly make it work but it's an unfinished basement and gets pretty cold in the winter.  

Nice work sticking with it. That said, eating 1-2 meals a day is a recipe for metabolic disaster if you're working out, especially with cardio.

You should be eating 3 meals a day + snacks.

Breakfast (AFTER exercising to create a calorie/ glycogen debt in your muscles / liver). Complex carbs are ok, fruits are ok, get some protein as well if possible.
Lunch- Mix of veggies/complex carbs and protein. This should be your highest calorie meal of the day.
Dinner- No carbs. Proteins and veggies only.

If you need a snack do something like a boiled egg or raw carrots, almonds, etc. stuff like that.

Next is the length of your workout. 30 mins in only going to be effective if your doing HIT (looking at your charts that means keeping your HR above 152-ish for the full 30 mins) or lifting. Otherwise, if you're doing cardio and want to lose real weight without hitting plateaus all the time, you need to be doing continuous aerobic work for at least an hour. You would be better off doing 1, one hour session than 2 thirties.

Was able to break through the 170 barrier.  4 week progress.

First, you need to weight yourself every morning naked before you eat or shower (dry fasted weight).  Then you need to take your weekly average and use that as your metric to measure weight loss.  The scale will bounce around throughout the week depending on many factors like salt or carb intake the day prior or muscle swelling/retention of water.  

You are obese, it is a serious health issue, and you need to spend money to solve your most important problem. I am sure, like most of us, you spend money on stupid shit, but this is important stuff and so you need to spend money on this problem.  You need to hire a nutrition coach, I recommend a company called StrongerU, but there are other folks out there if you look as well.  You need a nutrition coach that will set a MACRO-NUTRIENT (Protein, Carbs, Fat) count/track diet for you. STOP DOING KETO, KETO IS RETARDED.   Fat is 9 calories per gram, whereas Protein and Carbs a each 4 calories per gram.  Therefore, in terms of volume you can eat more carbs and protein and feel more full than you can through eating fat.  KETO or any restrictive diet that eliminates foods or entire categories of food is not a life style that the majority of people can maintain forever and you need to start thinking in terms of nutrition NOT diet.  Healthy eating is for life bro, sorry you're not 16 years old anymore and you have a slow metabolism, time to face that fact and embrace.  You're probably doing KETO because you're addicted to salt and fat, you're going to need to break that addiction.

Weight training is a MUST. You don't have to be some gym bro lifting heavy, but you do have to lift as a part of a health exercise regime.  You should be lifting three times a week.  Low intensity steady state cardio is fine, it's good for the heart and you should absolutely be doing it, but it will not give you the engine to burn calories throughout the day. Only muscle will do that and cardio is not the most effective means of building muscle.  Before you start a lifting routine though you need to go down to a local gym, find a reputable certified personal trainer, and have someone check you on your form to make sure you're not going to lift in such a way that you'll injure yourself. If you're like most American men you learned to lift weights in school from other friends or magazine pictures and that's not the best way to do learn to do something correctly.  Go get professional instruction.  If you have injuries or physical issues talk to a trainer and come up with ways to design a basic routine that will work around those injuries. Get into a sports medicine doctor (local university clinics are a great place to look) and address any reoccurring injuries you might have that have maybe prevented you from lifting.

Sleep, water, micro-nutrients...these things are important for your recovery.  Eight hours of sleep, lots of water every day (not soda or juice, don't drink your calories), and go get your blood tested to see if you have any vitamin or mineral deficiencies (you probably do if you have been eating poorly).  Address your deficiencies through diet changes and supplements (eventually everything should be taken in through real food, but supplements can work while you transition to a healthier life).  

In terms of cardio, mix it up with intensity.  Everyone thinks that cardio should be some linear or static thing.  If you're doing the same cardio routine every single day you will plateau in terms of improvements to your VO2 Max and resting heart rate.   You need to mix up cardio with easy days and hard days.  Easy pace long days (your 2 mile run) then the next you do sprints.  Make sure that if you're running that you are stretching well and running on soft surfaces (avoid concrete, asphalt as they'll pound your knees and bones into injury).   Cardio done right should be a mix of Low Intensity Stead State (LISS) and High Intensity Training (HIT).  If you can toss in one day where you substitute in swimming laps (be prepared though for your hunger to increase exponentially from swimming so stay disciplined on your diet).  

Some other issues that might be plaguing you and would be worth talking to your doctor about are: Fatty Liver (you may have  a fatty liver that would make the processing of fat more difficult) and check your testosterone levels (you may have low Testosterone).  

Avoid alcohol!  Your body treats alcohol like a poison. Your liver, which processes fat will treat alcohol like a poison and burn it first while retaining fat.  You want your burning of the fat you consume to be as efficient as possible. So, no alcohol.  Don't drink calories.  

Eat carbs, they're not the enemy.  They contain micronutrients your body needs to repair between workout sessions and they provide the energy your body needs to get through intense workout sessions where you'll be building muscle or in the case of cardio better cardio health.  Think of carbs as a filler. You need to be consuming at least your ideal body weight in grams of protein. You should be taking in somewhere between 25 to 30% of your calories from fat and then the rest is the carb filler, which can be adjusted up or down.  Some people find it easier to cycle their carbs and go low one day and then back up the next (perhaps back up when they are going to do a hard cardio day).  

Good job, OP.

Your current #s and mine are almost identical. I need to do some actual cardio and get better at consistently working out.

There are lots of people who will disagree with you, processed carbs are the enemy. Natural carbs from fruits, vegetables, and similar unprocessed foods are not necessarily the enemy.

So much good information in this post.  

I also agree with this about the weights.  Start light and work up to heavy.  I wouldn't stop the cardio nesscessarily.  I think you'll be surprised.

My big problem is that lack of space for a weight setup.

All you need really is a few dumbells or kettlebells to start.

Kettlebells are good because you can get a heavy one and a light one, then you can squat, deadlift, row and press it. Among other things.

The scale doesn’t tell the story.  

I’m 5 pounds lighter and an inch shorter than the op.  I eat a shit ton more than the op claims he is.

I’m 48 and this picture was taken this week.  Not even cutting...

Great advice! In my opinion we should follow some standards which tv and media shows us. If you have a healthy lifestyle and feel comfortable with your weight, why would you change something? Of course it is different if you can't go up the stairs in your house or have difficulties breezing because of the overweight. In this case you can try different diets, like this one for example - https://betterme.world/articles/7-day-military-diet-plan/. It is not that strict actually and most of the people can to it without suffering.

Lift weights. Do cardio after your workouts
Eat protein.