Aquarium cycling stalled?

I'm cycling my aquarium with just fish food and no fish. In the beginning everything was great ammonia spiked, then nitrite. But it's been a few days and nitrite is 5.0 and nitrate is 5.0 as well. And it's been like this for a few days- nearing a week and the results have been the same. What happened, is this normal? And when nitrite spiked the ammonia went down, but not to 0ppm. It's in lingo between 0-.50ppm. HELP ME, I don't understand what happened. It's filtered and heated to 84. I did stop adding fish food when things started rolling, could this be a problem? Am I continually supposed to put fish food until the cycling is done?