How to break through your weight loss plateau
Have you been exercising regularly and eating healthily but find you still can’t lose those last few pounds? If so, you’ve probably hit a weight loss plateau.
Often when weight plateaus, you are actually closer than ever to losing weight. However, seeing your weight stay the same for weeks on end after an initial weight loss is a natural and common occurrence caused by your body’s instinctive need to maintain equilibrium.
Once your body has got used to a new routine of eating and exercising it gradually adjusts its metabolism in order to safeguard its fat reserves. It’s at this point that you’ll notice your eating and exercise efforts aren’t producing the same weight loss results as before and the needle on the scales stubbornly sits in the same place.
If you still have weight to lose it is important to keep eating healthily when your weight loss plateaus. Trying to speed up weight loss by severely restricting your food intake is no solution – your body will recognise the reduction in calories and cling to fat ever harder. Don’t get angry with yourself either. Instead think of how far you have come and how much weight you have lost. Think about how much better you feel now that you are eating healthily and how much easier it is to climb stairs or run after the children. Make a mental note of all the improvements you notice to stay motivated.
Is this really a plateau?
If you’ve been eating healthily and exercising regularly and your weight has hit a plateau for several months then you need to think about whether this is really a plateau or you have indeed reached your natural weight or the weight your body feels comfortable at. If you are 30 pounds over what is ideal for your height and build this could be a plateau but if you are just 5 pounds or even 10 pounds away you might consider accepting your weight. Is it really worth punishing your body with a strict regime to achieve a weight that is perhaps unnatural and unhealthy for you?
To recognise if you are really in a plateau, think whether you are doing any strength training or muscle work. Muscles weigh more than fat. That’s why scales can be misleading. You may not show a weight loss, but with muscle replacing fat, you will look at lot better. You may also want to check with your doctor if you have any condition that interferes with weight loss, such as diabetes, PCOS, thyroid problems or other hormonal imbalance. Also important to consider is where the fat is stored. If it is stored around your middle, this is the greatest risk to your health. Fat stores accumulated here are associated with heart disease, diabetes and even cancer.
If you are eating a healthy, balanced diet and do regular exercise, it is possible that your body has simply settled at a weight that is best for you. If, however, you really feel you have reached a plateau and that you do need to lose some more weight, there are things you can do to promote weight loss.
Promoting weight loss when you hit a plateau:
In order to break through the plateau, you have to do two things: alter your eating habits and change your exercise programme in a way that challenges your body.
Start first with your diet:
- Keep a food diary: Sometimes after the initial weight loss, you may not be as diligent as you were in the beginning. Portion sizes start to increase. Sweets creep back into your diet. You could be eating more calories than you think. Keeping a food diary and recording everything that you eat will help. This does not mean severely restricting your diet. It just means making a few small changes; eating more fruit, having a salad a day and avoiding high calorie foods.
- Forgive yourself: Many people have an ‘all or nothing’ way of thinking, when it comes to healthy eating. They feel guilty or angry with themselves when they lapse and then carry on eating poorly because of these negative feelings. The first step is to forgive yourself: what you’ve eaten isn’t the problem, but how you’ve reacted to it is. If you’ve lapsed recently, remind yourself that no one is perfect and tomorrow is another day.
- Ask for help: Social support from a partner, slimming group, friend or website can provide essential help and emotional encouragement. And statistics show that people who have a support system tend to lose weight and keep it off, as they can share their diet ups and downs with others.
- Slow down: Many people have unrealistic weight loss goals. When you start eating healthily, and combining this with regular exercise, you will lose a lot of weight but most of this is water. After losing this initial weight, people tend to lose one pound a week on average, which is still considered good progress (even a few pounds a month is good). In fact, slow but steady is the best way to lose weight because studies show that people who lose weight slowly and gradually at a rate of one or two pounds a week tend to be most successful at losing weight and keeping it off.
- Look beyond your diet: Are there other factors getting in the way of your weight loss efforts? For example, stress might be bringing up inner feelings and needs that are sabotaging your eating plan. Go back to your food diary and jot down the thoughts and feelings that make you want to eat, or use your social support network to talk about the emotional connection between food and mood.
- Be prepared: Always eat breakfast so you don’t start the day feeling hungry, and make sure your environment complements your diet. This might mean taking healthy snacks to work with you or filling your fridge with healthy foods so you’re not tempted to eat things that might sabotage your diet.
- Moderation: Don’t cut out all the foods you enjoy from your diet. Just eat them in moderation. Losing weight and being miserable do not have to be the same thing.
- Eat little and often: Eating small meals frequently can help regulate your blood sugar and appetite. Also, as your body expends energy when digesting food, eating several mini meals a day can help boost your metabolism. Drinking water can also help fill you up and regulate your appetite. It’s important to be sure you are getting enough water since many people can mistake thirst for hunger.
- Drink up: Drinking plenty of water is essential to weight loss, since burning fat increases the toxins in your system which then need to be flushed out by your liver and kidneys. If there isn’t adequate water to do this, your body will burn fat less efficiently as this natural function won’t be triggered. If you’re eating properly and exercising regularly at a high intensity, increasing your water intake may be just the thing you need to get your weight loss back on track. You should drink up to two litres a day (or more if it’s hot or you are exercising), and cut back or ideally eliminate coffee, tea or colas etc. that may dehydrate you.
Now that you know what kind of changes you need to make to your diet to start losing weight again, you can focus on subtly modifying your exercise routine to get the results you want.
- Consider cross training: Are you stuck in an exercise rut? Running the same number of miles a week? Swimming the same number of laps? When muscles get used to an exercise pattern, they begin to adapt. Your body gets used to a particular type of exercise and burns fewer calories doing it. To keep your fat burning high, mix your workouts. Combine walking with cycling, or jogging with swimming or stair climbing with aerobics and so on.
- Increase the intensity: You could build up the intensity of your workout by picking up the pace for one to three minutes, then returning to your normal pace for three to five minutes. Repeat this cycle throughout your workout as it will help you burn more fat.
- Exercise first thing: If you can try to exercise first thing in the morning as this will kick start your metabolism and help you burn fat stores all day. If you aren’t used to morning exercise make sure you have a light snack such as a piece of fruit and a cracker before you begin; then have your breakfast after your workout.
- Get pumped: Are you doing enough strength training? Muscles require more energy to function than fat does, so if you increase your muscle mass you’ll raise the speed at which you burn calories and, consequently, fat. Often women lose weight by cutting calories and only doing aerobic exercise such as walking but this means they lose muscle along with fat and each pound of muscle you lose decreases the amount you must eat to maintain your weight by 35 calories. The secret is to maximise fat loss while maintaining muscle tone. Keep doing aerobic activity but start weight training or muscle toning exercises for a slimmer, firmer body. If you do training with weight make sure you have a rest day in between.
- Are you active enough? Think about how active you are in your daily life. In this modern age of internet shopping, phones, e-mail, cars, lifts, escalators, washing machines and TVs we are far less active that our mothers were fifty years ago. Try to keep as active as possible during the day.
- Go for longer: If you are exercising aerobically it might be time to increase the length or intensity of your workout. Studies have shown that exercise for forty five minutes five times a week is effective for weight loss but if you haven’t got the time to spare intensify your workouts by making movements more precise and not resting between moves. There’s no need to increase the duration of your workout - just your effort.
- Have a rest: During exercise, you stress your system and if you don’t allow your body to adequately recuperate between sessions, you can actually lose muscle tissue. This, in turn, will cause your metabolism to slow down. Allowing your muscles to recover, along with following a good diet, is ultimately what makes you more toned and sculpted. Also, by letting your body recover properly, you can work to maximum capacity in your next workout and so burn more fat. So if you are exercising more than five days a week or for more than two hours a day, it may be time to cut back.
Once you have reviewed the tips above and fine-tuned your diet and workout programme, you should start to notice a difference in how you look in the weeks ahead. Don’t forget that muscle weighs more than fat, so even if the numbers on the scale aren’t budging, it does not mean you are not making progress and fluctuations of a few pounds either way are perfectly normal. Above all, be patient with yourself. If you keep eating healthily, exercising regularly and enjoying your life your body will eventually settle at a weight that is perfect for you.