Busting Through The Weight Loss Plateau
by
Annette Jones
Weight Loss Plateau
The weight loss plateau is not a phenomenon that is unique to Weight Loss as a plateau can happen in other parts of your life too. In your career, your relationships or even a form of exercise.
What all these things have in common is, that we get use to what we are doing, a little bit or boredom and a dash of no variety and bang! you slam into the brick wall and come to a complete stop.
The trick is to recognize when it’s about to hit and catch it before you start the spiral into the abyss of the roundabout of “Here we go again”.
It’s human nature and completely normal to hit a plateau and everybody does it at sometime when they are losing weight.
I know, it’s really unfair as up until this point you have been “really good” “followed the plan step by step” and “stuck to the exercise plan like glue” you have worked really hard and quite frankly feel a little ripped off!
Being Honest With Yourself
To bust through the weight loss plateau takes courage. Courage to be completely honest with yourself. Much of it is a mind game and if you are in control and not negative Nancy or Nigel, then you are already in front.
What tends to happen is we become a bit slack. We stop writing down the foods that we are eating every day. We use to follow the theory if we bite it – we write it, however, now we just guess. It’s amazing how those little morsels of food and the nutritional additions can soon add up.
Perhaps your portion sizes have crept up? Exercise has become monotonous and boring too. Be honest here!
Chemical Reactions & Metabolism
A weight loss plateau can also happen because of a chemical reaction in your body too.
How exciting is it when you are in those first couple of weeks, the pounds or kgs are dropping off, you are feeling good and even a little bit sassy!
…and then it stops…
There is a type of carbohydrate called Glycogen found in the liver and muscles and when your food intake or calories are reduced your body releases Glycogen to use it as energy.
When Glycogen is used as energy it also let’s go of water that it stores, hence in those first few weeks weight loss can be credited to water loss.
A weight loss plateau happens as your metabolism slows— energy burning slows down as you begin to lose muscle. Your not burning the same amount of energy and calories and therefore hit a weight loss plateau! You repeat the daily activities that had such success when you initially started, you feel like you are peddling uphill and getting nowhere!
The Solution? Change It Up!
There are two solutions both are the initial causes of weight gain in the first place! Calories eaten and expulsion of energy!
Let me be more specific as you already know that, right?!
Go Back To the Beginning
Have a look at WHY you started, reignite yourself, check that there are no holes in your plan, (you DO have a plan don’t you?), is there something you are not following or doing now that you were doing? Remember BE HONEST. It’s OK if you have, pat yourself on the back, readjust and MOVE ON!
Check Your Portions
Have a look at your portion sizes are you adding a little here and there? Taste testing in the kitchen more often (Guilty!)?
Change up your food too, remember that’s why we have cheat days to “trick” our bodies, they have a memory for what is normal so change it up add a shake a couple of times a week, reduce your calorie in-take on some days.
Don’t go overboard here just subtle changes combined with other subtle changes will win out.
Take Your Workouts to a Whole New Level!
Change it up! If you have been only walking add some jogging. I started by jogging from one lamp post to another and then played a game with myself and added another lamp post and another lamp post until I was jogging the whole circuit.
Add some classes, Zumba and Belly Dancing are a lot of fun helps you to really move your body and sweat it out.
Add some weights to build muscle, this will help strip fat, win-win! Tones and tightens too!
Visualize & Imagination
This is THE most important step throughout your whole weight loss journey.
Do you have a picture in your minds eye of how you want to look and feel when you reach the size and shape you are journeying towards?
Without this it would be like wanting to travel from Vegas to L.A. without knowing the directions, not having a map and not knowing some of the details of how to reach L.A.
Get that pair of jeans out the back of your closet…you know the ones I mean… and hang them up somewhere you can see them EVERY day. Spend a few minutes looking at them or thinking about when you use to wear them, what were you doing, who were you with and most importantly how did you feel?
Those jeans hold memories and perhaps they are the very key to you busting through your weight loss plateau!
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