If you’ve ever gone on a diet, or an exercise programme, then you will know, the initial spurt of weight loss is easy and painless. After the first six months or even earlier in some people, it gets harder to lose any more weight. You hit what is called a weight loss plateau. This is a situation where you are still doing the same things you were doing in the first six months and yet you are not losing any weight, in some cases, a bit more weight even comes back!
First of all, it is important to note that weight and fat losses are two different things. At the beginning of a diet / exercise regimen, body water balance is altered by the new foods you are eating. More often than not, at the start, the number reflecting on the scale is loss in water weight. Even after you have been dieting for a while, weight can go up and down by small margins because of changes in hydration and water balance.
Fat loss is what anyone looking to shed some extra weight should really be going for. The only way to lose actual fat is to get your calorie intake lower than calorie expenditure. Simply put, expend more energy (via exercise, keeping active) than you take it in (the food you eat). However, this doesn’t mean you simply cut calories as you wish and expect to lose weight, it’s a little more delicate than that.
So what do you do if you reach such a plateau? Be it weight or fat loss, when the numbers on the scale are no longer going down, or other forms of measurement are stalling as well. Below are some tips to help you break through and get shrinking again!
Tip One: Switch Up Your Workouts
Although one can lose weight without exercising, exercise can help you lose weight faster. However, when you do the same thing over and over again, your muscles will learn to those same routines with lesser energy – thus you burn fewer calories. To maximize the benefit from your exercise routines, you need to mix it up. If you are used to jogging, try adding sprints while jogging and change your usual route to one that includes hills. If you go to the gym and are used to using say the treadmill for cardio, switch up to the stair master or elliptical. Also, look up HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) and incorporate it in your routine. This has been proven to be the fastest and most effective way to facilitate fat loss.
Tip Two: Calorie Cycling
For weight loss, the key thing is to cut back on your calorie intake, i.e. food intake. The problem is when you do this long enough your body may start conserving energy by lowering your metabolic rate. When that happens you don’t burn as many calories and your weight loss slows or stops altogether. This may seem like a sabotage on the part of your body but what your body is doing is going into fat starvation mode. Your body sees that less food is coming in so it tries to protect you by holding onto the already present fat stores in your body and increasing your chances of survival in what it perceives as a famine.
Calorie cycling is alternating between high and low calorie days, high carb days and high protein days. Let’s say you were eating 1,700 calories every day and that stops working, instead of eating even lesser food, try eating say 2,000 calories some days and 1,300 calories another day. Keep changing it up that way. The advantage of higher calorie days is that it keeps your metabolism from slowing down in response to sustained calorie restriction. Also, this helps so you don’t feel too restricted. On lower calorie days, you may feel a bit hungry but you will have the higher calorie days to look forward to.
Tip Three: Take a Breather
Any fitness journey you embark on know that it is a marathon, not a sprint. Take your time and enjoy the process, celebrate the work you’ve already put in. Don’t think of the goal as a finish line, but as a life style. Try not to get frustrated at a few remaining pounds so you don’t give up. Remember after you lose and get to your desired goal, maintaining that goal weight is also hard work, so don’t be in a hurry. If it takes you six months to lose the last few pounds , that’s six months of developing and maintaining a healthy eating habit. And that greatly increases your chances of maintaining a healthy weight for the long term.
