Weight-loss Plateau – Why me?
Have you been stuck on the same weight and cm’s for a while now, you might of hit your weight-loss plateau I know this can be very frustrating even when you’re still super dedicated and driven with your exercise and eating plan. It feels like your body is betraying you! Stagnation sucks, good news is that your body isn’t betraying you. When you hit your weight-loss plateau (like I have) then just reassure yourself that it’s normal for this to happen. According to Mayo Clinic it’s normal for weight-loss process to slow down or completely stop. You need to understand how to overcome your weight-loss plateau before you can move on from it.
Let’s First Understand what Weight-loss plateau is:
It’s an event that happens to almost everyone who tries to lose weight (sorry guys). This is a shock to most people and you kind off feel like you’ve been exercising regularly, feeding your body with the correct amount of food, the correct type and you’re just not losing anything. The truth in the matter is that even though you follow the perfect plan that weight-loss efforts can stall. Sob.
What are the common causes:
During the first few weeks a rapid weight loss drop is normal. This is because, when you cut calories, your body responds and searches for needed energy by releasing its stores of glycogen, which is a type of carbohydrate found in your muscles and liver.
Ever heard of the saying you’re only losing water weight? This is partly true. Glycogen is partly made of water, so when your body burns glycogen for energy it releases water, resluting in weight loss that is mostly water. Please note this effect is temporary. Hence, why those quick fix diets works so well, is because is short lived and your body burns glycogen that results in water weight that you lose not actual fat. That comes later with longer committed dieting and exercise.
As a normal process, when you lose weight you lose muscle mass. Muscle mass is your friend. Why? Because Muscle is like purring gasoline on fire, it increases fat loss and increases metabolic rate. As muscle burns fat (burns more calories), so if you loose weight you loose muscle mass, meaning that your metabolism declines and body does not burn as many calories as it did when you were at a heavier weight.
This in effect is what is slowing down your process, even though you’re eating the right amount of macros and exercising. When you eat the macros that you burn, that’s when you reach a plateau.
So what do you do? You either increase your physical activity or you can reduce your macro intake. If you don’t do this, you will only successfully maintain your current weight and body fat percentage.
How To overcome your weight-loss plateau:
You need to assess first: Do I want to loose more weight? If your answer is yes, you will need to adjust your eating plan and physical plan. It’s as easy as that.
To get past the plateau is not impossible, you need to get and be committed to dropping the fat. You can try the following:
- Look at your past and current behaviours: During your weight-loss mission, did you start getting more lenient with the amount of days and time that you exercised? I know I have.
- Cut Your Macro count: You guessed it, you will have to cut your calories. It is advised that you don’t go under 1200 calories a day, this is because you will be more likely to overeat due to hunger. Please consult your Dr or health practitioner if you want to go below this.
- Change Your workouts: You need to increase the calorie burn in your workouts! Easy way to do this is to incorporate more weight training – increase your muscle mass = burning more calories. Secondly increase your intensity in your normal workouts, do super-sets and more reps faster. Give your body a real challenge. The harder it is the more fat your body will burn.
- Move more during the day: Okay this is where working a desk job sucks. So make a point of it to move more during the day. When you have lunch go for a walk. When you have a lazy Sunday do yoga and move shortly. don’t be a coach potato and if you are there are multiple exercises you can do to promote blood flow in your body. Dry brushing is also a great solution for smoothing out cellulite as it promotes blood circulation. It really is the little things we do that makes a massive difference.
- Don’t lower protein intake: Protein is your friend in building lean muscle. And what does muscles do for weight-loss? It increases your calorie burn efficiency.
- Manage Your stress levels: When we stress our bodies releases the stress hormone called Cortisol that has been found to make weight-loss very difficult. When you learn how to manage your stress levels your body will release fewer cortisol levels that will ease up in your weight-loss efforts again. Cortisol release has been found to increase belly fat in women especially. Learn to get stress relieve mechanisms. I love doing Yoga, it is my destress for everyday. Yoga is a very effective stress management tool that boost confidence and your metabolism.
- Avoid Drinking alcohol: We all know that one glass of red wine is actually good for you, however most people don’t keep to only one glass. This leads poor inhibitions and poor food choices and overeating.
- Drink more water: This will flush out your bad toxins and help increase your metabolic rate. It can simply increase your metabolism by 24-30%. That’s a very impressive percentage.
- Get lots of Zzzz’s: It’s important for your body to get the proper rest it needs. Sleep determines physical, metal and emotional health. Poor sleep can lead to weight gain and plateaus.
- Eat Your Veggies: Eat your veggies in every meal, why? Fiber and nutrients that’s why. Veggies are not just healthy and great for weight-loss it’s a great fuller!
- Don’t only look at the scale: The scale does not always tell the truth, or let me rather put it this way, it adds to a part of the whole story. Like research you can’t only focus on one method as one is not better as the other. A collective approach is better. Meaning take data from the scale, measurements and progress photos. Then you will have a 360 of your weight-loss efforts.
We all need to remember that this process is normal, it’s not rare. You just need to know how to overcome your weight-loss plateau and accept that getting to your goal body is a journey and as I’ve discussed in previous articles, weight-loss sucks. It’s tuff and mentally challenging. Losing weight sucks but the reward outweighs the sacrifices we make.
