3 Easy Steps to Crushing Weight Loss Plateaus
Stop me if you've heard this one before: You've just lost a significant amount of weight, though you're not quite at your goal yet. You're exercising regularly, sticking to your diet perfectly, and then one week, everything stops.
You check your scale to make sure it's not broken, because surely the needle would have moved further down by now, but nope, you're stuck!
No need to worry, there are several common reasons you may experience a sudden stop in your weight loss, and today you'll learn how to overcome your plateaus.
Usually a plateau is caused by eating too much -knowingly or unknowingly- not getting enough exercise, or simply poor adherence to a good program (or worse: good adherence to a bad program).
To fix all that, I'll give you three suggestions get your weight loss back on track. If you follow these steps in the order listed, you should start to see your results pick up again.
1. First, increase your exercise volume to 5-7 hours per week. Include a good mix of free weight training, interval training, and moderate cardio. I know quick, HIIT-style workouts are popular right now, but if you're stuck, you simply may not be putting your body under enough adaptive stress, and the extra hours could help. If you don't see progress after a few weeks (give yourself at least two weeks), move on to Step 2.
2. Second, reduce calorie intake by about 250 per day. If you're someone who, for example, likes to eat 5 meals a day, it's fairly easy to cut out just 50 at every meal. But remember, calorie listings aren't perfectly exact, so get an idea of how much food 250 calories is and go from there. Also, don't fall for the "I'm not losing weight because I'm not eating enough" myth. Smaller bodies require less food, so as your body shrinks, so will your calorie requirements. After at least two weeks, if you see no progress, move on to Step 3.
3. Third, increase exercise volume to 7-9 hours per week. Are you starting to see a pattern here? It may take a higher volume of training for some people to see changes, so be patient with yourself. If weight loss again stagnates, continue as before with dropping your daily calories by 250.
BONUS STEP: Think positively about your body changing. The more you associate your ideal body with fun things like feeling confident, playing with your kids, or enjoying more out of life, the more you will see results happening. I always say the body follows the mind's commands, so if you can change your mindset, you can change your life.
Please comment or share this if you got some good tips today, and feel free to send me a message if you'd like me to answer one of your questions :)
