Thursday, January 23, 2014

Getting Over Your Weight Loss Plateau



It’s an unfortunate fact of weight loss that there will be plateaus. Every now and again you’ll hit a point where it feels like your body can’t lose any more weight no matter how healthy you’re eating, how much you’re exercising, whether you’re eating solid or liquidnutrition, or what kind of diet you’re on. There may be a lot of reasons for this plateau, but all of them are easy to overcome with some determination and strategy.

Don’t Give Up

The first thing you’ll need to have when you’re traversing this plateau is a good attitude about it. Not everything pays noticeable dividends all the time. Noticing that you’re not losing weight - but not gaining any back - is a good thing. Keeping in mind that the weight loss isn’t coming, but you have noticed some more firmness in your arms, legs, or stomach is another fantastic way to think.

Keep Track

Every few months it’s important for dieters to take another look at their eating habits. Just because you may have a few months ago, at the start of your weight loss journey, doesn’t mean you should keep your habits the same or even that you haven’t unknowingly fallen back into bad habits. Keep track of what you’re eating, drinking, and doing and see if you can find where things are going wrong, what can be cut out, or what can be added. If it’s that there aren’t certain nutrients coming into your diet then add some reinforcements, like a liquidnutrition supplement, if it’s that you accidentally went back to idly snacking on bad foods, cut it out.

Switch Up Your Foods

Sometimes your portion sizes will creep back up and you’ll find that, instead of 2,000 calories per day, you’re eating 2,100 calories or getting too much of that in fats or carbs. By switching over to low-fat sources of protein, like fish or different cuts of chicken, you will be able to reduce the amount of fat you’re taking in. These will not only allow you to eat more food throughout the day, keeping you feeling fuller; it will help you to eat the right things as well as not get bored with your diet.

Push Yourself Further

If you’ve taken a look at your diet, made the appropriate changes, and even found a better way to eat so that you’re getting all of your nutrients in a filling way at an even lower amount of total calories, then good for you! The next thing that you can do to step up your weight loss is to simply push yourself harder during your exercises.

It’s easy to not want to have people see you fail to lift some weights at the gym or feel embarrassed on the treadmill. The fact is that working your body out to the point that it’s no longer able to lift those weights or run that speed is a good thing. The human body is an incredible, but very lazy, machine. It wants to get the best results with the smallest amount of work possible. Unfortunately, its idea of “best results” are often at odds with yours. While your idea of “best results” is getting a beach body in time for summer, its idea of “best results” is getting the necessary work done with the least amount of energy expense. Getting into a routine with your weights or cardio is going to put your body directly into this place. Putting more weight, more reps, more speed, or more incline onto your regular workout will switch it up for your body and allow you to start dropping pounds once again.

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