You’ve been watching what you eat and exercising… at first the pounds came off but now it’s been a couple of weeks and you haven’t lost an ounce.
Frustrating doesn’t even begin to cover it…. What gives…
Why does weight loss stop?
The truth is we’re human beings not robots and your weight loss journey is going to be on of ups and downs. While it would be great to know you can lose weight each and every week the fact is that’s NOT going to happen.
There will be times you’ll lose a couple of pounds, there will be times you don’t lose a thing, and yes there will be times you may even gain a pound or two.
The thing to remember is its NORMAL for that to happen. But even knowing that, most people struggle with dealing with it.
I mean, you start out strong, you have made some impressive progress in your weight loss journey. In the first week or month, you might have lost over 5 pounds and maintained an average of 2-pound loss every week.
However, after a few weeks or months of dieting and/or exercising, it seems like you’ve hit a plateau, and you can’t lose any more weight.
GRRR right? But what’s going on?
The reason weight loss slows down or stops is multifactorial and could be caused by among other things, a low-intensity exercise routine, overestimating your caloric expenditure during workouts, and repeatedly cheating on your diet.
Regardless of the underlying mechanism, here are some helpful tips to get you out of this plateau and get the scale moving in the right direction
Workout harder: The body has amazing adaptive properties that allow it to undergo anatomical and physiological modifications to handle new challenges.
For this reason, you might witness massive weight loss during the first few weeks of cardio or strength training, which gradually slows down as the body adapts to the current stress.
Therefore, to avoid this pitfall, you need to constantly challenge your body during workout sessions to keep the muscles and cellular machinery under sufficient stress, which eventually leads to more weight loss.
Change your diet: Sticking to one diet or one calorie count after hitting the plateau is another mistake made by beginners, even if they’re doing everything else correctly.
For instance, if you are on a diet for a few month and it doesn’t seem to cause any further weight loss, it’s probably time to switch things up and more importantly lower the number of calories you’ve been eating. Smaller bodies mean lower caloric requirements so if you don’t make adjustments you’ll plateau. it would be a good time to switch to another eating habit and/or taking a different approach.
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Boost your metabolism: As we age, our metabolism gradually slows down, which may hinder your weight loss journey. However, this process also occurs when you switch to a sudden caloric deficit status since the body interprets it as a state of starvation.
To counter this phenomenon, you need to maintain an active lifestyle and consider consuming foods that boost metabolism (e.g., green tea, coffee). Though the effect isn’t usually great it often can be the difference for many people.
Takeaway message
Maintaining weight loss after a long period is more challenging than the process of burning fat itself. Hopefully, these tips will help you lose more weight to reach your fitness goals.
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