7 Strategies to Overcoming a Weight Loss Plateau
Achieving your goal weight can be tough. Even though you’ve shed weight rapidly at the onset of your fitness journey, there will surely come a time when the weight-shedding slows down. This is often regardless of the amount of effort you put into it. If you’re wondering why this is happening to your weight loss progress, the answer is you’ve probably hit a plateau. The next step for you is to figure out the best path to overcoming a weight loss plateau.
It’s a frustrating phase in your journey, considering you’re religiously working out and following your diet plan. But you’re not seeing the same results from the scale as you were earlier. What could be the problem?
It’s crucial to keep in mind how far you’ve come in your weight loss journey. Give yourself a pat on the back for all that work and don’t get discouraged. Instead, strategize how to overcome the plateau stage. Don’t let the frustration overwhelm you and take you back to your bad eating habits. It’s best not to lose focus and determine the best course of action to reach your goals. Push yourself to regain momentum to lose more weight.
Revisit Your Weight Loss Plan
Begin by revisiting your weight loss plan and identify where you started going off track. If you are working with a trainer they can really help you here. If they are using compliance and progress tracking software, they might know the exact problem. You could be lacking consistency or commitment to your new habits which might have caused the plateau.
Once you review the program, identify what you think are the possible factors that might have derailed you. To evaluate every factor, you should backtrack all your food intake and workout schedules in the past weeks before the plateau. You may have had some more cheat and rest days that could’ve been the reason for this stall in your weight. Again a personal trainer can really help in this area.
Adjust Your Training Regime
Monotony may make you complacent and can lead you into the plateau phase. It’s often suggested by trainers that you should vary your fitness program. For instance, you can do resistance training three times a week and cardio exercises in-between days. By doing this, you lessen the fatigue, eliminate the monotony, and increase the variety.
That said, it’s crucial to adjust to your training regimen and come out of your comfort zone to try different exercises. New exercises can invigorate you and provide new results. Additionally, they also decrease the chances of experiencing a plateau. Finally, you can look into diet changes and techniques like intermittent fasting to spice up your weight loss plan. Ensure that you are eating in a way that will protect you against muscle mass loss.
Rest Periodically
If you feel exhausted from working out or fasting, don’t think twice about resting. Always remember that fatigue can possibly be the reason for slowing down your weight loss progress. Overtraining can cause real issues. More often than not, individuals exhaust themselves thinking that it’ll lead to quick results, which makes overcoming a weight loss plateau more frustrating.
Taking rest days in your workout program or dieting plan is beneficial to your body. It’s an opportunity to evaluate your weight loss progress. This can have a dramatic impact on overcoming a weight loss plateau.
Control Intensity
Losing weight requires commitment and mental toughness due to the activities involved, especially in the gym. Your strategy should be intentional as you aim for your desired results.
You must increase the intensity of your workouts or adjust your diet to match the new changes. Try new workouts or workout intensity variations to help pull you out of the plateau phase. Do a few HIIT sessions if you haven’t been doing them. Or switch up your body part splits for a few weeks. A personal trainer can often update your workout plan to control intensity properly in a way that can help push you out of your plateau.
Moreover, you must always stay hydrated to replenish water loss during your workout. Stay healthy by eating a balanced diet. Avoid eating processed food and food supplements because it interferes with your weight-loss strategies. Diet could be the primary reason why you’re experiencing a plateau.
Document Your Milestones
If you want to track your weight loss progress, you can utilize progress tracking software with your personal trainer. Software like FitSW, also automatically highlights your achievements so you can see how far you have come. Reviewing these from time to time may make you feel motivated to keep on going in spite of all the weight loss challenges.
Take note of all the activities that your weight loss journey is comprised of. Then focus on the key areas that need improvement. It can help reduce the guesswork, and lets you remain focused on your plans. In addition, recording your milestones encourages you to push yourself more when implementing your weight loss strategy.
Keep Your Diet In Check
Weight loss strategies revolve around changing certain habits like binge eating or not exercising. Once you decide to lose excess weight, you must maintain the newly adapted practices to realize your goals. Remember that inconsistency after initial results can result in a weight loss plateau.
That said, pay attention to your diet and always hydrate to keep your body system working. Always make sure that you eat a balanced diet. Starving yourself may make you lose some weight easily, but it would eventually put your health in danger. It can also affect how fast your body does burn the calories it does get. Significant calorie reduction over long periods of time is not a risk worth taking.
Leverage Massage Therapy
Massage therapy can help relax your mind and the tense muscles in your body. Perhaps you’ve plateaued because of stress. A change in perspective should be the way to go. Realize that your weight loss journey should be taken gradually. Train your mind not to stress yourself out and enjoy the ride.
Plan your meal, plot your workout schedule, monitor your progress, and reward yourself with some massage therapy for relaxation. Following this strategy and lifting the stress of losing weight might contribute to getting you out of this plateau phase.
Conclusion
It’s exciting when you look in the mirror and feel that you’re shedding weight. It shows your new eating habits and workout are working in your favor. You’re pushing yourself to speed up the weight loss. However, you can easily plateau if you ignore evaluating your progress and some of the tips above. This can lead you to get stuck and quit. Instead, you must strategize navigating through weight loss challenges to propel yourself out of the plateau phase. One new trend to explore is red-light therapy. However, it is a controversial subject but some say it is beneficial as outlined in this informative post. As with any trend, research both sides of an issue and be sure you are investigating using objective sources.
