Overcoming the Weight Loss Plateau

Posted: Nov 28 in Weight Loss Blog by Staff

Have your weight loss efforts come to a halt? Are you frustrated because you’re running out of tricks to get the scale moving again? When the scale doesn’t want to cooperate, here are a few ideas to coax your body into dumping those unsightly pounds.

If your weight hasn’t gone anywhere in a few weeks, the best trick is to take a good look at your current eating habits. Many dieters have a tendency to let little things slip. Is that piece of beef sitting on your plate actually a lean cut or is it adding more calories than you’re accounting for? Have you started putting a little mayonnaise on your turkey burger instead of mustard? Maybe you’ve forgotten what a small pile of brown rice actually looks like. Underestimating calories eaten and overestimating calories burned causes diet stalls more than any other reason.

A similar problem occurs when dieters misunderstand the effects that weight loss has on their metabolism. The amount of calories, carbohydrates and fats you could initially eat and lose weight won’t stay the same as you grow smaller. Have you remembered to readjust your daily intake downward to match your drop in pounds? To keep losing weight, you have to eat fewer calories than your body needs.

If your calories are already low, perhaps it’s time to ramp up your metabolism. As dieters approach their goal weight, weight loss slows. You can counteract this problem by increasing the intensity and duration of your workouts. Aerobic exercise burns calories and improves cardiovascular health, but resistance training keeps the metabolism high for many hours after a workout. The higher your metabolic rate, the more calories you’ll burn.