Beating the Diet Plateau

The dreaded diet plateau! Enough to cause a grown man to shudder and go running for the Cheetos. See if the following scenario sounds familiar. You are moving along, dropping weight, feeling good. You have scrimped and starved and deprived yourself for weeks.

The moment of truth arrives and you step on the scale, thinking you are going to see some kind of fantastic result-when horrors-things come to a screeching halt! The scale has not budged. Don't be alarmed, it happens to the best of us. My friend, you have reached what weight loss vernacular is called the dreaded diet plateau.

Food Techniques

Don't fear. Like I said these plateaus can happen to the best of us. Nothing is as frustrating as reaching a holding pattern after all your hard-earned efforts. Especially,for the very reason that you are not cheating, you are doing everything right and are still stuck and not losing.

How do these plateaus occur in the first place, and more importantly how can they be overcome and conquered? The good news it that yes, these sticking points can be overcome with some extra determination and persistence. The bad news is that when you get stuck in your weight loss it can be daunting.

Feeling stuck and not seeing the scale budge is the point where many less tenacious people will give up and abandon their food plans. So, the purpose of this article is to get you past the hump and get you hurdle and steam-rolling down the fast track of success again.

So why does this happen in the first place? There are many reasons. The first one ismetabolism. Eventually the body becomes familiar with the current diet and exercise routine. Just like a long-term marriage. Initially the honeymoon phase is fun and exciting, but after awhile, you become accustomed to one another and no longer have the same spark, you have settled into familiarity. The same thing happens with your metabolism.

Initially, the fat burning mechanisms in the body are super-charged and ramped up, and the weight drops off with the new diet. Eventually though, the body realizes it is being deprived, so it compensates for the reduced caloric intake and readjusts it's internal set-point. This is an intrinsic response system in the body that was designed for species survival in order to conserve energy.

This natural regulatory system is why manyexperts recommend to not go below 1000 calories per day and advocate against extremely low calorie diets. Eventually the body will slow down it's metabolism to compensate, and even though caloric intake is minimal the weight loss will be too.

Another reason a person can reach a diet plateau is due to hormonal and water weight fluctuations. Women of menstruating age are especially prone to this and can hold onto or even gain up to five pounds of water weight prior to their menses. This makes it very frustrating when you have lost only five pounds in three weeks and then right before your period gain them all back! The weight gain and bloating is only temporary but can still be extremely disheartening.

Certain medications can also sometimes be a culprit. Many hormones,antidepressants, birth control pills, and anti-psychotics are notorious for causing weight gain or hindering weight loss results. Check with your doctor or pharmacist to see if the pills you are taking are keeping you fat.

The fourth reason people sometimes get stuck in their weight loss is just plain boredom! The same old diet, the same old exercise routine, day in and day out. Eventually, some of the old habits can come creeping back in. Maybe you are not as diligent as you were initially or you have possible to cut some corners.

So how does one beat the dreaded dieter's dilemma of reaching a plateau?

1. Shake it up). You have to trick your body and your metabolism to get it fired up again. You can do this a couple of different ways. You can change your foodplan. Cut back on your caloric intake slightly or switch to a low-carb diet for a day or two. Maybe try the good old hard-boiled eggs and grapefruit. Eat only fruit for a day. Whatever you want that appeals to you. The point is to switch things around a little bit to shake up your metabolism.

2.) Cut back your salt intake. Salt can be a huge culprit in water retention. Check labels, watch for hidden sodium in canned foods, especially condiments, soups, etc. Use herbal seasonings instead of the salt shaker. Sometimes just limiting your sodium intake will mean the difference of several pounds.

3). Rev up your metabolism. Get moving more! Do something different than your usual exercise routine to trick your body into submission. Eventually Your body adjuststo any exercise you do and then goes into auto-pilot. So what initially worked for you may stop working.
So the key here is to do something different. Lift some weights. Ride a bike. Add fifteen to thirty minutes more to your daily walk, and increase your pace. Take a spin class. Take up kick-boxing. Pop in a new workout DVD. The point is to do something different and make sure you break a sweat.

4). This last trick is the most unconventional but can also work. This is a last ditch effort for when you have pulled out all the stops and the stairs isn't budging. It is time to pull out the big guns! Go OFF your diet! Yes, you read correctly. Go off your diet.

Now I didn't say go crazy and binge. However, when all else fails, like I said, you have to trick yourbody. If you have completely stuck to your diet and have been following your previously successful diet to a tee, sometimes you just need to fool your body.

What you effectively accomplish by going off your diet and increasing your caloric intake for a day or
two, is that you will trick your body into thinking is has more calories to burn and it will adjust to fire up the metabolism, and get out of conservation mode.

Though this route is contrary to most conventional wisdom, by going off your diet for just a day or two you can reset your metabolism to a higher level. When you resume your previous again meal plan, your fat-burning furnace will be stoked up and again the weight will begin coming off easily.

Hope these tips and techniques helped you in going fromyour diet plateau to the slender self you are striving for.

by Lisa Goldsmith-RN

Beating the Diet Plateau