Weight loss: Avoid plateaus and ruts

Weight loss: Avoid plateaus and ruts

If you have lost a significant amount of weight or followed a weight loss plan for a period of time, you know that even if you continue to follow the plan perfectly, most people reach a plateau in about 6 months. The body, as intelligent as it is designed, learns to adapt to what you have done and no longer responds the way it first did.

It is recommended that you consume about 20% fewer calories for every 10% of your body weight lost if you want to continue losing weight. At a certain point you would feel starved if you just continued doing this! You can only reduce the amount of food you eat before it backfires.

You want to continue burning fat and building muscle because muscle is more metabolically active and keeps your metabolism high enough so you don't need to reduce the amount of food you eat as drastically.

Another tweak you may find helpful is to increase protein intake to minimize muscle loss. Protein is also more satisfying, leaving you feeling more full. If you're trying to continue weight loss, you may want to increase clean protein to about 25% of your total calorie intake.

Also remember that your body becomes more efficient when you exercise regularly. What's more, you'll use less energy to do the same workout as you would if you were losing weight, resulting in fewer calories burned. I always recommend changing your workout routine every 3 or 4 weeks – frequency, time, type of workout, or intensity. Let your body guess and it will respond. Many fitness experts believe that they "confuse" your muscles by varying your exercises from one session to the next to force adaptation to ever-changing demands, thereby improving growth and strength and helping you avoid plateaus.

While I'm on this topic of muscle confusion, let's talk about ruts. Maybe you stick with the program but feel unmotivated. Sounds like a rut to me. We all like a little variety. Well, I believe changing things up - both in your exercise routine and with your diet can only shake things up and renew your motivation as well as shock your body into responding again.

You can change your meals. I mention various ways to do this in the last section, such as the progression principle and carb cycling. You could try intermittent fasting and alternating fasting windows, doing a 16/8 window for a few days or a week and then doing a few 14/10 days and maybe a 20/4 day. Your body remains surprised and nothing will snap you out of the rut better than seeing your body react again. When doing intermittent fasting, just make sure you don't eat less, just less often. Also, make sure one meal in your eating window is enough to make you feel full so your body knows you're not starving. Otherwise, you defeat the purpose and your body will save fat instead of burning it.

Do you have a favorite way to overcome a plateau or avoid a diet/exercise slide?

Inspired by Ann Musico