How To Get Out Of The Weight Loss Plateau?
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What is a weight loss plateau?
How to get out of the weight loss plateau?
1. Power it up
- Losing Weight
- Maintaining Normal Weight
- Building Muscles
- Increased Metabolic activities
- Elevated Mood
- Increased fitness level
2. Replace the stagnant workouts with fresh ones
As you work out daily, your body eases into the same routine. Whenever your body stops crying for HELP during or after a workout, it means you have to change your routine.
This is the best time to add cross-training to your daily fitness regime.
Cross-training means new movement patterns. As you move differently, the heart rate goes up, more muscle fibers are used, and metabolism gets boosted.
You can search for Cross-training, High-intensity interval training (HIIT), cardio, and fat-burning exercises on the internet and do them at home or the gym or get yourself enrolled in such classes.
Nowadays, Zumba dancing is in a fashion that helps to break the weight loss plateau.
3. Strengthen your strength training
A steady weight loss works well with the cardio and strength training powerpack combo.
Now, the common mistake that you make is that when you start seeing the results you stop strength training. It is strength training that maintains a healthy weight and increases muscle mass.
If you want to keep burning calories and losing weight even when you are resting. Then strength training is the name of the game.
Sometimes, you will be hearing a lot of praise from people around you that you have lost a lot of weight. You keep on nodding thank you while deep down you are thinking ‘But my weighing scale needle is not budging at all!’
This is because you are losing fat mass and gaining muscle mass. 1 kg of fat takes more space than 1 kg of muscle.
4. Monitor what goes in your mouth…!!
As you hop onto the fitness wagon, you do everything right. You have healthy food, portion control, and regular exercise every day of the week.
As you see your weight loss progress, you start celebrating and deviate from the path, by increasing your food intake and end up eating more than what you intended to. This leads to a plateau.
For this you must:
- Keep a daily food journal at hand. (You can make a daily food tracker manually on MS Word or Excel or download one of the applications on your mobile phone)
- Do not go overboard on your cheat days.
- Calculate your macronutrient intake. (Proteins, fats, and carbs)
- Remember a moment on the lips, forever on the hips.
- It is human psychology that you underestimate the amount of food you eat. For e.g; I will have only 2 tablespoons of rice, Only 5 french fries won’t hurt, and a mini cone only- will burn the calories later on.
5. Go Protein..!!
- When Protein is digested, the process helps in burning calories by 20 to 30%. It is about twice as much when compared with carbs or fat digestion.
- Protein equally helps in preventing the loss of muscle mass.
- It also acts as a stimulator for the release of some hunger-curbing hormones like PYY.
- Do not have your protein for the day in only one go. Rather spread your protein intake throughout the day. This will help in kicking metabolism all day long.
- Have 20-30 grams of protein each at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
6. Eat Fibers…a lot of them!!
A soluble fiber-rich diet is highly nutritious and low-calorie. It passes through the digestive tract rather slowly, making you feel full for longer.
Insoluble fiber (whole grains, wheat bran, legumes, and almost all vegetables) prevents constipation by speeding up the flow of food in the Gastrointestinal Tract (GIT).
At lunch and dinner, always have a big bowl of vegetable salad drizzled with olive oil, spices, and lemon juice.
According to nutritionists, taking at least 30 grams of fiber daily helps in:
- Fighting the weight loss plateau.
- Reducing the number of calories your body absorbs from food.
- Lowering blood pressure.
- Increasing insulin sensitivity.
Fiber-rich food for breaking the weight loss plateau:
- Apples
- Beans
- Berries
- Nuts and seeds
- Oatmeal
Replace white bread with oatmeal, and a glass of juice with the whole food.
7. Drink water
8. Replace Coffee with Green tea
9. Stop bringing junk home
10. Never remain famished
11. De-bust Stress
As long as you stress or fret about stuff, you won’t go past breaking the weight loss plateau. When a person is getting stressed, it stimulates the release of the stress hormone-Cortisol. This hormone results in belly fat deposition. It affects women more than men.
Try to do yoga, meditation, or join a stress management program.
12. Sleep it through
You may feel groggy, crabby, and edgy when you do not sleep well through the night. It is because sleep is good for mental, emotional, and physical health.
Undoubtedly, sleep has a number of benefits. One of them is weight reduction and breaking the plateau.
Research was conducted in which those people who did not sleep well were fatter than those who took a daily 7 to 9 hours of sleep.
Insufficient sleep results in the release of hormones that make you feel hungry all the time and stimulate fat storage, rather than fat burning.
It is by no means entitling you to sleep all day long. As extra sleep has its own demerits.
13. A Mid-Day Nap
Take a mid-day nap of only 20 minutes every day. This magically works in destroying the weight loss plateau.
14. Spark up a weight loss duel
15. Give yourself a break
16. Talk to the doctor for weight loss plateau
If after doing all the things mentioned above still your weight is adamant and doesn’t move. Then go right away to the doctor. He will run a few tests to know of any underlying medical condition.
Let us know in the comment section below that what worked for you.