3 Proven Solutions To Overcome Stalled Weight Loss
March 21, 2015 // Nutrition, Wellness
Even the best diets and strategies can lead into the inevitable weight loss plateau. Follow the three proven strategies to blast through any stalled progress and accelerate your weight loss.
People have come to expect that at some point, their efforts in the gym and adherence to a dietary strategy will become ineffective and their body will plateau. This mindset can be problematic, especially since the human body is simply a reflection of its environment.
Weight loss and physique changes don’t plateau. People plateau.
Healthy weight loss is a complex process that occurs when the human body recognizes a pattern of frequent, reliable feedings that nourish the system and finds it inefficient to store food and nutrients. Remember, the human body is constantly adjusting itself to its environment, so ultimately how you look is a reflection of what you do to and with your body.
Understanding Your Weight & Physique
How you look right now is a byproduct of (but not limited to):
- The physical stresses placed upon the body
- The amount of food you consume compared with the amount your body requires (efficiency)
- The hormonal balance within the body
If you feel you eat “good” and exercise “enough”, you may question why the scale isn’t moving. The simple answer is because your body doesn’t find it efficient to burn more fat (yet).
Good News: This can change with certain adjustments that are the backbone to any full-proof dietary and exercise strategy.
3 Solutions To Overcome Stalled Weight Loss
1. Become More Aware
Awareness is a key variable in uncovering the patterns and trends that comprise your dietary habits. Many people, including myself, have our own self-determined eating habits and we’re convinced there is nothing wrong with them. Unfortunately, which I learned the hard way early my career, our perceptions are often biased and inaccurate.
For years I was convinced I ate “healthy” to the point that muscle should grow and fat should burn. Without having any measurable idea of what I was eating, I told myself that nothing needed changing. After taking someone up on a bet to guest-timate my caloric intake and macronutrient ratios, I was astonished to learn about how inaccurate I was when judging portion size and overall intake — and I’m the professional!
Needless to say, I almost instantly made adjustments to my eating regime and my body changed drastically.
This is a common scenario for my clients, as well. Once awareness is prioritized, results will occur.
My favorite tool for awareness is the MyFitnessPal app, which I have most of my clients use on a daily basis. You don’t have to be a mathematician to comprehend the numbers — your intake and summer is also presented in graphs and charts.
2. Change Your Physical Challenge
When you continue to repeat the same action(s) and expect different results, you can be assured that Einstein was referring to you when he explained the definition of “Insanity”.
If you find yourself loyal to your exercise routine, yet you are seeking enhanced weight loss and physique, you have to make sure your providing a greater physical challenge to yield results and changes.
As I mentioned above, the human body is a product of its environment and aims to become as efficient as possible.
Therefore, if you’re routine doesn’t become increasingly more difficult, your body will become very efficient and the results will cease.
You can increase your physical challenge by adjusting:
- Increasing the amount of repetitions you perform
- Increasing the amount of sets you perform
- Increasing the amount of weight (load) you lift
- Increasing the resistance you absorb
- Decreasing the amount of rest you take
- Decreasing the tempo of the exercise
3. Follow More Consistency
This last solution is one that gets overlooked and underutilized. The influence of consistency has a direct correlation with the onset of continued weight loss and physique changes. Being consistent with a daily task or habit is essential to build a pattern/history for the human body. The more consistent you are with your strategies, the easier it is to make adjustments within your strategies. Again, your body is a product of its environment, and can only improve once patterns of consistency are established.
To be more consistent, chose a habit that is easy for you to do:
“I can definitely drink 2 glasses of water in the morning. That’s easy!!”
Once you determine your easy habit, maintain it on an everyday basis:
“I’ve have 2 glasses of water every morning for 2 weeks!”
Slowly add another new habit once the previous one becomes automatic.
“Now that I’m always drinking 2 glass of water in the morning, I will start to eat some fiber for breakfast.”
Following the above three strategies will help increase your body’s weight loss and physique changes.