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Rediff.com  » Getahead » Struggling with your weight loss?

Struggling with your weight loss?

By Dhruv Gupta
Last updated on: November 26, 2014 18:35 IST
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Blame it all on the Weight Loss Plateau! Here’s what it is and how to overcome it.

So, you are struggling with your weight loss. It all started well when you got on a diet and started exercising. You were quickly losing the kgs and moving fast towards your weight loss goal. But then suddenly you stopped you losing weight.

It felt like you hit a weight loss wall and you can’t seem to get through it. This is commonly known as a weight loss plateau, also called fitness plateau.

Why do you experience a weight loss plateau?

Think about it this way. When you try something new and cool, your brain finds it exciting.

When you do it repeatedly for a couple of months, the excitement reduces, maybe even dies.

Similarly, your body needs some challenge and excitement.

It got some, when you started your workout, but after a month it got so efficient at performing the same exercises, that your efforts started losing effect.

Similarly if you are consuming fewer calories than you used to, then your metabolism has slowed down to conserve them.

Best way to break a plateau is to combine diet and exercise, while following it consistently over a period of time. Also, it is important to remember that while you might not be losing weight according to the weighing scale you could be losing inches around your waist or getting more toned.

Here is how you can make these quick changes in your diet and exercise to overcome this plateau and move faster towards your fitness goal.

Manage your diet better

The biggest mistake people make while trying to lose weight is they drastically cutting their daily calorie intake. On the contrary this only slows down your metabolism.

You need to provide your body adequate nutrition for it to feel secure. What is important to note here is that quality matters more than quantity.

You need to rise above just counting the number of calories you are consuming to focus on the source of the calories.

Better quality calories will be consumed faster by the body versus empty calories which could be stored in body for later use.

Change your workout routine to…

You might not realise this, but your body will adapt to any type of exercise. You got to switch up your workout.

Some simple ways to bring the change is by stopping the old exercises and throwing in some new ones. For example: If you’ve been running on the treadmill for 20 minutes at a constant pace, change that to cycling for 10 minutes and the stepper for 10 minutes.

Or if you love the treadmill too much, then change the incline: throw in some hills into your boring flat routine, and you’ll feel the burn again!

If you like running on flat ground, then change the speed -- turn it up and you’ll turn up the fat burn also.

If you’ve already corrected your diet and changed your workout but still not experiencing any results then there’s one last thing that might be causing your plateau: a hormone imbalance.

Maybe you need to seek some medical guidance to get more information on why your body is not functioning correctly so then corrective measures can be taken and the right diet can be prescribed to manage your condition better.

Photograph: Colin/Wikimedia Commons

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Dhruv Gupta