5 Tips on How to Avoid Weight Loss Plateau

February 26, 2008

plateau
Photo by Wolfgang_Staudt

Most people have heard of the weight loss plateau - it’s that annoying little tendency for your weight loss to suddenly grind to a halt after weeks of seeing the pounds tumble away… it’s going to be a problem at some point for everyone losing weight, but fortunately there are ways to avoid getting crunched by the dreaded plateau if you start now.

Before I plunge into my tips and tricks on how to bypass the effects of the weight loss plateau it helps to understand what is going on and why it happens… so a quick little bit of scientific mumbo jumbo first.

Here are the facts - I’m going to reference one of the foremost scientific journals for this type of research… yep, that’s right - if you want to understand the how, why and what of weight loss plateaus, you need to read this article on Oprah.com… if you’re a little on the impatient side though, here’s the quick summary:

Our bodies Basal Matabolic Rate (BMR) is the energy required to keep our core bodily functions operating smoothly while at rest, and it accounts for about 60-70% of the calories you burn every day. One of the biggest factors in determining your BMR is your weight - the heavier you are, the harder everything needs to work to get the job done. This is also true for any exercise you do - swimming 10 laps of the pool doesn’t burn the same number of calories for each person, the heavier you are, the more work your body needs to do and the more calories are burnt.

So what happens when you start to lose weight? For starters, your BMR starts to drop with it - so all those fun things like breathing, pumping blood around your body and wriggling your toes no longer burn as many calories as they did a couple of weeks ago… what’s more - that walk you do every day to fulfil your exercise quota isn’t giving you as much bang for you buck as it used to either - can you see where I’m going here? If you’re burning less calories, but still sticking to the same diet, then eventually your calories in vs your calories out will start to reach an equilibrium… and when that happens, you’ve hit the weight loss plateau.

So here they are, my five tips to avoid weight loss plateau:

1. Take small steps, change one new thing each week

By making a small change to your diet or exercise each week, you’re going to offset that reduction of automatic calorie burning from the weight you lost by either eating a little less or burning a little more. It’s your choice how to do it, but make it a goal to take one small step each week.

2. Try to build your muscle mass as you lose fat

It might slow down the weight loss you see on the scales because muscle weighs more than fat, but you’ll definitely see a continuous reduction in your waistline and because your BMR is based on your overall weight, you’ll lower the effects of lost automatic calorie burning while still slimming down.

3. Mix it up a bit, vary your exercise and diet

Keeping things interesting by varying your daily routine will help keep you motivated and will also force you to continuously reassess the benefits and strategy of your diet and exercise plans. It will also help you to prevent slipping back into bad habits brought on by complacency.

4. Increase the amount and intensity of your exercise each week

Make yourself a promise that each week you’ll push yourself that little bit further and that little bit longer. That might mean something simple like extending your daily walk, or averaging a higher speed on the exercise bike… going that little bit extra each week will help to offset that reduction in BMR and keep you burning those calories.

5. Reassess your calorific requirements regularly

When you first started to lose weight, there’s a good chance you worked out how many calories you can eat each day to obtain the weight loss goals you’re seeking. A major part of that calculation factors on your current weight to work out your BMR etc. As you lose weight, that calculation is obviously going to change, so if you’re one to keep a close eye on the numbers (and as the weight loss slows down, the becomes more and more important), then you need to constantly reassess your requirements. This could be weekly, fortnightly, even monthly, but it needs to be done.

There you go, I hope that’s given you a few things to ponder - the dreaded weight loss plateau is real and is something that you will need to deal with at some stage. The sooner you start planning for it, the easier it will be to avoid and you can bypass yourself a lot of heartache.

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February 26, 2008 | Filed Under Weight Loss Strategy 

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