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5 Tips on How to Avoid Weight Loss 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.
Share this article, I appreciate your support.Weight Loss Tip: Eat a good breakfast
photo by Lex in the City.
Getting the day off to a good start with a hearty breakfast is more important than you might think.
Another big change I’ve made to my eating habits is to focus a lot more attention on my breakfast. Typically I would start the day with a couple of slices of toast (usually with Vegemite… non-Aussies probably wouldn’t understand!) and a cup of coffee. For the past couple of weeks I’ve tried to focus on making them a bit more substantial, healthier and longer lasting.
My main ‘goto’ breakfast that doesn’t require much effort or thought is: muesli, fruit (usually banana), a splash of milk and some yoghurt… mix it all together and yum!
I do mix it up a little, my aim is for two days a week to have a high protein breakfast (although keep an eye on the fat content). Scrambled eggs will be the main choice, but throw in a lean sausage or two, or maybe a small piece of steak and it’ll round it off to a wonderful breakfast that should get you right through to lunch with only a piece of fruit or two to kick you along mid-morning…. and that’s my goal for breakfast - eat something healthy and wholesome that will get me through to lunch with only a snack of fruit in between.
What do you have for breakfast? do you feel hungry again mid-morning?
Share this article, I appreciate your support.Why cutting bread from your diet can get you off to a good start
If you’re like me and a typical day usually involves a couple of slices of toast for breakfast plus a couple of sandwiches for lunch, then it might be time to have a good think about changing your habits when it comes to bread..
Two slices of white bread tips the scales at about 170 calories (that’s just the bread, not everything else on it too!), so the six slices a day I used to have made up 510 calories of my daily diet. According to this weight loss calculator, given my current weight of 131kg, with a lightly active lifestyle, I should be eating around 2380 calories per day in order to lose about 1kg a week. Six slices of bread would represent 21% of that target… not only are there many ‘dead’ calories in white bread, they are pretty light on nutrients too, so wasting over a fifth of your diet on something as bland as mass produced cooked flour is not really something I would recommend.
What are the alternatives?
I think having toast for breakfast was more of a convenience thing than anything else, it’s quite easy to grab a couple of slices, throw them in the toaster and by the time you’ve got your coffee cup ready it’s time to start eating. But there are far more convenient foods out there that will give you a much healthier breakfast: fruit, yoghurt, muesli – all exceptionally quick and simple to prepare and you’ll get far more benefit, and keep off the hunger pains for longer than with toast.
For lunch, you’ve got plenty of choices too. For starters you could just eat what you regularly put on your sandwiches but leave off the bread, stack your plate up with a bit of extra salad and you’ll be good to go. Personally I’ve switched over to rye crispbread, has less than half the calories of white bread (although the slices are smaller), and it actually promotes healthier eating (at least it does for me), I usually top them with a little cream cheese, tinned tuna, tomato and lettuce or sprouts, it’s a really tasty meal.
Share this article, I appreciate your support.5 Weight Loss Tips for counting Calories (or should you even bother?)
Photo by Sister72
Last year when I lost 20kg (44 lb), I initially spent a lot of time counting calories – I do like to look at things from a technical point of view, so at the time, it was a comforting distraction. What I soon found though was that as long as you eat the right foods, it generally tended to work things out for itself.
Now, I do have quite a bit of weight to lose, at 131kg (289 lb) it’s pretty easy to lose weight by just eating the right foods, as I get closer to my goal weight, then a closer look at my exact calorie intake will be far more useful. For now, apart from a quick glance at the nutrition labels of foods I’m not that familiar with, I’m not going to stress about Calories all that much.
My tips for making sure you avoid the Calorific Overload:
1. Check out the nutrition labels for foods you eat regularly. Learn to compare the number of calories for a constant weight of food. For example, in Australia, all our Nutrition labels have Kilojoules/100g (4 KJ’s is approximately 1 Calorie), so this makes most food easy to compare and you’ll soon be able to tell at a glance if something is a bit too ‘Calorie heavy’.
2. Think about what you’re getting for the cost. It’s not enough just to look at the number of Calories, but you also need to consider the benefits you’ll get from the foods. Some ‘low fat’ snacks for example can also be very low on Calories, but they also have a nutritional value of next to nothing (meaning you’ll need to eat something else soon after anyway), whereas most nuts can have fairly high Calorie contents, but contain many essential oils and other goodness, are low GI and a small handful can stop those hunger pains and get you through to your next meal.
3. Cut out the ‘dead’ Calories. Similar to the above point, pay extra attention to cutting out foods that are high in Calories and have a high GI. Not only will these foods take up a large proportion of your daily Calorie intake, but they will also give that energy to you in a quick burst and leave you wanting more sooner than you should need it.
4. Have ‘pre-screened’ snacks that you can reach for when needed. It always helps to have some sort of plan, and having a list of snacks (and meals) handy that you enjoy and know won’t derail your weight loss efforts can be a godsend. Try to make sure you always have a few of them handy for times when you need that extra snack.
5. Above all, enjoy what you eat. There’s no need to limit yourself to low Calorie ‘cardboard snacks’. Just because lettuce leaves are virtually Calorie free doesn’t mean you need to force them down your throat if you can’t stand the taste. There is virtually a limitless supply of great healthy foods out there, find ones that work for you.
Share this article, I appreciate your support.How I plan to lose 40kg in 12 months (part 2)
In my previous post How I plan to lose 40kg in 12 months (part 1) I talked about the strategy I’m using to change my diet. Now I want to discuss adding a regular exercise program.
Stage 2 – Becoming more active
There are two basic things you can do to lose weight – eat less (which I covered in part 1), or burn more calories (additional exercise), which is the topic of this post.
When you’ve got as much weight to lose as I do, just changing your diet will be enough to ensure some decent results in the beginning… when I say ‘just’, I mean I should be able to lose weight even without doing any extra exercise, I don’t mean to imply that waking up one day and changing the way you eat is an easy process, it’s not – you’ve got to teach your body to form new habits, and that’s the main reason why I choose to tackle these areas one at a time.
As the weight loss starts to slow down though, I’ll need to form some regular exercising habits, here’s how I plan to address it.
1. Structured Exercise Time
This is important in forming habits that will continue over time, try to exercise at the same time every day and gradually push yourself further each time.
It’s important to not only find something that you can easily do on a regular basis (go for a walk, work out at the gym – whatever you’re comfortable with), but also find a time where you don’t feel under too much pressure to finish quickly and get home. Last time I tried to increase my exercise I went for a walk/jog (ok, mostly walk) each morning nice and early. As I am usually the one to get up early with the kids though, I think the pressure of finishing up and getting home was a little too much – this time I plan to exercise in the late afternoon where I will have less time pressure on me.
I live in a semi-rural suburb, all the houses around here are acreage, so there are plenty of wide open spaces for me to explore. My eldest son is just getting to the stage where he wants to ride his bike a lot, so part of my exercise regime will likely be a slow casual ride with him, followed by something more strenuous afterwards. We also have a swimming pool, so a lunch time swim will definitely be on the cards during the warmer months.
2. Non-Structured Exercise
By non-structured I simply mean taking advantage of any opportunities I come across throughout the day – things like kicking a ball with my kids, mowing the lawn, parking further from the shops than I normally do etc.
While the structured exercise program forms the basis of meeting the goals I want to achieve, it’s all the extra non-structured bits that will really help to make a difference, so the more I can take advantage of the better.
A quick word about goals
Setting clearly defined goals is going to help you achieve success in virtually anything you try to do, so it is definitely something that I need to address here. My general strategy for goal setting is to define something that is easily measured and has very specific time frames attached to them – that way when it comes time to review my progress, the analysis is pretty straight forward and I can be quite tough in my assessment about how I’ve gone.
My overall goal (to lose 40kg in 12 months), while specific, still needs to be broken down further so that I can analyse my progress effectively. Setting monthly goals would be the most useful here, weight loss can be pretty erratic over a week or so, but the results from month to month should show a definitely progression to the goal and offer plenty of time to analyse and adjust based on actual performance.
I could break the weight loss goals down into equal amounts per month (40/12 = 3.33kg/m), but this doesn’t take into account the easier times I should have initially where the weight will drop off a lot easier, and the tougher times towards the end, so I’m going to structure my weight loss goals something like this:
- February – July: 4 kg/m
- August – November: 3 kg/m
- December – January: 2 kg/m
All those weight loss targets should be pretty easy to meet if I stick to the plan, and that’s where the analysis comes in each month as I will revisit these goals and adjust my focus appropriately.
I do have other goals I want to meet, specifically addressing each point I outlined in stage 1 of my weight loss plan yesterday – they are something that I will analyse on a weekly basis to make sure I’m sticking to the basic principles of my plan.
Well, that’s it – that’s the ‘plan’. If you have any questions, be sure to leave a comment and I will try to answer as best as I can.
Before I end this post, I would like to quickly point out that I’m not a nutritionist, not a doctor – so please take anything you read on here as my opinions only, and not gospel. I do spend quite a bit of time reading and researching most areas I have an interest in, and weight loss in particular is something that I have spent a great deal of time examining, but these are just my opinions – please seek professional advice for your unique situation before acting on anything I might say or imply in this blog… I have been known to be wrong on occasions 