Have you reached your plateau? Are you fighting with stubborn weight loss and it seems like you're losing the battle? Know that you are not alone. A lot of people get to the point where they find out they cannot lose even one ounce more. It can be a depressing situation and it's better to be prepared for it before it happens to you.
What's known as stubborn weight loss occurs for a variety of reasons:
A. It may be that your body has adjusted to the changes you've made in your diet and you have reached equilibrium. This means you consume everything you gain from your food, but no more.
B. Your body does need more than you actually eat, but because the food it's too scarce you have forced your body into a low activity mode where it consumes as little as possible trying to preserve your life.
C. You don't exercise enough.
In case you aren't eating enough, the best thing you can do is to stop immediately and see a nutritionists. He or she will be able to assist you in finding a proper diet. In case you have reached a plateau in healthy weight loss, then all is not lost and there are a couple of things you can do for yourself. The key here is exercise. You have to exercise smart.
If you are a couch potato and the only exercise you ever do is to walk from the kitchen to the living room, then you can start to add some cardio exercises. Cardio exercises will improve your overall health and will make a big difference in your energy level. You will be able to do more throughout the day and you will probably kick start the weight loss process all over again.
It's an entirely different story, if you have lost weight with the help of both a healthy diet and a lot of exercises. If you run a couple of times a week and go to the gym too, then you probably need to diversify your activities. For weight loss, toning and shaping you really need to add some kind of resistance training. Resistance training (weights, machines or body-weight exercises like push-ups) has the added advantage of raising your metabolic rate so that you burn more calories at rest, a huge advantage in the weight-loss game.
So there you have it. At the end of the day all your body needs is a little variation. You don't have to start rock climbing or anything extreme, just make some changes and offer yourself a little challenge. Athletes reach the same plateau when they are training for strength and endurance and savvy trainers know they have to alternate and always come up with new routines to help them get to the top and stay there for as long as possible.
If you have absolutely no clue on what you can change you can try asking your gym trainer. If you don't like his or her ideas, change the gym and the trainer and you will certainly find variation in a new place surrounded by new people.
