Plateau 1 and Diet v2.0

When you have a lot of extra weight like I did that you can lose you will more than likely run into a plateau for losing weight. When this happens you will get stuck at a particular weight for a while and it will seem like the results aren't as good if you are strictly going by the weight on the scale. For lots of people this can wind up being very frustrating and sometimes they might even give up on their workouts and diet, this FYI is the wrong move.

In November of 2011 I had hit such a plateau. I got down to 245 lbs, from 270 lbs since I had started, and then the weight just seemed to stop coming off. When you hit a plateau  (which you most likely will unless you have super genes for losing weight and building muscle) make sure to not let it get you down. When you reach a plateau make sure to realize there are many reasons for it and also several things you can do to get back on track. Hitting a plateau is one of the biggest reasons you need to track your success via multiple styles, when the number on the scale stops dropping you often still notice a difference in pictures and how your clothes fit better.

First off I will go over a few of the reasons why we have plateaus in our weight loss as we get in shape. If you were like me and pretty badly out of shape your lean muscle mass will have been pretty low. Shortly before this I had finally started lifting heavy to promote building muscle since I had gotten healthy enough to do so by building my base strength. Right off the bat when you start doing heavy lifting you will build up quite a bit of muscle in a short amount of time before it tapers off. This muscle you are building weighs more than fat per volume of space, which will make it seem like you are not losing weight. On the contrary, you will still be losing weight in fat loss which you will notice in pictures but not on the scale. Another reason you might run into a plateau is because your workout has become stagnant. What I mean by this that you get into a set routine and just go to the gym and lift the same amount of weight for the same amount of reps with the same types of exercises. If this happens your body will become too accustomed to the amount of work you are doing and it will wind up being too easy of a work out.  The last thing that will make us plateau is not being careful with your diet (this is what caused my plateau). If you are badly out of shape like I was when you first start working out you can have a pretty wimpy diet and still see lots of weight loss right off the bat. The reason for this is because you haven't worked out in so long your body will react highly and you will burn a lot of fat. After this initial fat burn your weight loss will slow down as your body grows more accustomed to working out, which is where your diet will come into play to make the big difference. My beginning diet was pretty lackluster and it was causing me to slow way down in my weight loss.

To help me get back on track after seeing how my weight loss had been stuck for about a month I decided I better have a second look at my diet and wound up starting Diet v2.0. If you recall, I had been shooting for around 2250 calories per day, eating 3 meals, and cutting out junk food and that was the extent of my diet. After doing some looking I figured I should find an actual number of calories that would apply to me and my weight loss efforts. First off I didn't know how many calories I should have daily just to operate normally so I went about figuring that out. In doing this I found out about your BMR (Base Metabolic Rate) or also sometimes called RMR (Rested Metabolic Rate). Your BMR is how many calories you burn just to stay alive, even if you were to lie around all day you would burn these calories. This is caused by all the functions your body performs naturally like breathing, blood circulation, thinking, digestion and all of your other vital bodily functions. Just check out a BMR calculator and plug in a couple numbers and you can find this out very quickly. My BMR turned out to be 2100 calories. To successfully facilitate weight loss you need to be in a caloric deficit from your BMR (eating less calories than you burn normally throughout the day). Most dietitians recommend to subtract 3-500 calories from your BMR to steadily and healthily lose weight. I changed my diet and decided to do 1500 calories per day, so 3 meals at 500 calories each (this was a bit too aggressive of a caloric reduction as you will see in a later article - don't be stupid like me listen to the safe amount). After I changed my diet and was making sure to be at a caloric deficit my weight loss got back into action.

Other than tightening up on your diet to get back on track after hitting a plateau you can also change up your workout.  Like I had mentioned earlier if you think you might be hitting a plateau because you have let your workout become stagnant step it up a notch. Start making sure to up your weight to push yourself harder with heavier weights or if you want to stay at the same weight for a bit longer add more reps to all of your exercises. If you get on the treadmill and typically run at 5 miles an hour for 20 minutes bump it up to 5.5 miles an hour for 20 minutes. This will help you spur your body into having to react to overcome these new challenges and it in turn will respond by building more muscle and burning more fat. If we don't push our bodies they won't react, but when we do push our bodies we get great results.

So, make sure to mix it up with either your diet or your workout if you wind up hitting a plateau and you will soon start seeing positive results again. Remember if you give up once you hit a weight loss plateau you will never get results, so instead continue on and it will be a bit tougher but you will wind up reaching even greater heights in your fitness success.