Keep on top of these plateaus with summer coming up...use them as a time for reflection on how far you have come.
You've worked hard to improve your diet and exercise habits, and your reward has been watching your weight go down and feeling better. Now, however, for no reason you can identify, the scale has stopped budging, despite your healthy diet and regular exercise. You've hit a weight-loss plateau.
What happens when we lose weight too quickly?
During the first few weeks of losing weight, a faster drop is normal. In part, this is because when you reduce intake, the body gets energy initially by releasing its stores of glycogen, a type of carbohydrate found in the muscles and liver. Glycogen is partly made of water, so when glycogen is burned for energy, it releases water, resulting in weight loss that's mostly water. This effect is temporary, however.
#1 Metabolism Fact: when we lose weight our metabolism slows down!
As you lose weight, you lose some muscle along with fat. Muscle helps keep the rate at which you burn calories (metabolism) up. So as you lose weight, your metabolism declines, causing you to burn fewer calories than you did at your heavier
weight. In essence, as we get lighter, our metabolism will slow down.
#2 Metabolism Fact: The same exercises become less effective as we get fitter!
To boost your metabolism you can look to your workout and activity levels. This is the best way to increase our metabolic
rate.
But when we exercise our body quickly adjusts by becoming more efficient at the task. This means over a given time we will burn less energy doing the same workout. That is why it is essential that we change it every few weeks.
Longer, more frequent or more intense exercise workouts, or incorporating more general daily activity are two ways to achieve this.
#3 Metabolism Fat: metabolism is affected by age, gender and fat mass
As we get older out metabolism slows down, estimated 2-3% per decade after 30. Women generally have slower metabolic rates than men as they have more fat and less muscle, on average. For women, metabolic rate slows after
menopause as oestrogen drops, this accounts for around 50-100 calories a day.
#4 Metabolism Fact: eat too little and you wont lose weight!
Eating infrequently, skipping meals, eating too little all lead our metabolism to slow down. Cutting calories drastically has been
shown to reduce our levels of normal thyroid hormones and increase one (RT3) which blocks normal thyroid hormone activity, causing slow metabolism. Worse, this RT3 stays elevated after starvation even when calories increase, causing more weight gain. This is the key issue with crash / yo yo dieting.
Re-focusing
When we begin on a weight change strategy our full focus in on this goal and we adhere strictly to our regime. But naturally after a few weeks of this our focus can move (rightly) to other things in life such as work or family and we become less strict on our eating patterns.
This can allow old habits to resurface, or preparation and planning to slide leading us to deviate from our new
routine. Remember, a few weeks isn’t long enough for this new routine to become our default yet so when things come along to distract us it is natural that we slip back to our previous ways.
We just need to recognise this and refocus ourselves.
If you're committed to losing more weight, try these tips for getting past the
plateau:
- Reassess your habits. Look back at your food tracker. Make sure you haven't loosened the rules, letting yourself get by with larger portions or extra snacks. Conversely, check that you haven’t been too restrictive with your diet such that you have dropped your metabolic rate.
- Rev up your workout. Increase the amount of time you exercise by 10% .
Look to increase the intensity of your exercise if you haven’t done so yet, or change the type of exercise you are doing. Adding exercises such as weightlifting to increase your muscle mass will help you burn more calories.
- Pack more activity into your day. Think outside the gym. Increase your general physical activity throughout the day by walking more and using your car less. One study found that even standing and stretching every
hour at work can boost metabolism by 13%.
Be patient with every plateau and trust the process,
Kim
