Why You've Hit A Weight-Loss Plateau...And What You Can Do About it!

I’m pretty sure we’ve all been there.

You’ve been losing weight steadily for a good amount of time, feeling good and confident, and suddenly you go weeks/days at a time without losing one pound. You feel frustrated and like a failure. What’ve I been doing wrong? Do I need to eat less?

What Caused the Plateau

You’re not eating enough. I’m sure you’ve heard before that your body goes into starvation mode when you eat less than 1200 calories, but you’ve probably ignored this and decided to try it out anyways. Bad idea. When you eat less than 1200 calories (approx.), your body lowers its metabolic rate, and stores any fat that you eat, rather than burning most of it (which it does when you’re eating enough). Your body needs energy, so it wants to hold on to everything you eat! This is why you stay the same weight. Yes, you’re eating less; however, whatever you’re eating is going straight to fat storage, AND your metabolism is slower, so you burn less.

Because you’ve lost weight, your body now requires less calories than before. When you started, you found how many calories it takes to lose a certain amount of weight each week, and you’ve stuck to that plan. However, if you’ve lost a good amount of weight, namely 10 pounds or more, your body doesn’t need that same caloric intake anymore. You know your weight factors in to your required caloric intake, so when you lose weight, you need less food! 

You’re not sleeping enough. Lack of sleep raises cortisol levels. High cortisol levels cause the body to store fat around the midsection. Also, with lack of sleep, the body is unable to maintain a beneficial level of serotonin. Low levels of serotonin cause sugar cravings, binges, and carbohydrate cravings.

Loss of muscle mass. If you’re not paying attention to strengthening your muscles, you could be losing muscle mass at the same time as losing fat mass. Muscle mass burns five times more calories then fat mass, so it’s obviously essential in weight loss. If you’re not maintaining your strength and increasing it, you could have lost muscle mass and now aren’t able to burn as many calories.

How To Move Past the Plateau

Make sure you’re getting enough calories. In order to lose weight, you need to eat a little less then what you normally would eat. To figure this out, go to a site that configures this amount for you, based on your body and how many pounds you’d like to lose a week. Many people like myfitnesspal.com. It lets you track your food and exercise, and keeps you around your goal caloric intake.

Get an adequate amount of sleep. Usually, this means 7-8 hours per night. It may be hard to make this change, but it’s very important. Read before you go to bed, lay in bed early, anything that may lead to sleeping earlier. Some may be very busy, but make sure that you’re getting the max amount of sleep you can with your schedule.

Continue to strength train. And, if you’ve been continuing your same routine, turn it up a notch and make sure to increase resistance as you get stronger. Keep your muscle building in tact! As you get smaller and lose weight, make sure to check and see how many calories you need. It may be different from when you started, and you need to keep up with the changes.

Track everything you eat and every time you exercise. Use a fitness-tracking site to help you track everything. You may be eating little things that you think don’t matter, but actually do contribute to your daily intake.

Keep up with your body! Your body is an amazing ‘machine’, and can get accustomed to things fast. Give it enough sleep and calories so it has an endless supply of energy, keep working yourself harder as your routine gets easier, and treat your body well!