Are you frustrated and stuck in your weight loss process?
If you started out strong on your weight loss journey and then got stuck, this is certainly frustrating. Let’s start by defining when you are Really glued.
If your average weight loss over a 4-week period is less than one pound, you’ve reached what we call a “plateau.” But a week or two of no success, or losing and then regaining, isn’t necessarily a plateau. Especially if you’ve just had a disappointing week, stick with it!
I recently covered many of the mistakes people make in their weight loss efforts in another article. If you start out with great diligence but then lose focus in one or more of those areas, you can definitely cause a plateau. But there is one thing I left out: being in a rut.
It’s natural to think that if certain habits have led to success in the beginning, they must continue to do so. But it is not always true!
There are two areas where people traditionally get stuck in a rut:
- What they eat, especially for breakfast and lunch.
- the exercise they do
If you’re experiencing a weight loss plateau and are eating exactly (or nearly exactly) the same thing for breakfast and/or lunch every day, you need to find new options! You don’t have to ditch your favorites entirely, but change things up a bit. If you usually eat cereal with milk for breakfast, try scrambled egg whites on whole-grain toast for a change. You can get a lot of ideas from the Hungry Girl cookbooks. Lisa’s Egg Cup Recipes are quick and easy in the morning (I especially love the Egg Cup Lorraine). Salad for lunch is another routine that we normally see. At least vary the type of vegetables you use, maybe even try adding fruit and vary the protein. You can also try soup, pasta salad, or a sandwich, as long as you pay attention to calories (or points). Again, Lisa Lillien to the rescue! Many of her recipes are quick and single-serving, so she makes for easy variety.
When you do the same exercise all the time, your muscles get bored and so do you. I know, there are people who run or walk every day and it works for them. But I definitely recommend a mix of cardio and strength training with variety in both. If you go to the gym, try different machines and different classes. If you use DVD at home, don’t use the same one every time. One of the reasons I love The Firm DVDs is that they offer a variety of cardio and strength (and mixed) exercises and routines.
Another thing that helps many people get out of a plateau is to increase the intensity and/or duration of their exercise. Sometimes we don’t pay attention to the fact that what we have been doing has become quite easy and is no longer a challenge. With strength training, increase weight or resistance or add more sets of different exercises for the same muscle group. With cardio, increase the intensity or increase the duration. You can also exercise more days a week to help break through a plateau.
Do not give up! If you can’t figure it out on your own, get help from an organization like Weight Watchers, a nutritionist, and/or a personal trainer. Or just have fun searching the internet for suggestions, just remember that some of the people may not be really experts.
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