Breaking Through Your Weight Loss Plateau! | Prescription Fitness

So, you made the decision, after much deliberation, to start a weight loss and/or muscle training program. You are few months in and your results are definitely noticeable. You are excited and your confidence is better than it has been in a while. Suddenly, your progress stalls – almost like you hit a brick wall! However, you decide to stay positive and continue doing what you’ve been doing in hopes that you will see a duplication of the initial progress at your next check-in. Fast forward another month or so and you are now frustrated because you have not lost weight nor have you increased in strength/speed. What is going on?! How is that even possible?! You’ve been doing all the right things…sigh.
Before you beat yourself up and get discouraged, there are factors that might cause a stall in your progression. In any weight loss or muscle building program, we must make adjustments along the way. Let’s discuss a two of the most common reasons and a few tips to help you bust through:
1. Are you tracking your food intake? Sometimes we don’t realize how much we are eating until we start tracking. After a few weeks or months of eating clean, we think we “deserve” a cheat meal. While having a cheat meal is not a bad idea, the problem is when a cheat meal turns into a cheat day, and a cheat day turns into a cheat week. You get the picture, right? Hold yourself accountable and track your food intake!
• Shock your Diet: Just as we get bored with our daily routines, our bodies get bored with the same foods/caloric intake. Shock your body by introducing new foods into your meal plan every few weeks. If you are already doing that, alternate between higher calorie days and lower calorie days. Do something different! Your body will thank you by showing you the weight loss.
2. Are you really giving 100% to your workouts? We’ve all had days when we don’t even want to get out of bed much less make that trip to the gym. We decide to skip it or we show up but we don’t put much effort into it. Pull that stunt week after week and you can see why you are not stronger, leaner, or faster. An easy fix for this is to track your workouts as you would your meals. Keep track of your repetitions and weight used. If you are trying to improve your cardiovascular health, keep track of your speed, incline, and time. Once you see in writing what you are/are not doing, you can make the necessary adjustments.
• Shock your workout: Introduce chaos into your workout routine! I know that sounds crazy but give it a try. Keep in mind that your body is an amazing machine and it can adjust to the work outs you do often. In turn, it will burn fewer calories over time. The key is to introduce new exercises into your routine to keep your body guessing. It is my opinion that, whenever possible, you should work smarter, not harder!