Weight Loss

It gets really discouraging when you’ve done everything you could to lose weight but still can’t manage to attain the weight you want. You’ve completely changed your diet, logged in dozens of hours at the gym, and have been faithfully sticking to those arduously exhaustive workouts time and time again. They’ve all helped in shedding significant pounds away but now you seem to be stuck in what some people call a weight-loss plateau, in which no matter how much you try and how much you’ve put in all the effort, your weight just wouldn’t go down any further. A weight-loss plateau actually is not uncommon and it’s perfectly normal to get to a point where your ability to lose weight gradually slows down and even grind to a screeching halt. But you shouldn’t be discouraged to the point that you go back to your old unhealthy habits.

Weight-Loss Plateaus – The Reasons

A weight-loss plateau occurs when a person’s new slim body needs fewer calories to maintain his/her weight as opposed to the time when his/her bulkier body required more calories to support itself.  When you begin to cut down on your caloric intake, through exercise, a lesser-calorie diet, or both, your weight quickly drops.

Why people experience plateaus is also because they are losing muscle, which aids in calorie burning. This fact becomes more obvious when you lose a lot of weight within a very short period of time. The rate of metabolism slows down more as you lose more muscles. This means that fewer calories are burned when you do the same activities that you’ve doing at a heavier weight.

If you want to continue to generate a calorie deficit that will result in further weight loss, you need to consume less and exercise more.

The following are suggestions on how to overcome weight-Loss barriers:

• Change your exercise routine: Your body eventually gets used to the same old gym workouts that you do time and time again as you become more physically fit and it becomes more efficient at doing the same old activities. To continuously challenge your muscles, switch to an entirely new form of exercise. If you haven’t tried it yet, include resistance training to your workout. Also do some weight lifting. Weight lifting routines add muscles to your body that can incinerate those hard-to-burn calories.
  
  
• Monitor your exercise and food intake: This will help you know if you’re slacking off at the gym or eating large meal portions
  
  
• Reduce calories by tweaking your diet a little: Try reducing a small but reasonable amount of calories from your daily diet. Shedding a couple hundred calories a day, which is the average amount of calories in a snack, may mean a few pounds lost per month.
  
  
• Rev up the exercise: Huge results can be achieved by simply adding an extra 15 minutes to your exercise program. Try adding more time to your warm-up routine and cool down routine or try jogging or walking an extra mile to burn a few more calories.

Always keep in mind that when it comes to losing weight: your health is the thing that matters most. Research has shown that people whose main motivating factor for losing weight is to improve their health (instead of acquiring a desired body shape or size) are more successful at losing weight and preserving that new lighter weight over a long period of time.