It can be very frustrating when you experience a weight loss plateau. It feels like no matter how hard you try, you don’t make any progress. It’s not unusual and happens for several reasons. Some are positive. Don’t give up. Start by asking yourself a few questions. You might find you’re doing far better than you thought. Are you losing inches? Is your endurance, strength, balance, or flexibility improved? Are you changing your routine frequently by making it more difficult? Have you examined your diet?
If you’re not losing weight but are losing inches, then you’re making progress.
If you’re pushing hard and not seeing your weight going down, but your pants are now too big, you’re making progress. You’re building muscle tissue. One cubic inch of muscle tissue weighs far more than one cubic inch of fat tissue. If you weigh 160 pounds but it’s mostly muscle tissue, you’ll look and be thinner than someone whose body composition is mostly fat. Muscle tissue requires more calories to maintain. The more you have, the easier it is to lose weight. Keep up what you’re doing. You’ll experience the weight loss you hoped to achieve.
If you’re plateauing, check your workout.
You probably saw a lot of progress when you first started exercising, especially if your workout was challenging but still doable. Now, you can do it with ease. That means you improved your fitness level. For the best results, increase the challenge to match your new ability. You also need to mix it up and switch routines periodically. Your body becomes more efficient at the movements the longer you do it. That means it burns fewer calories. Increase repetitions or find another way to make your workout harder.
Maybe your expectations need to change.
That doesn’t mean you lower your expectations. It does mean you must modify them. Weight loss doesn’t occur in a straight line. You might lose two pounds one week and four pounds the next, then nothing the following week. Your weight loss may be temporarily stopped due to water retention or other factors. You may need to modify your calorie intake. If you weighed 20 pounds more than now, it was like carrying a 20-pound weight every time you moved. You weigh less than when you started, so you don’t burn as many calories.
- Are you just putting in the time when you go to the gym? At least once or twice a week, do an intense workout like HIIT—high-intensity interval training. They burn more calories when you do them and for 48 to 72 hours after you’re done.
- Look at your diet. You can’t out-exercise a bad diet. Cut out highly processed food and food with added sugar. Check what you’re drinking. Cut out sugar in your coffee and tea. Eliminate all soft drinks, even diet ones.
- Drink more water, especially if you’re retaining water. Increasing water intake boosts your energy, fills you, and helps normalize sodium intake to flush retained water from your body.
- Stay more active outside the gym. Find ways to burn extra calories. Instead of circling the parking lot for the golden parking place, park further from the building and walk more. Take the stairs and not the elevator.
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