by Susan Kristoff

Created on: November 06, 2009

When you're in the middle of your weight loss journey, it's inevitable that you'll have weeks where you maintain your weight, or maybe gain or lose just a little. Life can interfere in your plans, and it's natural to have off weeks. When your weight stays about the same, within a pound or so of a certain number for a few weeks, this can be considered a plateau in your weight loss. A plateau is not the end of the world, but it is a time to assess what you're doing and to maybe shake up your routine.

Assessing Your Approach

When your weight loss plateaus, your body has achieved an equilibrium with the amount of food you're eating and the amount of activity you're performing. This balance means that your body, at it's current weight, is getting exactly the right amount of energy it needs to maintain itself. The most simple solution is to either eat less or exercise more, but this is only part of the solution.

Start by reviewing your Tracker for the last few weeks. Have you been tracking all of the food you eat? If you haven't been tracking faithfully, take a week to measure, weigh, count, and write down absolutely everything you eat. It could be that you're underestimating the Points values for what you're eating, or you haven't been accounting for some between meal snacks.

The other thing to assess is your activity level. Have you put off exercise lately? If you had previously been exercising regularly and you stop, your body isn't using as much energy, and you're not burning as many calories.

Shake Things Up

A great plateau buster is to shake up your routine, whether it's trying new recipes or new activities. Pull out a cookbook you haven't touched in ages and mark out five new recipes to try. If you normally hit the treadmill at the gym, switch to the elliptical machine for a week or get out and run outside instead. Your body can get into a rut if you push it through the same routine every day. By switching things up, you work different muscles and wake up your body.

By assessing what you've been doing and adding some new foods and activity to your life, you can bust out of a plateau quickly. Remember that if you have not been exercising and you start, you may see a temporary weight gain at first as you start building muscle, but the effort will be rewarded as your body becomes more fit.

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