by Michelle Wilkinson

Created on: August 03, 2010

It’s hard not to become demoralised when you fail to lose weight, especially if you have been doing everything right. If you don’t lose weight when you’re supposed to be on diet and you know that you’ve had a few slip-ups during the week you’re not completely surprised that you haven’t lost a pound. However, when you have followed your diet plan to the letter and have been doing exercise you can be left feeling demoralised and frustrated. Sometimes, you just give up because you don’t see why you should bother to be ‘good’ at meal times when it seems to make no difference when you step on the scales.

It is important to remember, though, that you can’t expect to reach your weight-loss goal overnight, especially if you have a significant amount of weight to lose. Although you’d probably like to be able to lose ten pounds in a week you often have to settle for just one or two and you should be happy with that. Of course, there will be weeks when you don’t lose anything, but then there will probably be weeks where you lose more than you were expecting to and so it all balances out in the end.

If you fail to lose weight and you have been religiously following a low calorie diet plan and taking regular exercise your body may have adjusted to your new regime, thus becoming reluctant to shed more weight. You shouldn’t use a weight loss plateau to simply abandon your weight-loss aims, however, as it is still possible to continue forwards on your weight-loss journey. It may seem counterintuitive, but if you stop losing weight it could be a good idea to increase your calorie intake.

You might feel guilty about doing this and start to worry that you won’t be able to get back on track, but if you increase your calorie intake it will make weight loss easier when you go back to your diet plan. Your body gets used to being fed the same number of calories after you’ve been on the same diet for weeks and months and so by shaking up your routine you should start to see weight loss again, as long as you go back to counting calories.

The main thing is to recognise that it might take you weeks, months or years to reach your weight-loss goal, but it doesn’t really matter as long as you continue to take the action needed to help you lose weight. You will reach your weight-loss goal eventually and so there is no point becoming demoralised on those occasions when you don’t lose any weight.

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