Highlights:
- A weight loss plateau occurs when the calories you eat equal the calories you burn.
- To continue losing more weight, you need to increase your physical activity or decrease the calories you eat. But, there’s more to it than just that.
- To bust through a plateau, learn how to eat less overall while eating more sometimes. A zig-zag method may help.
- There are ways to jumpstart your weight loss, but going hungry can work against you.
- Rotate your exercise routine to break through a plateau
- Little things add up to significant changes in lifestyle. Check out these tips.
- Almased: The great breaker of the weight loss plateau
So, you’ve shed those unwanted pounds and made great strides on your weight loss journey. Then suddenly, ongoing progress comes to a screeching halt. You find yourself stuck – before you’ve reached your ideal weight goal. This is known as the weight loss plateau, and it occurs when you’ve dieted, had some success, but hit a wall and can’t lose any more weight. Hunger kicks in, we become lethargic, and our metabolic rate slows.
You’ve come so far by doing all the right things. You expected your progress to continue. What went wrong? You’ve already made impressive changes in your life.
Should you fast regularly? Perhaps that new ketogenic diet went well, but it only went so far. Can you be in ketosis and not lose weight? What are the best foods for weight loss, and what is the best diet? 1
It’s easy to say: “eat less, move more,” but breaking a plateau is more than calories coming in and energy going out. As you lose weight, your metabolism plunges so your body needs fewer calories to sustain the new-sized you.
Hitting the brick wall of a weight loss plateau can be dispiriting.
1. Avoid the Famine Reaction
The famine reaction occurs because our body defends our weight. When you start losing too much weight or too quickly, the body brings on this defense mechanism to protect you from wasting away.2 Starving yourself is not the best way to lose weight.
When Your Body Thinks it is Starved, it Compensates By Slowing Down Your Metabolism
This adaptation has been shown to happen even in overweight and obese people after losing as little as 6% to 12% of body weight.3
The best way to lose weight and break your weight loss plateau may be the intermittent approach of eating less overall but sometimes eating more. This can improve the efficiency of weight loss and may also reduce the drive to consume large amounts when you’ve lost some weight. So, the good news is: You don’t have to go hungry!
2. Determine How Many Calories You Need to Consume Each Day
First, determine just how many calories are required to lose weight. Revise your calorie goal about every 10 pounds or so to match your current needs for weight loss.
Research has shown that people often underestimate how many calories they eat and overestimate how many calories they burn during exercise. To better approximate your caloric needs, use the BMR calculator to discover how many calories you burn a day if you did nothing but rest for 24 hours.4
Use your basal metabolic rate as a benchmark to subtract the approximate number of calories burned during activity. Keep in mind that the number of calories burned during exercise can vary.
The Calorie Calculator can be used to estimate the number of calories one needs to consume each day.5
How to Jumpstart Your Weight Loss
Can you lose weight by eating one meal a day? Likely not without triggering the famine reaction. Oddly, it might be a matter of reminding yourself to eat more.
That’s just one reason why The Almased Figure Plan is one of your best and easiest tools to help you maintain the vital nutrition necessary to avoid those hunger pangs and the lethargy associated with the weight loss plateau. Plus, it’s a great way to jumpstart any weight loss plateau.
How long does a weight plateau last?
A plateau can last from as little as a few days to a few months.6
3. Understanding calories
For some people, a weight loss plateau may be due to lack of calories; for others, it could be too many calories. How do you know which is which?
Consuming too few calories could be recognized through hunger or constant cravings during the day or even disturbed sleep at night due to hunger.
Those who need to lower their caloric intake would experience feeling satisfied in general and are doing the same diet or exercise every day yet do not see a weight change. This would mean the body has adapted to the diet or exercise routine, so now needs some tweaking.
One technique worthy of battling a weight loss plateau is the zig-zag method. For two or three days of the week, eat the same number of calories as usual. On the remaining days, eat more calories. 7
How to break a weight-loss plateau on the Almased Figure Plan
If you hit a plateau while on the Almased Figure Plan phase 2 or 3, consider staying with your usual number of calories for two or three days. On the remaining days of the week, incorporate more calories into your diet.
One way to do this is to increase calories in your shake by adding oil, fiber, or nuts. Or, at one meal eat between 500 to 700 calories. You could also achieve it by including one or two small snacks each day of about 150 calories each. Just be careful not to overdo.
