Christie Achenbach

Tips to Get Past Your Weight-Loss Plateau

One of the most common causes for people to give up on their weight loss goal is from hitting a plateau. No matter how hard they try, they feel stuck at a certain weight. Do not get discouraged because a weight loss plateau eventually happens to everyone trying to lose weight. Here are a few tips to help you during this frustrating time and to help you get back on track to your weight loss goal.

·Make sure you haven’t loosened the rules and started increasing your portion sizes or doing less exercise. I strongly encourage recording what you eat in a daily food journal, I personally use www.myfitnesspal.com. You can also record your workouts in this journal or write them down on a monthly calendar.

·Reduce your calories further, but do not go below 1200 calories for the day.

·Increase the calories you burn. You can either try increasing the amount of time you spend exercising, increase the intensity of your workout, or add strength training to help burn more calories.

·Increase your general physical activity throughout the day to help burn more calories. Take the stairs instead of the elevator, get up from your desk and walk to co-workers desk versus sending an email and so on.

Whatever you do, don’t revert back to your old eating and exercise habits which might cause you to regain the weight you lost. Be patient with yourself. You didn’t gain the weight over night so don’t think you can take it off as fast.

August 3, 2011 Posted by Christie Achenbach RD, CSSD, ACSM-CPT | Weight loss | Leave a Comment