The Dreaded Plateau - What can you do?

In every weightloss journey there are plateaus. Those weeks that go buy when your weight and your measurements just won't budge. The first plateau is always the most discouraging because you go from successfully dropping weight check-in after check-in to losing nothing. There are two facts about plateaus that I have come to find. 1) The more weight you have to lose the longer it may take for you to hit a plateau and 2) the faster you lose weight in the beginning the sooner you will hit a plateau. There's a reason experts recommend setting a goal losing only between 1-2 pounds a week. The reason for this is to prevent your body from going into panic mode. When you lose a whole bunch of weight in a short amount of time it's a shock to your body. Among other things feels threatened because it's emergency storage (your fat cells) are disappearing at what it thinks is an alarming weight, this sudden change to your body also triggers several other changes starting with signals to hormones throghout your body to adjust to try to conserve the it's stored rations that you have been carrying around in the form of fat for a number of years. This is why it is recommended to only lose between 1-2 pounds per week. This rate of weightloss allows your body to slowing adjust to it's new weight and doesn't trigger the panic affect that dramatic weightloss can. I started my most recently weightloss journey on August 3, 2011. Every week with exciting and amazing success I was steadily losing weight. I even dropped 4 pounds in week two of my journey. In the weeks that followed I have been pretty successful at losing between a half to one and a half pounds each week, and on weeks that I didn't lose a whole pound or more I've lost inches... until this week. I lost not a pound nor inches. I have lost a grand total so far of 7.5 lbs. in just 5 weekss. So, what do I do about it? Do I get frustrated and give up because I am still 43lbs away from my overall goal and have already hit a plateau or do I realize that my short term goal is to lose 5lbs a month until my birthday (a grand total of 20lbs by December) and accept the fact that I am still on track to meet both the monthly and short term goals and just keep plugging away. The answer is obvious. Try to make even better food choices and make working out an even higher priority. With the help of MyFitnessPal to help me continue to stay on track with my calorie goals I know I can do it. So can you. Do not go on a drastic diet or drastically reduce caloires to break through this goal. It's frustrating to hit a plateau but it's even more frustrating and upsetting to give up and gain back what you've worked so hard to lose! Keep making better choices and stay focused. Sooner or later you'll break through the plateau and start dropping again.

Just as I finished this blogpost I saw a link for this article on twitter:
12 Reasons You're Not Losing Weight by Julie Davis (Medically Reviewed) on Everyday Health
http://www.everydayhealth.com/weight-pictures/12-reasons-youre-not-losing-weight.aspx?xid=tw_everydayhealth_20110912_main#/slide-1