How to Break Through Your Weight Loss Plateau

[spoiler title=’Click for video transcript’ style=’default’ collapse_link=’true’]You’re losing weight everything’s great and then BAM you had a weight loss plateau today I wanted to talk about the plateau because it’s something that pretty much everybody goes through when you’re losing weight it’s a dreaded thing and it can really throw you off track if you don’t know how to properly deal with it so today I’m going to talk about my own personal experience with them and how I overcome them so my own personal experience with Plateau the main one that I went through it was so frustrating I had lost about 20 pounds from late February of 2015 until about July of 2015 and so it was about five pounds a month I was pretty happy with that and then I just couldn’t lose weight anymore it just I hovered right around was so frustrating I really I was just I didn’t know what to do luckily during that time I read an article and it was encouraging and it basically said you know don’t give up and and don’t panic so I’m gonna give you a process that I go through if I’m ever plateauing and I don’t want to be then I go through this process first of all determine are you really in a plateau and the way I would define a plateau is that for one month you have seen no decrease in your weight remember your weight loss is like a heartbeat it goes up it goes down and you have to look at that trend line so it’s very hard to see like week to week if you’re really in a plateau so I would say if you’re you know if if after a month you’re just seeing it flatline then at that point I would say you’re in a plateau then the second thing I would do is put a positive spin on it instead of saying oh I’m in a plateau realize hey I am I’ve learned how to maintain my weight loss right now and really if you think about it learning how to maintain your weight loss is really just as important as learning how to lose weight in the first place because if you lose weight but you don’t understand how to keep it off then you’re back where you started so if you really are in a plateau here’s what I would suggest you ask yourself number one do I have a written plan and if the answer to that is no you need to write down your plan because chances are you just don’t really know what your plan is you’re not really sticking to it and that’s why you’re just kind of in this area of a plateau now if you do have a written plan you need to ask yourself am i following this consistently and this I think is the biggest part of weight loss is being consistent whatever you do whatever plan you choose I don’t care if it’s intermittent fasting or if it’s Atkins or if it’s paleo or 30 day fix or whatever it is you have to be consistent with it one thing I do is I ask myself at the beginning of every day did I follow my plan yesterday and the reason I ask it in the morning the day after is you know because snacks and late night things can happen so instead of saying it you know after supper I wait until the next morning and do a whole review of the day before in my mind if you sit down and you and you’re honest with yourself and you say I’m really not being consistent ask yourself why are you not being consistent and basically there are two options either your plan is too hard or your plan is okay but you just haven’t really committed to it so if your plan is too hard I would say find another plan there’s no reason to make this too hard on yourself different plans work for different people so just say okay that one was not gonna work for me moving on or you can just make some minor changes to the plan to what you know you can stick to if on the other hand do you know that you can stick to the plan but it’s just because you really haven’t committed to and I’m serious then recommit to it say okay I haven’t been doing this but I’m gonna I’m gonna recommit okay well what if you say hey I have a written plan I have been very consistent with it and the scale is just not moving down and that does happen sometimes I would say my own personal opinion is give it two more weeks and I know that sounds like a lot that’s six weeks of being at the same weight but again if you’re staying at the same way that’s that’s an okay place to be that means that you’re learning right now whatever I’m I’m doing is maintaining my weight in most cases in my experience the scale does start to move down again but if you still are stuck with that number you’ve been after like that’s a whole six weeks of being the stuck at that same number then you probably need to tweak your plan just a little and my own personal opinion would be you need to tweak your eating plan the exercise component is important in that it keeps you active keeps you feeling good and all that but really you can’t outrun your fork that’s a true statement you know personally I can still lose weight on this plan that I have of eating once a day but there may come a time in the future that if I want to continue to lose weight I mean I may need to like modify the types of foods and stuff that I eat but right now it’s still working for me really any diet plan that’s how it works it’s that you are just consuming fewer calories and then what you’re burning and you know pretty much anything Atkins or paleo all of those things work because you’re just you’re putting less into your body than what you need and you’re burning off pounds it just so happens though with intermittent fasting that’s how I can eat fewer calories and not feel deprived so if you need to tweak your plan make it very minor and make it very achievable and know that you can be consistent with it this is not a time to be all crazy because whatever you weren’t doing was working so likely it just is going to take a tiny little change to then get that scale moving back down and you know if you make that minor tweak and it still doesn’t move the scale it make another minor tweak but each time make sure that you’re being consistent with it so basically you’re just gonna have to be stubborn with this Plateau be more stubborn than the plateau that’s my best advice so to recap remember think of it as being in temporary maintenance mode don’t think of it is this horrible plateau ask yourself do I have a written plan ask yourself am i sticking to that plan if it’s too hard tweak it if you’re being consistent though give it another couple of weeks and then minor adjustments only so I hope that helps I know that it’s helped me when I am going through a plateau generally I’ll be honest with you it’s because that means I’m kind of going off plan I’m not being very consistent and then that’s when the scale starts to stall out if you have had a problem with a plateau in the past how did you break through it let us know in the comments below let’s learn each other’s tips and tricks so I hope you enjoyed this video if you would like to see more videos like this be sure to LIKE comment and subscribe [/spoiler]

I created a handy flow chart for future reference. You can scroll down and click on the button below the chart to get your own free PDF version.