What a Plateau Can Mean for Your Health Journey

Authored by Reagan Christian, our new guest blogger. He lost 100 pounds in 2017-2018. He continues to maintain his weight with food, activity, and lifestyle changes.

Are you stuck in the mud? Spinning your wheels? Discover strategies to get you back on the road!

After seeing the number on the scale progressively get lower, it can be disheartening to suddenly stop seeing the numbers fall. When this happens, don’t feel as though you’re doing something wrong, this means you’ve made progress!

As you get healthier, you have to change your goals to continue to see improvement.  Compare a 350lbs, 6-foot tall man to a 185lbs 6-foot tall man.   If both men have similar, sedentary activity levels, and both eat 2500 calories a day, you will see very different results at that level of caloric intake. The man who weighs less may gain weight, as someone of those proportions isn’t likely to expend 2500 calories in a day without a form of exercise. A larger man has to move more mass, and will use more calories for everyday activities. This means that the larger man will likely use a higher number of calories, and may lose weight, even if they have the exact same day. This is because the two subjects have different Basal Metabolic Rates (BMR). This is the rate at which your body uses calories while at rest to perform the basic functions of life: breathing, digesting, etc. As you lose weight, your body’s BMR will change as well. It will require less energy from your body to perform tasks. 

This comes into play when looking at the guidelines you have set for yourself.  As your BMR changes, you’ll need to lower your caloric intake with it to continue to have a calorie deficit. If you looked at your maintenance calories earlier in your journey, I implore you to check them again. Likely you’ll find that number has lowered. As you lose weight, you’ll use, and in turn, need, less calories. You may be thinking “I’ve already cut my calories so much, now you want me to eat even less”?  So what can you do to get past this plateau?

Try to incorporate more exercise anywhere you can

If you have times set aside for exercise, you may see taking the stairs one floor vs the elevator as negligible. Of course taking one set of stairs every day alone probably won’t get you to your goals, but add in a little more standing in your day, and maybe the classic exercising during commercial breaks and you’ll see that making small changes in your day to day can really help with shedding the pounds.

Be honest about your calories

Everyone who’s tried to stick to a diet, caloric deficit, or other forms of mindful eating have fallen victim to the dangerous thought of  “I’ll just have a little”. Sure one bite of a donut or an extra sliver of cake won’t break the bank, but you have to be sure to track these calories as well. Maybe you “eyeball” your food measurements or have a heavy hand when serving. These small differences may seem insignificant, but an extra, unaccounted for hundred calories here and there can easily turn into extra pounds you’d otherwise be losing.

Change up your workout

In my own weight loss journey, I started by going to the gym 5 days a week and riding the stationary bike for 20 minutes. Soon after, I was able to push myself to do 40 minutes, and later, an hour. At an hour the bike shuts off automatically, and I was feeling pretty well worked out, so I’d end the workout there. I had pretty good results with this system of biking an hour 5-6 times a week, combined with meal prepping and calorie counting... until I didn’t. Eventually my body caught up with the regimen I followed and I went from consistently losing weight for 6 months to a complete standstill. When I decided to change up my workout and incorporate strength training as well as other forms of cardio, I began to see a change again, because my body was working harder to learn new exercises and not being hit with the same thing every day.

Talk to your doctor

Your doctor will have a lot of knowledge on different causes of a plateau and may be able to find areas of your health journey that need to be reassessed to meet your goals. 

A plateau can be very discouraging to see.   It can make you feel as though your hard work isn’t paying off.  But changing your routine can get you moving again, and on to your goals.  Make sure you are doing what’s best for your body.  Plateaus are part of the journey.  Focus on putting in the work.  And the results will come.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/weight-loss/in-depth/weight-loss-plateau/art-20044615

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/basal-metabolic-rate?s=t

https://pixabay.com/illustrations/obese-weight-loss-man-nutritionist-3011213/