So as you can see from the graph
above I’ve been battling a plateau for roughly the past two months at this
point. For me the plateau has been 360
or as I’ve come to refer to them as ‘The Magic Number or The Wall’. At first I thought I was just having a lazy
week after having a good work. Then I
started looking at more closely as it continued for several weeks and knew I
had to off hit a plateau and that if I was serous about this that I would have
to take steps to break through.
First off I
want to address the terminology being used because I really don’t like it. A plateau is some where that mountain climbs
stop and take a rest, may take a few pictures and enjoy themselves, for them it
is a goal. For people trying to lose
weight a plateau is a point of frustration it is something that stops us and
gets in our way. It certainly isn’t
something that we strive for or reach for.
So I say lets call it what it really is a wall. Its something that we have to push through or
climb over, it is in the end something to get past. Now that we’ve got that out of the way and
are speaking the same language lets get on with the blog.
It’s my
opinion that in order to beat something it is best to learn as much as you can
on the subject. That way you have the best
possible tools to achieve your goals. So
off to the internet I went, I learned that ‘walls’ apparently come from two
different possible sources. One of the
possibilities even claims that other is a biological impossibility. I’m by no means a medical expert so I won’t
even try and guess who is right in this and just present them to you as two
separate concepts.
The first
theory I came across on why have these walls when working to lose weight goes
something like this. The body needs a
certain amount of calorie energy to get through the day. After all it has to do
the basic things that we all feel are so important to continued life like Heart
pumping, Lungs expanding and contracting, the kidney’s filtering and so one. As we cut down our weight the amount of
caloric energy we expend to stay alive goes down as well. .
The next
theory is the so called “Starvation mode” and it goes something like this. Our body detects the reduction in calories
and interprets that message as meaning that food is scarce. So it goes in to what could best be described
as a sort of power saver mode and saves any extra energy it can. It makes sense in a lot of ways to me and
would be a good survival method if food really was scarce. Sadly in this case the body is miss-interpreting
the message.
Some people
say that the second one is biologically impossible, like I said earlier am not
going to try and figure out who’s right and who’s wrong. In the end the reason this happens is less
important then what to do about it when it does happen. That’s the real reason am sure many of you
are reading this blog entry so lets get right in to that.
During my search
every link I clicked offered me a new method to push through the wall or in
some cases several of them..
Change things up if you have been focusing mostly on cutting
back the calories then switch to focusing on burning the calories through
exercise or vice versa. If your already
doing both try changing the amount you’re working out and increasing the
intensity and or the resistance.
If you are not already doing so start a food an exercise
log, Keep track of everything you eating
the calories too when possible. Also
including in that what you do for exercising.
It gives you a good picture of what your doing and not doing so you can
really examine the changes you’re making to your life styles.
Change some of your eating habits can help so try reducing
the carbohydrate and fat in take and eat more protein calories. Just be sure to keep the daily protein calorie
intake under 25% of your calories. You
can also try having days that are less restrictive in your diet plan. That will sometimes help to keep the pounds
coming off this is sometimes called Zig Zagging the calorie intake. Along the same lines you can also adjust the
sizes of the meals you eat through out the day and have several smaller meals /
snacks through out the day.
I want to close with one site I came across that encouraged
you to hang in their and keep it up.
Even though your not losing weight at the rate you might like, it is
likely that your still losing although gradually. This suggestion struck me personally as the
height of stupidity and that it would only lead to further frustration. So don’t just hang in there do something
about it make changes and try in things.
Push through that wall and remember there will be another one at some
point you broke through this one and you will break through the next one as
well.
Your friend in weight loss who won’t give up and hopes you
don’t either.
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