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Health Fitness Articles
Successful Weight Loss
You are overweight and you have decided to take up
a weight loss program to shed off your excess body fat so that you can get a
well toned slender physique. You were committed to the program and you
continuously lose 1-2 pounds of body fat per week.
You were
very happy with the results that you were getting until suddenly after a month
or two, you noticed that your weight loss is getting slower and slower until
it grinds to a screeching halt. What happened, you wondered? Well, this
dreaded phenomenon is called the "Weight Loss Plateau".
Overcoming Weight Loss Plateau
Firstly, you need to understand why you have hit
the weight loss a plateau. Actually the answer is very simple. You see, and
you probably know that in order to
lose weight, you have to consume less calories than you burn for energy.
So if you were losing weight effectively
before and now your weight simply refused to go down any further, that could
only mean one thing. That is you are longer on calorie deficit situation. Yes,
you can say that you are still eating the same thing and amount when you begun
the program and I can tell you that is exactly the problem. Here is why:-
Decreased Metabolism/Calorie Deficit
You see, if your diet requires you to cut calories
and since you wanted to get faster result, you cut down your calorie
consumption more than what is recommended, your body adapts to this by
decreasing your metabolic rate sometimes known as "starvation mode" or
medically known as "adaptive thermogenesis".
This adaptation is actually a natural
survival instinct because your body instinctively "thinks" that you are
starving and thus conserve your fat to keep you alive. Tweak your diet to get
out of this phase.
Now, it may also escaped you that as
you were losing weight, you were getting smaller and therefore need less
calories so that if you are eating as much as before when you were heavier,
then you are now consuming more calories than you are burning. Common sense
right? However, most people do not realize this implication or thought about
it this way.
Since you have a smaller body and is
much lighter now, your body will burn less calories when you move about or
doing your cardio exercises. Again this boils down to common sense and common
sense is not so common after all. In other words, you have to tweak your
exercises to burn as much calories as before when you were much heavier.
These are the reasons why you often
hear people say that it is most difficult to lose
that last ten pounds. It is not difficult at all, it is just that they
have overlooked those simple facts explained above. So the answer as to why
you have hit the weight loss plateau is that you no longer in a caloric
deficit state.
So how to break out of weight loss
plateau? Well, start of by giving your body a break. Take two or three weeks
off your program since your body has adapted to it.
This is also to give your body a
physiological break from the stress of dieting and exercising and for it reset
some of those starvation hormones and start stimulating your metabolism, so
when you get back to the state of calorie deficit after your much needed
break, your body will be responsive to your effort again.
Then when you return to your weight
loss program, tweak it to reflect the current state that you are in and watch
those body fats start disappearing again. One easy way to condition your mind
to lose more weight and overcome weight loss plateau is through self
hypnotism. You can read about it at "How
to use self hypnotism to lose weight".
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