If you feel discouraged during a weight loss plateau, it can be harmful to your motivation. Therefore, if you start to detect these feelings building, it’s important to take action. Put these feelings to an immediate stop.
Easier said than done? Perhaps, unless you have the right tactics on your side. Consider these methods for getting started.
Step 1: Do Something Fun That Gets You Moving
The first step when you feel discouraged during a weight loss plateau is to do a fun activity. You may have been doing the same exercises in the same way for weeks. It’s time to shake things up. It might be what your body and mind both require to get going again. Sometimes the change will help your body to kick back into gear again. It can certainly help to improve your mood!
Step 2: Conduct a Calorie Intake Review
Check your calorie intake. Use a nutrition tracker to find out whether you’ve inadvertently been overeating. It could be that you’ve been making mistakes you didn’t know where there. Your tracker will help you to boost your confidence that you’re eating properly. This really helps turn things around when you’re discouraged during a weight loss plateau.
Step 3: Intensify Your Exercise Plan
Upgrade your workout. It could be that the workout you’ve been doing is no longer appropriate to your fitness level. If you’ve been sticking to the same routine, your fitness has likely improved. That’s great news for your body. That said, it also means you need to increase the challenge your workout is giving you. Otherwise, you won’t challenge your muscles and it won’t do for you what it once did. If you feel sore later, think of it as a sign your new plan is working. You’ll feel less discouraged during a weight loss plateau when you see the extra efforts paying off.
Step 4: Evaluate Your Body Composition Changes
Understand your body composition. Remember that your bathroom scale weighs only one thing: your body weight. It can’t tell the difference between the weight of your fat, bones, muscles, brain, or even the sweater you’re wearing. As you eat a healthy diet and exercise regularly, your body composition will change.
That can mean that while you’re burning fat, you may also be building muscle. Like fat, muscle has some weight to it. As you build muscle at the same rate that you burn fat, it can seem as though nothing is happening on the bathroom scale. The loss of one is negated by the gain from the other. Be patient and don’t be discouraged during a weight loss plateau. The odds are that you’ll break through it soon and you’ll see even better results on the other side!