Guest Post: Breaking Through the Weight Loss Plateau

[This is the next post in the series of guest posts on healthy diet and lifestyle from Dave Banko.]

My new diet is off and running. I’m disciplined and start losing weight. A couple of weeks in, and my weight loss starts to slow down, then stops all together even though I’m still doing what I did at the start.

Frustration sets in, and this is where many people quit.

Why?! I’ve hit the plateau!

This happened to me time after time.  I worked so hard, and only lost 10-15 lbs.  Months would pass, and I couldn’t get any further.  Eventually something would happen and I’d stop. I couldn’t get past the plateau.

Over time, with repeated trying, hitting the plateau, and not being able to break through, I became depressed and didn’t think it was possible to lose weight. When trying again this time, I set the goal of losing 100 lbs in a year, but given my past experience I didn’t really believe it was possible.

The ‘What’s the Right Diet for You?’ program, though, explained what the plateau was and how to break through it.  This time I was ready and armed with new information, and blew through each plateau as they started to happen!

What is the plateau? Here’s a link to a dietician’s explanation about a plateau. To try to explain it in simple terms, your body adapts to the changes made and your weight loss levels out.

I started off weighing more than 350 lbs, and let’s assume (I wasn’t measuring at the time, so I don’t know for sure) I was consuming 5,000 calories per day to maintain this weight. I start dieting, cut my intake to 4,000 calories per day and start losing weight.  At 350 lbs, my body needed the 5,000 calories per day just to maintain.  Since I reduced the intake to 4,000 calories per day, my body will start burning fat to compensate for the difference.  However, as I lose weight, my body no longer needs as many calories to maintain the lower weight, and at some point the weight loss will level out as I reach the point where my body only needs 4,000 calories per day to maintain itself. (You can probably insert a nerdy mathematical decreasing returns graph here.) 🙂

So what do I do? Cut further… go from 4,000 calories per day to 3,500 calories per day. When I reach the next plateau, I cut further again.

As long as I have fat reserves, I know my body has all the energy it needs and I can cut further.

What I don’t want to do is cut so far my body goes into starvation/fat preservation mode or is unhealthy because I’m not getting the basic nutrients I need.

The recommended average intake for a man is 2,500 calories per day (minimum 1,500 calories) and a woman is 2,000 (minimum 1,200 calories). This average has a wide variation, however, based on age, body size, activity level, etc. You really need to measure and experiment for yourself to find out what your value is.  I found mine, once I went below 250 lbs, to be around 2,200 calories per day, and, at this moment, as I am working on the last 10 lbs, I set myself the target to stay within 1,800 to 2,100 calories per day.

You might feel like you’ve cut really hard, well below the recommended value, and you’re still not losing weight.  Here are my recommendations:

1. Did you cut as far as you think you did? If you aren’t tracking what you eat, you may not think you are eating a lot but would surprise yourself by how much you really are. In August 2015, I finished a project at a customer site and started working from home. I had already lost 100 lbs, and was doing well. After a week, I stopped losing weight, and, in fact, started to gain weight. How could this be? I was following my diet and hardly eating anything. This is when I downloaded My Fitness Pal and started tracking what I was eating. To my surprise, I was consuming much more than I thought. It was too convenient at home to have a bite of this and a bite of that, even good food. My calorie consumption had gone up, and my weight was climbing accordingly. I had to discipline myself to track EVERYTHING I was eating at home to get a handle on this. As soon as I did, I got my diet back on track. Another possibility is that you are having nice low-calorie healthy meals like salads, but the salad dressing you are using is so packed with sugar, unhealthy fat, and empty calories it completely outweighs the benefits of the salad.
2. Did you cut too far and put your body into starvation mode? Remember, we need to consume a healthy minimum of nutritionally balanced food to kick-start our metabolism into burning fat for the excess energy we need.
3. Are you drinking enough water? We need water to flush the toxins out of our systems, to properly use the nutrients we are taking in, and to release the fat into our blood stream for use. Be sure you are drinking enough water throughout the day.
4. Adjust your ratios and the nutritional benefit of what you are eating. We need a balance of protein, complex carbs, fiber, fruits, and vegetables, but our body chemistries are all a bit different, so what may work for me won’t work for you quite the same way. This is fine tuning and will come into play more as you work off the last few pounds.
5. Add or change your exercise regime. Exercise helps improve fitness and burn calories. We need to be careful about exercise when using it for weight loss however (see my previous post on this). Adding or changing your exercise regime while controlling your diet is another way to change the status quo and break through a plateau.

Here’s a blog post from My Fitness Pal with additional tips for breaking through the plateau.  [Hint: think of plateau-busting as troubleshooting.]

Plateaus are natural and will happen as your body adjusts to your new eating lifestyle. When you understand them, YOU CAN BREAK THROUGH THE PLATEAU! Breakthrough simply requires another change, further tuning your diet. You can do this!

Good luck! As always, feel free to contact me at daveb.uk@hotmail.com if you have any questions or comments.  [Crew Dog: Or comment below.]