You’ve been losing weight steadily for the last few months, and you’ve made great progress. You’re not quite where you want to be yet, but the weight just won’t move any lower. You haven’t changed anything about your exercise or nutrition, but the weight just won’t budge. You, my friend, have reached a weight loss plateau.
Original source: here.
In this article, we’re going to discuss:
- Why we reach a weight loss plateau
- How to break through it
Why We Reach a Weight Loss Plateau
There are a number of reasons why you hit a weight loss plateau:
Reason #1: You’re Losing Fat and Gaining Muscle
If the scale is the only thing you’re using, you don’t really know what’s happening to your body fat, and your muscle mass.
It’s a possibility that your fat has fallen more than your muscle mass has risen initially, and that’s why you saw your overall weight drop, but after some time, you started gaining muscle at the same rate as you started losing fat. The net effect: no change in weight.
That’s why you should measure not just weight, but body fat. This way you see whether your weight loss has stalled because your rate of fat loss is matching you rate of muscle gain, or if it has stalled for another reason.
It goes without saying though that for your muscle mass to go up, you need to be strength training. If you’re not strength training, and you’ve reached a weight loss plateau, you can rule this one out. And you should do some strength training. Don’t make me come over there.
Reason #2: You’re too Toxic and/or Your Detoxification Organs are Sluggish
Toxins are stored in body fat. When you lose body fat, toxins are released into the bloodstream. If your organs of detoxification (that’s the liver, kidneys, large intestine, lungs and skin) are working properly, you’re in good shape. You have no problems getting rid of the toxins in your bloodstream.
If those organs of detoxification are not working so well, your body puts a halt on your fat loss attempts. Why? Because the detox organs are trying to catch up to the toxic load you created by losing fat. And fat tissue is a fairly safe reservoir for toxins. Better than them going to your brain, or your thyroid, or elsewhere.
And it can take 3-6 months (sometimes longer) for those organs to catch up.
Reason #3: Your Body Fat is Already Low
If you get below a certain level of body fat, your health starts to suffer, and your body knows that. So it’s going to purposely make it harder for your to get even lower. But this applies to very few people. In general, health starts to suffer below 6% body fat for men, and for women, it’s more of a range. For women, health starts to suffer somewhere between 9 and 18% body fat. In what way does your health suffer when body fat gets too low?
- You start to have a hard time sleeping
- You get forgetful
- Your skin goes dry
- For women, you can lose your periods, and bone mass
Fat is needed for a lot of functions by the body, so having high levels is certainly not good, but having extremely low levels isn’t healthy either.
Reason #4: Your Metabolism Has Slowed Down
If you’ve dropped your calories too drastically, you’ve sent a very clear message to your body: there’s a famine. And your body is wired for survival. Not aesthetics. If your body perceives that there’s a famine, it will slow down your metabolism to prevent you from dying. You’re welcome.
After all, if you burn fewer calories, you hold on to your energy. You hold on to your energy, you don’t die.
Reason #5: You’re Malnourished
Hopefully you’re losing weight by eating nutrient-rich food, not the low-calorie, low-nutrient junk food that really doesn’t exist in nature.
For chemical reactions to happen in your body, you need helpers. Those helpers are vitamins, minerals, and enzymes (which are made of protein). Less high-quality food usually also means less nutrients. Less nutrients means less helpers to helping you lose weight. And the end result: your weight loss plateau.
How to Break Through a Weight Loss Plateau
As you can guess, with this many reasons (and there are others) for a weight loss plateau, there’s not just a single strategy to break through it. There’s a few that you can use, depending on your reason for the weight loss plateau. But if you can’t figure out your own reason, you can use my services to help you figure out your reason for a weight loss plateau. The first step is to see if you qualify. To figure that out, just fill out this 1-minute survey.
But hey, if you’re cheap, or a major procrastinator, or a do-it-yourselfer, here are some strategies to help you:
Strategy #1: Measure Your Body Fat
I emphasize “body fat” specifically. Not weight. At least not by itself. Your body fat, in combination with your circumferences and your weight will give you a much fuller picture of what’s going on in your body.
And don’t just measure it once, but measure it on a regular basis. With our clients, we do it every 2 weeks.
This won’t necessarily help you break through the weight loss plateau, but it will shed some light on whether you’re gaining muscle at the same time as losing fat, or not.
Strategy #2: Detox
Detoxing isn’t just about buying a cute little kit from the drugstore, give yourself diarrhea, and say “I’m detoxing.”
Detoxing is about 2 things:
- Taking away toxins. That includes eating organic, avoiding food sensitivities, etc.
- Adding in nutrients that support the organs of detoxification.
There’s a lot of magic and hype around liver support supplements, but some of the most tried, tested and true are:
- B complex
- NAC (N-Acetyl-Cysteine)
- Phosphatidylcholine (PC)
- Milk thistle
- Glycine
Strategy #3: Spike Your Calories
If you’ve lost weight by drastically cutting calories, your metabolism slowed down. Why? See reason #4, above.
To speed the metabolism back up, just spike your calories. Increase your calories for a period of 1-2 weeks to send the message to your body that you’re not starving, and it doesn’t have to conserve its energy. If it doesn’t have to conserve its energy, the metabolism will climb back up, and then you can resume your weight loss efforts.
But when I say “increase your calories”, this isn’t permission to set up a tent outside your favourite buffet.
I mean use healthy sources to increase those calories, like rice, potatoes, etc.
And if you’re wondering whether you’ll regain some of the lost fat, the answer is “yes.” But over a 1-2 week period, it won’t be much. Think of it as taking 1 step back in order to be able to take 2 steps forward.
Strategy #4: Take a Multivitamin
We start our clients off with a multivitamin from the get-go, but if you haven’t been doing that, now is a good time.
But take a high-quality multivitamin. What is high quality? It’s not Centrum, Jamieson or Kirkland. My favourite multivitamin is Multigenics by Metagenics (and I have no financial affiliation with them), but other good companies are Platinum, AOR, Genestra, Biotics, and I’m sure there’s a bunch of other good companies that I just didn’t list here.
If you’re wondering how to determine quality, read my article Nutritional Supplement: How Do You Determine Quality.
There you have it: 4 strategies for breaking through a weight loss plateau. If you want help with their implementation, and to figure out specifically what’s right for your body, you can fill out this quick survey to see if you qualify.
