When trying to lose excess body fat and improve your physique, have you ever had the experience when you’ve done everything “right” but feel like you’ve  now “stalled”? Like nothing is shifting anymore for you and you’re not getting any results? This is a common theme I hear from people and many of us experience it from time to time. It is a real thing and it often called a “plateau” when we’re trying to lose weight or get more strong, lean, fit and increase our endurance. But what exactly is it, why does it happen, and what can we do about it to start progressing again? 

Have you ever noticed you body (and mind!) make some of the biggest changes in the early stages of starting something new? That is, in part, because we are introducing CHANGE. In one or more ways we are changing things up and our bodies and minds are going to react to that by adapting. Adapting in the case of weight loss and fitness means we may lose weight faster in the beginning stages than we do later on when our bodies have adapted to our new eating and exercising routines. 

Note that in the case of weight loss, specifically, we are often losing water weight until our bodies stabilize and adapt to  a new way of eating. I find people often get excited at this stage as they lose pounds on the scale, then swing back into disappointment when the weight loss slows down and settles into a more steady and gradual loss (assuming we are burning more calories than we take in, through a combination of exercise and eating habits). Our bodies eventually adapt to the initial “jolt” of changing things up. Generally speaking, our bodies can maintain but will stop responding (meaning: changing, adapting, improving) to what it gets used to. 

One of the problems I see frequently is people starting our by reducing calories too much from the get go, feeling all excited when they lose weight quickly, but then their bodies adapt and there is nowhere to go from there so they either stop losing weight or they reduce their calories even more and mess up their metabolism to the point where when they start eating more again they pack on the pounds fast.  Have you ever been in this boat? Messed up  your metabolism? I have and it sucks and takes time to repair. The fact is, we NEED a certain amount of calories for everyday living as well as to fuel our exercise activities. And if we want to be able to to tweak our calorie intake as we progress in our health and fitness goals, we simply can’t start off at the very lowest intake. This is one of the most common causes for people who get frustrated as they “plateau” in their weight loss journey. The truth is, if you start off with low calories and low carbohydrate intake, you have given yourself no where to go, as your body WILL adapt to the deficits and stop responding and you will have little or no room to change things up. 

In the case of exercise - cardio and weight training (using either bodyweight or weights exercises) - we also can  “plateau” or just maintain what we have. For exercise, if we want to continue making progress that can mean changing up one or more things like time, intensity, , variety, increasing weight amounts, different workouts and specific exercises etc. For most people, doing just one type of exercise (such as only cardio, or only weight training) can make us more susceptible to “plateauing”. Sometimes we will even gain weight while doing the same amount and type of exercise we were doing when we first lost excess weight relatively quickly in the beginning! Adding in the other aspects of overall fitness will spark change again. 

If we feel “stuck”, it’s time to change things up!  There are different ways we can do this and we can make small changes in one or more areas at a time if we want to. This applies to both nutrition and exercise.

Our bodies will respond to change and as we get used to this concept and embrace it, we will see how changing things up sparks improvement and also can re-inspire us and keep us on track to our goal of better health!

Here are some things we can tweak to shake things up and add a variable (or more than one) to jump start progress: 

> Changing your workout routine: After about 6-8 weeks your body will adapt to whatever program you are using. Adding different exercises, changing the time or intensity, adding weights, changing up your repetitions or intensity of sets of specific weight exercises, changing the periods of rest between exercises in a workout, alternating between different types of cardio (steady state, interval or high intensity interval training) are just some of the ways you can tweak your program to spark change in your body again. There may be times you are focusing more on muscle building and less cardio, and then you might want to lean out after a muscle building period, so adding more cardio. There are many ways to change things up, but the important this is to stay consistent for 6-8 weeks and not keep making random changes.

> Periodically changing up the goals of your workout program. The benefits of this is it gives you an overall better state of health and fitness in the end too. With cardio it can be focusing on endurance (longer time, less intensity) or shorter but more intense sessions (both have great benefits but are different). With weight training you can switch up working towards power, strength, or muscle building (all aspects of overall weight training but different set/reps/exercises and techniques can be involved for each). By changing things up with your workout plans over time, you will help your body not only continue to change and progress but also have less muscle imbalances and better balance and body stability.

> An important thing to remember though is to not continuously change things up. This won’t help anything. What you want to do is set your program up to meet your initial goals and STICK WITH IT CONSISTENTLY for about 6-8 weeks before you start changing things up. Note that this doesn’t mean you won’t have variety within that one program for 6-8 weeks, but it will mean that it gives your body time to change and get to the point where it has adapted and needs something to change up so it will continue to respond in new ways that will keep you on track to improving your overall body composition and health goals.

>While you should always eat healthy foods, there may be times when you want to change up the relative amounts of various macronutrients  (carbs, protein, fats) you eat, within a calorie range. Sometimes small changes - while still eating enough calories, a varied diet and never cutting out any one macronutrient - can spark your body out of a plateau for a while. 

Fitness Spark!

So yes, those frustrating “plateaus” are a real thing for most people as they work towards getting healthier, losing weight (if that is a goal), and improving their overall physical fitness. It is well known that the body adapts and can respond to changing up one or more variables. Above I have given you some ideas about this, but for everyone it is an individual thing and getting help (if needed) on ways to change things up in your specific routine is all part of the fun of seeing and feeling yourself getting healthier and more physically fit and watching how your body and mind respond!

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