How to Avoid Diet Plateaus

by: Mary Watson

Everyone has periods when no matter what they attempt, they will not lose weight. It’s normal to experience this “plateaus” occasionally, but if you have them frequently, you may be doing something wrong. If you think you are doing everything you should do and are still not losing weight or are losing at a very slow pace, you need to evaluate everything you are doing to find the cause.

Make a Log of Your Menus and Snacks

One of the first things you need to do in order to determine the cause of your weight loss plateau is to make a log of everything you eat. In all likelihood you are eating things you should not be eating or in excessive quantities. It is rare that one can follow a diet program precisely and not lose weight. There may be occasions when you might lose less weight than at other times for any number of reasons including illness, but if it continues beyond a week or two, you need to keep of log of your food intake in order to evaluate the cause.

While you are logging your food consumption, you want to pay close attention to your snacks. One of the mistakes people tend to make is choosing low calorie snacks that have added sugar or thinking they can eat more because the food has little or no calories in it. The time you eat meals and snacks may also have an effect on the speed at which you lose weight. If you have a tendency to eat dinner after 6:00 p.m., you may find it difficult to lose weight because there is not enough time to digest the food before bed. Of course, if you go to bed much later, this will not be as big of a problem.

Log Your Activity Level

In addition to logging your intake of food, you need to log your activity level as well. You have to keep in mind that you cannot lose weight without exercise, so there is a good possibility that without realizing it, you have lowered your level of activity, thus placing your weight loss at a plateau. This decreased activity level will cause your metabolism to slow down and those slow your weight loss efforts. You want to ask yourself what you are doing differently; perhaps you have slowed down the speed of your activities or have changed to an activity that does not burn calories at the same speed as the activity in which you were previously participating.

Evaluate the Drinks You Are Consuming

You should be drinking at least sixty-four ounces of water daily. If you are not doing this, it is probably affecting your weight loss. Even low sugar drinks can have an affect on your weight loss if you consume too many of these drinks especially if they are preventing you from drinking enough water. Soft drinks should be avoided as much as possible because even the diet varieties contain excess sodium which can have a detrimental effect on weight loss.

Many years ago I was involved in a weight loss program and when I reached a plateau I was told to drink something hot in the morning to get the metabolism going at full speed. If you are not a tea or coffee drinker, you can certainly substitute hot water with some lemon or other flavouring added. I would not recommend hot chocolate unless you are drinking the sugar free variety, and even then you must be careful how much you drink at 70 calories a cup.