Weight loss plateau.
You have been losing weight nicely, suddenly the dreaded weight loss plateau comes knocking on your scales. Happily you have been watching those scales moving slowly backwards each week. Then horror! it hasn't moved since last week! What have I done wrong? No, I haven't made any major changes. Never mind,Ill just wait and see what happens in a few days. I don't believe it!!!, it still hasn't changed. What the ;?+#! going on? Don't panic, it happens to all of us. This weight loss plateau is the biggest reason people give up when trying to lose weight. Have a good look for anything you may have changed with your food. Often you make what may have been a simple change to your diet which can have a profound effect on some of us and no effect on other people. Why? because we are all different and respond in different ways to different situations. As my old grandmother used to say, "What's good for the goose is not necessarily good for the gander" If there has been no obvious change in your eating pattern then we need to start looking at some other solutions to your weight loss plateau. A big trap is allowing ourselves to get hungry. When we do, it encourages us to eat more than is necessary. What happens here is, we eat, but our hungry feelings continue and we go on eating because it takes the body a while for the hunger to subside. That becomes an invitation to go on eating until the feeling goes away. YOU CAN IN FACT EAT LESS BY AVOIDING HUNGER. This is not an invitation by the way to keep snacking! The best way to avoid hunger is to spread your meals out. Instead of eating 3 meals a day or whatever you normally do, try and consume maybe 4 or 5 SMALLER meals. This will help to limit your hunger. It is constant hunger that causes most people to fail with diets. If you haven't been doing any regular exercise, then you need to take steps to start doing so. If you have been, then you need to up the anti and push your activity up a notch or two but be careful because exercise can make us hungry. Find some form of activity you enjoy, otherwise exercise is going to become a burden and you won't keep it up. It's always easy to find reasons why you haven't got the time. The type of the activity is unimportant. You just need to get the body active. One of the reasons some people don't lose weight through exercise is because exercise stimulates hunger and the resulting hunger encourages them to eat more and that's the end of that weight loss attempt. The effects of the physical activity are often overcome by the weight increase due to hunger, but once again be careful because you are trying to lose fat and not muscle. Weight loss plateau can be a major problem and here is some very important information. You should be using a tape measure and not your scales. A correct weight loss program should see you losing fat and not muscle. FAT WEIGHS LESS THAN MUSCLE, SO YOU CAN LOSE A LOT OF FAT, PUT ON A BIT OF MUSCLE AND WEIGH MORE. Muscle you need, fat is bad news. Don't be mislead!. Another very effective approach to beating the weight loss plateau is by changing the form of your diet. Increase your protein levels and cut back on carbohydrates. This particularly applies to sugars. You should only be eating enough to keep that hungry feeling away, not eating because it looks nice. Leave those tempting things like chocolate on the shelves for other people.
See glycemic foods
I don't recommend harsh laxatives, try and avoid them. A very safe way to keep your bowels open is with sufficient forms of bran in your diet. Things like Psylium or some proprietary bran type products can be very effective. It is not natural for us to be overweight and if we don't take steps to deal with this, our body is going to pay a price in some form of physical illness. There is an enormous amount of material now appearing in the news media concerning the physical illnesses due to excess weight.
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