4 Tips to Overcome a Weight Loss Plateau

4 Tips to Overcome a Weight Loss Plateau

It’s 8am, you just woke up and looking forward to going up on the scale. You realize that you didn’t hit your target weight for the week.

“OMG, What am I gonna do?”

You have hit  a weight loss plateau.

Panic enters your brain and your heart beats too fast because you have become angry and a little stressed. You are in a dead end, you know that you’ve got to do something but you don’t know what that is.

But let me tell you one little thing you might not believe right now, but you will by the end of this article:

“You know everything you need to know, to make the scale go down”

Trust me, when I say EVERYTHING I mean EVERYTHING.

So, I am gonna lay out the 4 easiest tips that you can do right now and hit your goals. No long term stuff, no hard things. The 4 easiest you can do NOW!

Ready?!

Tip #1: Eat more Protein

Egg is one of the best protein sources
Egg is one of the best protein sources

Whenever you feel hungry or not full enough, go for the protein choices. There’s nothing wrong with over consuming protein. Plus, I am talking only about the times you need something to eat, immediately.

So the reason protein works best is because you can’t over-consume it. Yes, you can eat more bagels, yes you can eat more fried-oily stuff. But protein you can’t really eat that much.

Also, protein is the toughest nutrient to break down and your body needs more energy to do that. Even though it has the same calories per gram with carbs (4kcal per gram), protein has the advantage of needing more energy to break down so the NET calories are fewer than those of carbs.

Another benefit of protein is that it spares muscle mass. Muscles need something called “muscle protein synthesis”[2] to keep on regenerating muscle tissue. Remember, your body is always breaking down tissue, it does that in order to regenerate or heal any wounds.

Muscle tissue should be regenerated even if you don’t want to grow a lot of new muscle tissue, regeneration is crucial.

Therefore, muscle protein synthesis is being triggered by amino acid availability[2]. So where do amino acids come from?

That’s right PROTEIN.

So you got 2 benefits from protein, fewer calories overall and more muscle mass maintained.

Tip #2: Drink MORE water

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A lot of times, we mistake the feeling of being thirsty to that being of hungry.  It’s no joke. Too many times I felt like eating a whole meal while that feeling disappeared, 1-2 mins after I drank a glass of water.

The thing with water is that fills out your stomach for some time and has kinda the same feeling as being full after a meal. It’s actually a small trick to make your body think you don’t need much food.

Another benefit is that dietary fiber absorbs water and that’s how you get the feeling of satiety from it. By drinking enough water, you are making sure that you utilize all that fiber you’re eating.

That’s also the reason that soups make you feel that full. They have a lot of water and especially when that water is warm, your stomach is feeling a little bloated.

In the same category, another small trick would be to have a cup of warm tea. 😉

Every time you feel a little hungry just go for the extra glass of water and see how you feel after 5mins.

Tip #3: Sleep Early, Sleep Enough

Babies (after their first year) have the best sleep schedule, copy them 😉

There is enough research[3] to suggest that sleep deprivation or sleep restriction is making you have an appetite.

Sleep is regulating all kinds of hormones in your body and is heightening the growth and rejuvenation of the immune, skeletal, and muscular systems. Basically, sleep rebuilds you and keeps you youthful.

Nowadays we don’t value sleep that much and we think that we can work all night and still wake up early. But actually, sleep deprivation makes you less efficiently during the morning.

On top of all that, after just 24 hours of sleep deprivation, there is an overall reduction of six percent in glucose reaching the brain. This is why all sugary things sound such a great idea late at night.

It’s a survival mechanism, your mind is actually telling you to get some glucose ASAP, and restore the mental power needed for anything dangerous that might happen.

But if you had a good night’s sleep and a proper nutrition plan, none of that would happen.

The sleeping early part is actually helping with getting more *sleep time* in. Meaning, if you get up early, and go out in the sunlight, you get to produce extra melatonin which will put you to sleep more easily. It will also help with getting more deep sleep. It’s all a virtuous circle.

Tip #4: Skip a meal

dish-overcome-weight-loss-plateau

This is especially great for the people who fear that their muscles will drop off if they skip a meal. Similar to having 30gr of protein every 3h or less.

The logic is simple. Fewer meals lead to fewer calories, lead to more weight lost.

For me and most people, it’s easier to skip a meal in the first hours of the day. There are 2 reasons for that.

First of all, your body is full of cortisol in the morning when you wake up, in order to get you going from all the relaxation of sleep. Your body is making a transition from the sleep state to the awake state.

Our bodies are very intelligent on their own and know if they really need food. Actually NOT being hungry is a pretty solid argument that your body doesn’t need food. The opposite is not necessarily true because we might have become accustomed to eating more and on the smallest amount of caloric restriction, our body reacts to prevent messing with its current stable state. This is called homeostasis.

Secret Tip #5: BE CONSISTENT

If you have done any of the above and got back a good result, your mind is making the right connections for your reward system.

Your brain basically confirms that these actions are giving you the expected result. That’s all you need to know.

If you do action A, it will lead to result B.

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So did I convince you? Did you already know everything there is to break through your weight loss plateau?

Just incorporate these tips into your diet plan and you will soon reap the results of your effort.

Do you have any other tips about breaking through a weight plateau?