Getting Off the Weight Loss Plateau

Why am I on a Plateau?

• Am I eating more? Keep a food diary to see how much and what you are really eating. With increased exercise your body may be signaling you to eat more, and you may be doing so without realizing it. Check your portion sizes at meals.
  Printable Food Diary in Adobe Acrobat .pdf format.
• Am I rewarding myself with food? You may be giving in to food rewards that have more calories than you burned off walking. These may be sweets, salty snacks, or even meat and cheese. Check the calorie charts to see how many calories your walking burns (about 100 calories per mile for a 150 pound person) and match that with the calories on the treats you allow.

Plateau Busting Tactics

• Walk More: Your walking program should build up progressively, increasing your total mileage by no more than 10% a week in order to avoid injury. Look at your walking progress and increase your mileage according to that schedule. As you lose weight, you burn fewer calories per mile, so in order to have the same calories burned, you will need to steadily increase the distance that you walk.
• Reduce calories: Reduce your calories by a further 200 per day, but do not go below 1000 calories per day unless you are on a medically supervised program. Tactics would be cutting portions and eliminating fattier food, substituting fruits and vegetables for other snacks. If you begin to lose more than 1.5 pounds a week, add back in those 200 calories.
  Walking Calorie Calculators
• Add More Activity: Find ways to build more activity into each day - take the stairs rather than the elevator. Park in the far corner of the parking lot rather than near the door. Put on music and dance through chores or just for fun.
• Tone Your Muscles: Walking tones your legs, but you will still need some arm and abdominal exercises to keep the rest of you in shape. Buy a theraband or some light dumbbells for an arm routine and select a good abdominal routine. This will keep the jiggles in check as you lose more weight.

Plateau-Busting Tools

Weekly Walking Workouts
Spice up your walking with targeted workouts.

Email Buddies
Find an email buddy to encourage you in our Forum.

Related Sites
Weight Loss
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