You are probably motivated and thrilled to begin your weight loss journey when you first start your diet. Everything goes according to plan for the first few weeks; you lose a significant amount of weight, feel wonderful, and have no hunger pangs.
Well you’re following all of your commitments, such as eating a calorie-restricted diet and exercising, and you’re well on your way to achieving your weight-loss target. Then you get to a fork in the road with only a few pounds to lose, and they refuse to budge. The fact that the last five pounds are the most hardest to lose has long been an issue. If you can’t see the fruits of your efforts, it’s difficult to maintain working hard.
If your weight reduction has paused, you’re probably asking, “Am I doing something improper?”
There could be various causes for your initial “easy” weight loss to come to an abrupt halt over a period of time.
- When you lose weight, you lose fat as well as a tiny portion of muscle. Because muscle is so important for keeping your metabolism going, losing it might slow down your metabolism and make it more difficult to lose weight. Strength exercise can help you maintain and add muscle, re-igniting your metabolism.
- To maintain your weight loss, you may need less calories or more physical activity. A weight-loss plateau is most often caused by this. Furthermore, it is nearly impossible to lose significant amounts of weight without exercising, and whether you exercise is the strongest predictor of whether you will be able to maintain your weight.
- It’s simple to think that if you lose weight by eating a certain number of calories or consuming a certain amount of food, you’ll keep losing weight as long as you stick to your diet. Moving around with a lighter body demands less energy. This means you’ll either have to boost your energy expenditure by exercising/moving more or reduce your energy intake even more. Your energy consumption normally decreases when your bodyweight decreases. In order to reduce weight, you must also adjust your caloric intake and energy expenditure.
- After a few weeks of tight dieting, you may begin to feel hungry, and you may have developed the undesirable habit of snacking or adding minor pleasures to your diet. This is understandable given that weight loss is associated by hormonal changes, increased appetite, and decreased satiety.
- Snacking, not accounting for butter/oil or other calorie dense ingredients/foods that you may not always notice, are some habits that can obstruct further weight loss.
- There are many different types of stress that might occur in one’s life. Stress can cause water retention, and while you may still lose fat, the water retention may hide the fat loss. Identify any stressors in your life and try to reduce them if at all possible.
Our weight remains stable at a position when the allure of the foods we eat, our eating constraint, and the energy we waste in physical exercise are all balanced. We can adjust all three, but picking foods with lower energy density may be a particularly effective weight-loss technique. It’s also worth remembering that slimmer bodies require fewer calories to maintain a healthy weight.