Are you losing interest in exercise because you feel that you’re going nowhere? The bad news is that you have probably hit a plateau. The good news is that this is a very common problem and you can actually overcome it! The reason why this happens is that your body is resistant to change or in other words, hates to lose weight. So, after you have lost weight early on in your program, you might reach a stage where you stop losing any. This can be really frustrating for you, because you are maintaining the same exercise routine and diet plan.

The key is not to be overwhelmed by this frustration and instead try to push through this phase. Do not even think about quitting because there is light at the end of the tunnel. Here’s how you can tackle a plateau and attain your fitness goal.

1. Keep a tab on your daily calorie intake. This is the net of the total calories you consume minus the calories you lose via exercise. Ideally you should not lose more than 500-700 calories a day. This leads to hunger and makes it really difficult for you to lose weight.

To prevent this you should know your daily calorie requirement. Keep your net calorie intake just below this figure and you’ll be fine.

2. Are you losing muscles? In case you are, you need to understand that weight loss can be achieved only by losing fat mass. Muscle burns fat even when you are at rest and so losing it means your fat loss decreases too.

Try to ensure that your diet is nourishing your body sufficiently. Right nutrition can ensure that you do not lose lean body mass at all.

3. Have you lost weight rapidly? If during the initial phase of your diet and exercise program, you have lost weight drastically, you may have lost lean body mass instead of fat. A drastic loss of weight can also result in less calorie requirement for activities. And if you don’t burn calories, how can you lose weight?

The key here is to increase lean body mass while losing fat mass at the same time.

4. Have you been doing the same exercises for a long time? If so, your body might have grown accustomed to the exercises and they no longer affect your body mass as much as they used to. Also when you started working out, you body faced a new type of challenge and so reacted better.

A personal trainer is the best person to ensure that you keep doing new exercises and also work out at variable intensity, duration and frequency. But if you do not have a trainer, you can ensure this yourself. Use interval training for best results.

5. Are you overtraining? In your zeal to keep losing weight, you might be pushing yourself too hard. When you work out more intensely than you should, your body develops a resistance to losing calories when you are at rest. So, take it easy and do not burn out.

A plateau can only be as difficult to overcome as you make it seem. Do not let your shoulders drop when the scales disappoint you. Try these ideas and keep losing weight!

Author Bio: You can also overcome a weight loss plateau with the assistance of a Basingstoke Personal Trainer For a group training style try this boot camp Chino program.

Category: Wellness, Fitness and Diet
Keywords: exercise, results, fitness, get results, get in shape, personal training, fitness training