Your Weight Plateau Could be Your Bodies Happy Weight

People who have success with dieting will sometimes run into their weight plateaus. That is, they hit a point where they stop losing weight and simply maintain their new weight. Tons of other people can tell you ways to get through this plateau, but have you thought that it might be a signal from your body?

Since there are so many ways and reasons people hit that plateau it's night impossible to describe every scenario. However, the main point is that your body does not like change and is trying to stop you from changing even more. Sometimes it is right. Sometimes it is wrong. Thus it is important to decipher if hitting the weight plateau is good for you or if you need to continue with your diet and exercise.

One of the first things that should be considered is your caloric intake. What is it at now? A few months ago how high was it? How much more weight would you like to burn and in what kind of time frame? For example if you have gone from a caloric intake of 1900 calories down to 1400 or 1500 to cut weight and you are not at a weight loss wall it would be very unhealthy to cut another 400 or 500 calories. Instead you can consider cutting another 50 or 100 calories in exchange for a longer timeframe to lose the weight. It is definitely the healthier option than cutting a lot of calories again.

Another factor in hitting the diet and exercise plateau has to do with the amount of calories your body starts to naturally burn. While dieting you will gradually lose body weight, which in turn means that your body will need less energy to maintain the same functions. If you maintain your pre-diet weight on 2,500 calories with no exercise, then you are metabolism burns about 104 calories an hour. After you diet you might maintain your new weight on 2,300 calories wit no exercise. You have no gone from burning 104 calories an hour naturally to 95 calories per hour. Examine this a little bit and you can see that you then start burning fewer calories each day, which can land you into the weight plateau. Pushing your metabolic rate too low is a recipe for disaster since it has partly to do with your total caloric intake. Never let that get too low or you may find your body starts eating itself.

Now that it is established why you might hit a weight plateau we need to think about what reasons you might have to stop there. As was said earlier your body is trying to tell you it does not want to change anymore. It has had enough excessive diet and exercise. If your body is happy with its new weight maybe you can be too? Start to think about what your original goal was. Have you reached it? If not, was it a reasonable weight loss goal to begin with? With any luck you may have taken your body fat percentage prior to losing weight. What is it at now? Perhaps you may weight more than what you wanted but as a trade off you have lost more fat and gained a bit of lean tissue or muscle. Do your best to remember that the number appearing on the scale should not be the final assessment you refer to. There are a lot more factors that go into where your weight should be than just those digital digits.

Once you stop perceiving your ideal weight at a set number it is time to take a thorough look at your body in the mirror. Pictures from where your weight used to be can be quite inspiring while also providing a lot of insight as to where you want to end. Yet again you should think about what your original goal was. Did you want to tone up those thighs or lessen those love handles? Since you cannot always predict where weight will fall off you may wind up pleasantly surprised that your goal was achieved a lot quicker than expected.

Being able to see the difference in your body from where you were to where you are will also help you to vision where your body could be with more weight loss. Will it be too much of a loss into the realm of sickliness? Currently the fad of skin-and-bones models is being sucked down the drain in favor of more realistic models. Interpret this as a sign that a lot of people nowadays do not find too thin as being too fabulous. If you are having difficulty picturing what your body will look like with a few more pounds shed, then try to get your hands on a one-pound fat replica model. These can be found on the internet at places like Amazon.com if you search "one pound fat replica" or some such term. After receiving it you can use it as a tool to grasp an idea of where that weight will come from. In all actuality you will be quite shocked to see what one pound of fat versus one pound of lean muscle looks like.

Finally you should reach the realization that your body would rather have more lean muscle and weigh more than have less lean muscle and weigh less. It cannot be stressed enough how important it is to forget the numerical weight number and focus more on other factors like body fat percentage. Stop focusing on extreme dieting and exercise for the sole purpose of losing weight. Begin to tone it down (or up in the case of dieting) while shifting focus to building more muscle than losing weight. Cardio, while important, is more useful in losing weight whereas weight lifting and other resistance training will help you build muscle. Adjust your ratio of cardio exercise to resistance exercise, but never cut cardio out of your routine. Eventually you can hit a balance of cardio and resistance when you see your body as being perfect. You will not need to run that mile one second faster or lift that extra pound.

If you look for it, then you can see perfection in your weight plateau.