Break a Plateau

Plateaus can be so frustrating. You’ve been running on the treadmill everyday. You have been watching what you eat. You think you have been doing everything right and the scale hasn’t budged in a few weeks. What’s going on? How do you break a plateau?

A plateau occurs when your body adapts to what you have been doing. Whether it is your food intake, your activity level or your exercise routine. So how do you break the plateau? You change it up!

1. Eating-change it up. If you have been reducing your intake to a certain amount of calories per day, increase your calories one day to a maintenance level and then back down to the reduced level the next. Some may call this the cheat day. It doesn’t mean binge on everything in sight, but if you have been reducing calories for weight loss and you increase those calories, it shocks your system and it has to work harder to use those calories. Some people do a cheat meal every few days.

2. Fitness routine-change it up. Just by definition routine repeats and becomes a habit. It works for your body too. You want to change up your routine every 30 days to 6 weeks. With P90X, it’s muscle confusion. With other Beachbody programs, there is usually a new phase every 30 days of the program.

3. Resistance train-add it too your exercise plan. If you have been a cardio king or queen, add weights. This again changes it up to break the body’s adaptation to your workout.

4. Take a break. Even this changes your routine if you are used to working out every day. You may need to take a rest day or do a day of stretching and light yoga.

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