If you’re actively dieting or trying to lose weight, then chances are that you’re going to hit a plateau at some point in your weight loss journey. In other words, there is going to be a period of time in when no matter how hard you try, your body refuses to lose any more weight. This could be near the start of your diet or at some point further down the line, there is simply no telling when you may reach a plateau.

A weight loss plateau normally lasts for about 3 weeks and results in your body weight remaining at the same level for an extended period of time. This may be caused by a number of factors and doesn’t necessarily mean you’re doing anything wrong but if it lasts for longer than 4 weeks, then you may want to re-evaluate your diet/exercise regime and check with your doctor to make sure you don’t have any underlying health issues.

If you do happen to hit a plateau at some point in your weight loss journey, it may help to remember these 5 things:

Stay Patient

Nearly everyone who’s tried to lose weight has been in your position at some time or another. It’s important to stay focused and remember all the hard work and effort you’ve made to get to this point and not get too down about the numbers on the scale. Just because you haven’t shed the pounds immediately, try and think about how all those positive lifestyle changes are affecting other areas of your life. Perhaps you have more energy or don’t find yourself getting out of breath when climbing the stairs so often. The more you stay motivated the more likely it is you will get over the plateau and continue on with your weight loss journey.

Try and remain consistent with your eating habits/exercise regime

Sometimes a weight loss plateau isn’t a plateau at all but old habits starting to creep back in. This is understandable and it’s not always easy to stick to a diet, particularly if you’ve already lost a lot of weight. People tend to be far more motivated early on in their weight loss regime and find that after a length of time it becomes much more difficult to stay focused. The key thing is to keep setting yourself new goals and targets to make sure you stay motivated.

Your body’s metabolism naturally drops as you lose weight

One thing people often fail to take into account when trying to lose weight is that your bodies metabolic rate does not stay the same. The less you eat, the less energy is required to burn off fat therefore your metabolism slows down as a result. This is why crash diets never work because if your metabolism starts to slow down then you will put weight back on much quicker when you start eating properly again. If you’ve reached a plateau in your weight loss journey, it’s important to stick to your workouts and make sure you have a sensible, healthy eating plan I in place in order to help you overcome it.

It’s important to mix up your exercise routine

Quite often when your body gets accustomed to set patterns in your diet and exercise regime, it starts to plateau, and you may find you need to mix things up if you want to continue to lose weight. If you’re used to exercising for half an hour, why not push yourself and try to last the whole 60 minutes? You don’t need to go to extremes but an extra couple of hours exercise a week can make a massive difference and help you get over any plateau you might have reached. It’s also a good idea to train different muscles/areas of the body when working out. This is because when we move differently, the body has to recruit more muscle fibers and our heart rate generally increases. This means you get a harder workout even if exercising for the same period of time.

Stay hydrated to avoid water retention

A lot of the time when people start exercising as part of a weight loss regime, they forget they need to drink more. If you’re weighing yourself several times a day, you will often notice your weight tends to fluctuatee by a small amount. Most of this is down to changes in water retention. If you don’t drink enough after working out or you consume a lot of sodium, then your body will retain water as it needs to stay hydrated. The more you drink the more your body works to flush it out and therefore you can actually lose weight by drinking more water.