|
Don't Let "Normal" Set Points and Weight Loss Plateaus Stop Your Plan.
You have watched you diet for weeks, exercised and saw a steady weight loss. Then suddenly it all ends, no matter what you the scales will not budge. You have reached a set point, or plateau. Why is this inevitable?
- Our body works hard to keep energy intake and output in balance.
- We all like weight loss but our body interprets the weight loss as starvation,
- It shuts down our metabolism.
- The more effort you make to burn more calories the more it slows down.
It takes fewer calories to maintain your weight because you simply weigh less. To lose one pound a week, you'll need to create a deficit of approximately 500 calories per day. This plateauing effect is one of the biggest motivation killers there is. The best single word of advice is to make a change. In Part 1 of this series you will learn all of the reasons responsible for this problem.
Here are some of the causes range of the slow down include:
Normal physiologic resistance to weight loss
Genetic predispositions
Unrealistic expectations
Mistakes in food selection, portions, and preparations
Bored or fatigued
What Should You Weigh? Expectations Versus Reality:
Are expectations unrealistic? If you are comparing yourself to the bone-thin celebrity on television or what you weighed in high school, perhaps your expectations are unrealistic.
Genetic Predispositions Cause Weight Ranges for Many People:
70% of the variation in people’s weight may be accounted for by inheritance, which means that a tendency toward a certain weight is more strongly inherited than nearly any other tendency.
Weight Loss is Proportional to Starting Weight:
For an individual who weighs 200 pounds, it will be easier to lose five pounds than for the person weighing 150 pounds. This is normal and expected.
It’s Normal for Weight Loss to Slow Down
Weight loss slows over time because your metabolism slows to prevent what the body interprets as starvation. Although the possibility of starvation is not entirely relevant in the U.S. today, this bodily mechanism did help our ancestors survive during lean times.
Personal Set point:
Each person has his or her own set point, or the level at which one naturally starts to resist weight change and becomes “comfortable” with his or her new weight. There are low set points and high set points; think of them as preset weight zones. Your plateau might be your low set point. Many times the cause of this may be those genes you inherited, other times just from making a few mistakes. Set points often occur at weight points of previous diet attempts.
Depletion of Vitamins and Minerals:
Weight loss is associated not only with reductions in body fat, but also some loss of muscle mass. Invariably numerous vitamins and chemicals as vitamins and co-enzymes needed to breakdown fat are also depleted.
Once you have discovered the reasons for you weight loss slow down, the next step is to do something about it. The second part of this series describes some of the secrets my patients have used.
Maybe they can help you.
|
Section Blog 
