Recharge Your Weight Loss

Sometimes, despite your best efforts, the scale just stalls. That’s when these science-backed strategies come in. Bust through your plateau and let the slim begin.

- Marnie Soman Schwarts

The dreaded weight loss plateau – it’s something most dieters encounter around the six-month mark, research shows. You continue working out and eating right, yet nothing. No more progress. Plateaus are so intensely frustrating that they often prompt people to quit their diet altogether. “You think: ‘I’m putting in all this effort and not seeing results – is it even worth it?’ But you can get through it,” promises Meghan Butryn, a psychology professor at Drexel University.

WHY PLATEAUS HAPPEN

After you lose weight, your body operates more efficiently and needs less energy to do everything, including your workouts, which means you burn fewer calories. At the same time, your system is biologically programmed to get you back to your former, heavier weight – a survival mechanism to help prevent starvation that is left over from prehistoric times, when food was scarce. 

This phenomenon, called adaptive thermogenesis, puts the brakes on your metabolism. A 10 per cent drop in your body weight will slow your metabolism by as much as 25 per cent, experts say. And the more you lose, the greater the effect, though scientists don’t know why. In a study published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, people who lost the most weight saw the greatest dips in their metabolic rates.

And that’s only part of the problem. Your hormones are also making you hungrier than ever, says Dr Louis Aronne, director of the Comprehensive Weight Control Center at Weill Cornell Medicine and the author of The Change Your Biology Diet.