You know the word. People whisper it furtively while tossing salt over their shoulder, knocking on wood and never letting Jon Gosselin cross their path. Men tear out their hair, women shriek and babies cry at its mere mention. It is the single most feared word in health and fitness circles.
Kidding.
It’s “plateau.”
As anyone who has ever lost weight, gained weight, lost muscle, built muscle and/or obsessively watched 24 knows, eventually all good things must come to an end. It the case of 24 that means Jack Bauer will be tortured but for the rest of us non-spy folks, it’s a different kind of torture – the fitness plateau. Whether you are stuck at a certain weight or that you can’t break through a specific performance barrier, the #1 question I get asked on this site (Why do people ask my advice? I’m as baffled as you are!) is “How do I break through a plateau?”
We’ve all been there. When you first start a new nutrition or exercise program you often see big results at the beginning. Then the excitement dies down and you settle in to moderate progress. But then – and it is inevitable – all progress ceases and try as you might you can’t get any closer to your goal. You work harder, read more and annoy all your friends with your incessant whining and yet you are still stuck. You have plateaued.
I may not be an expert at plateau busting but I do know one thing: the psychological impact is immense. Tears, anger, bitterness, depression and even apathy are all common reactions. Nothing is more frustrating than feeling like you are doing everything right and having it not work. Not only are you stuck but you might even be backsliding a bit. It feels like all your hard work up to that point was for naught. What is the point of continuing to deny yourself the peanut butter brownies and dragging yourself out of bed to hit the gym before work when it isn’t helping anyhow?
Some people fight plateaus for a few weeks before their body either kicks back into gear or they figure out an effective change. Others however ending up fighting it for much longer – months or even years. It can be downright crazy making. But rather than just giving up, I offer you these few tips:
1. Know you are not alone. Plateaus happen to all of us. Everyone will hit one at some point in their health journey. I know that doesn’t help you lose those last 10 pounds but misery does love company (and, also, chocolate).
2. Remember how far you’ve come. Whether it’s losing 10% of your body weight or finally being able to run a mile without stopping, every little bit helps. All your hard work was not in vain. You may not have accomplished everything you wanted (yet) but you certainly have accomplished something and in regards to your health any improvement is worthwhile.
3. Reexamine your goals. Perhaps you just aren’t meant to lose those ten pounds. Are you healthy where you are at? Are you happy? Perhaps that is your body’s way of telling you you’re good. Or try changing your goal to a performance goal. Quix recently did this, after losing over 100 pounds she has been struggling with a plateau for some time now. Rather than chuck all her healthy habits in frustration, she has decided to give herself all of 2010 as a break from worrying about losing weight and is instead focusing on her new passion for running.
4. Change it up. This is the sole reason I started this website. The only good advice I’ve ever heard about breaking a plateau (and I’ve heard plenty of bad advice – diet pills anyone?) involves changing your routine. Shock your body. Try lifting heavier. Or a new class. Go vegetarian. Or take out sugar. Try interval cardio. Play around with your macronutrient ratios. Have more sex, even! There are many many variables to play around with.
5. More is not always better. Especially when it comes to exercise. This is a lesson I’m still learning I’m afraid. This weekend I got an e-mail from a reader at her wit’s end with a plateau. Like me, she had been consisting upping her exercise to be longer and more intense hoping it would fix the problem. And yet the opposite was happening. There is a sweet spot when it comes to exercise and we need to find it. Rest days are as important as workout days. (PS. This philosophy also applies to dieting! Cutting more calories is not always the answer. Sometimes you need to eat more!)
6. Hire a good personal trainer. Sometimes you just need a fresh set of eyes to look at what you’re eating and how you are working out.
I know how heartbreaking a plateau can be. In fact, I’m at one now. Like I predicted, I lost most of the baby weight pretty quickly but am now stuck with The Last 10 Pounds – a battle I will be fighting for the foreseeable future. At the very least it will be until the Jelly Bean weans as my milkshake brings all the babies to the yard. And possibly longer. So I know how much a plateau sucks. It can make you question every healthy change you’ve made. It can make you think you are a failure or that the universe hates you. At the very least it is a severe annoyance. But don’t let it drive you into a severe depression (that’s what Judge Judy is for!) and give up your healthy lifestyle. Because you are worth taking good care of!
Since I know that we all think that everyone else has it easier, I’ve created a little plateau poll to (hopefully) prove my point:
(If you get this via e-mail or through a feed reader, click through to take the poll!)
So what is your experience? Are you stuck in a plateau? What tips do you have for busting a plateau? Anyone else feel bad about the world after watching Judge Judy (where do they find these people??)?
I hate plateaus.
(Although I wouldn't mind one right now. That means I'd have to be losing weight FIRST to have one, right? 😉
#3 makes a lot of sense to me.
Sometimes I hope that a shift in focus, like running a race or doing a pull-up, will help me get my mind off the scale. But often I secretly hope my new "healthy" goal achieving self will also lose a little weight in the process. sad but true. Workin on it.
and Charlotte.
I must tell you. That dude's finger going through his eye socket makes me want to throw up every time I see it.
sorry. It's way too scary/weird/germy/awful. It gives me nightmares.
but I still love you.
And I love YOU katie!
LOL @ Katieo…that picture freaks me out, too.
I plateaued for a good six months last year. I started losing really well, then went up a little and down a little…then just kind of stayed the same, playing around with the same 5 pounds between February and August. (Okay, so spraining my foot and being stuck in a cast for six weeks didn't help, but the whole plateau was six MONTHS.)
What helped me more than drastically cutting calories–which I did, and increasing my exercise to insane amounts–which I also did, was to take a step back, take a deep breath…and start over.
I really re-examined my diet and my exercise routines. Turns out, I had grown so comfortable in both, I was getting lazy. Starting over–I was doing Weight Watchers, so starting over for me meant going back to the beginning, where I weighed and wrote down every bite that went into my mouth–really helped me see the things that I had been doing wrong. I made adjustments…I actually ate more, kept my exercise about the same, and finally started losing again. (Like crazy, I might add.)
Plateaus are hard and they seriously suck! Just another bump in the road, though. 😉
I plateaued right when I started working out 2 years ago – stayed stuck regardless of how much fitter and stronger I felt. I upped my weight training from 2 days to 3 and it was enough to break the plateau. So I'm a big fan of changing things up to break it.
I'm in the middle of one at the moment because I don't have a lot to lose so my body is being a stubborn beotch. So my focus is on starting to run instead and I've really jumpstarted things with Lindsey's training (the woman is going to kill me I tell you. I spent last week aching all over!)
I've found during plateaus that it helps to measure myself rather than weigh. Sometimes I'm losing cm/inches but not weight as muscle weighs more than fat. I also ensure I have 1 pig-out day per week to trick my body and also vary the exercise a bit, even skipping a session or two. That seems to confuse my body enough that when I return to regular habits I start losing again. But my most important tip – don't look at the scales – give them a rest for a couple of weeks and use a tape measure instead 🙂
Erm… sorry to whine in your blog comments…
…having dropped from 132kgs (June 2008) to 77kgs today, I am firmly stuck in a plateau, and it's driving me loopy, I only want to drop another 3kgs – which would give me a nice little 5kg buffer between me & my max 'healthy weight.' I eat an extremely healthy, nutritionally balanced, low-fat, calorie controlled vegetarian diet, no junk.
I tried increasing/decreasing the duration and intensity of my workouts – and discovered that decreasing my cardio makes me crazy & increasing it is pretty much impossible.
I tried adding more weight-lifting to my routine – fun but no dice, I must have lost more fat because you can See the gained muscle but the number remains the same.
I tried increasing/decreasing calories – to no effect, which was weird, though I'm way to paranoid to increase them for more than a week. And living on less than 1500 cal' per day made me a bit crazy.
I tried upping my lean-protein & lowering my carbs – but less carbs just made me want to stab people.
It's been over three months and nothing seems to have any effect.
I'm starting to wonder if my body is just happy where it is – which is technically a healthy place, but I'm not happy here. …perhaps it's time to consult the professionals, hey.
i voted – but I've never been to the Jersey shore so I dunno if it sucks…..but plateaus sure as heck do!! x
YESYESYES on number four.
Thats 100% what I do (food, exercise, anything else I can shake up :))
All the answers to breaking the plat-OH! are contained in the GFE archives.
Im just sayin'.
I'm with Katie – please don't use that photo again! I couldn't get past it to read your post…. *shudder*
I've been on a plateau for… oh, um… (just a minute, have to take my socks off) …. err, about 11 years now….
Sigh.
Thanks for all this information! I just don't know, and I try to stay educable. All of my intuitive instants are probably plateaued because I can't understand how a plateau occurs if there is a calorie in versus out deficit.
#4 is my favorite. when i did WW years ago I hit many plateaus and at one time decided to "buckle down" and REALLY follow the program….after 2 months I only lost .2(after going up and down)…nothing more frustrating! i decided to just change my focus. What else could i put all that energy into? how i felt, how my clothes felt and how i talked to myself. It sure helped! oh…I had to put away the scale so it wouldn't control how i felt about myself or all the healthy stuff i was doing!!!
Yes, the dreaded plateau!!! I have had this more times than I want to count because at my age, you are bound to go thru it many times!
It is not only when you are in the weight loss mode. As we age, our bodies change and change and change.. more times than the plateaus pissed us off! I have had to make more changes in my food & exercise programs from the mid
40's to now than I want to even think about! CRAZINESS!!!! BUT, I persist & get thru it. It ain't easy but I still try!
I don't try hard enough on those "last 10 pounds" to consider my failure to lose them a plateau–I like to think that if I really cared that much I could do it. Denial? Probably, but it keeps me in sufficient quantities of dark chocolate and almond butter and wine, which is a fair enough trade-off for 10 extra pounds.
My most frustrating plateau is my inability to do unassisted pull ups. I stopped making progress despite adding more sets, negatives etc. I can do ONE chin up, which is not the same thing. But I may have to settle for that one lame chin up, as the pull up thing just doesn't seem to want to happen for me.
I tend to not stay at plateaus very long, not because I have the magic cure but because I get frustrated and eat junk and just put weight back on. Trying to take a longer view of things right now to focus on health, long-term weight loss and maintenance. That, plus keeping the Govida out of the house might just work.
You had me at "Milkshake brings all the babies to the yard"!!
Hillarious, Char!
I've found that my plateaus happen when I lose focus. Careful journaling and a change in exercise routine are the most helpful. Also, if you are gaining muscle and not weight that's a win!
cammi99
I spent about 6 months at a plateau last year… But every week, I reminded myself that being stuck at the same weight was better than gaining! I eventually broke it by doing more tracking (I was on Weight Watchers) and being mroe strict about my nutrition. Fitness is easy for me, it's food that gets me every time!
I'm with Crabby on this one. I'm at a plateau and figure, Eh, I'm within 10 pounds of where I want to be, I'm healthy, so I'll just keep exercising and if it comes off it comes off.
I think of plateaus as the second (and sometimes third) years of college: it wasn't new and exciting anymore, and I couldn't see the degree at the end of the tunnel. It was just long days of hard work with seemingly no end. One of my classmates referred to it as "The Quagmire."
I've found that when I've hit plateaus in the past, I've had to either trudge my way through that quagmire, knowing that it would end eventually, or look at myself with new eyes: "OK, I may weigh 10 pounds more than my 'ideal' weight, but that 10 pounds is mostly muscle!"
Or sometimes I just watch "Judge Judy" and think "Forget my weight; at least I'm not THAT guy!"
Wheee thanks for the linky love! I'm finding that not worrying about my weight has actually HELPED my fitness – my body being more fueled is definitely helping my running. I can't imagine trying this training and also dieting.
I'm also finding that once I let go of the desire to have the PERFECT body and work on having a more CAPABLE one, I'm happier. Doesn't mean that I'm not going to lose the rest of the weight someday, but for now, I'm getting acquainted with me, at 155 and satisfied. 😉
Apparantly this post is pointed directly at me (and my husband). We watched 12 hours of 24 this weekend and I am just dying for more. Obsessed. Jack Bauer can do no wrong.
Moving on…plateaus can be pretty destructive for me. I start questioning the process, questioning my sanity, and questioning what the heck I am even questioning. Brutal.
*waves hands wildly in the air* I LOVE CHOCOLATE TOO!
I don't think I've ever hit a plateau- any time that I have, it's been my own fault because my nutrition hasn't been so good, or because I haven't exercised as much as I ought to have.
I hit a weight plateau in the past, and changing my diet from practically vegan to low carb (by which I mean lots of veggies, but no grains, etc.) helped me break through.
Recently, I broke through a 2nd plateau by cutting out all processed foods (ie, no "power bars", sugar free ice cream, etc.–I still eat good cheese), and going organic whenever possible.
It might not work for everyone (the low carb OR the avoiding processed foods), but it sure did for me.
I try a new class every month, which normally shows me muscle groups I've been neglecting…
I hate plateaus! I was "suffering" from a plateau for about 6 months last year. I got so frustrated & stopped working out for a month because I wanted to give up. In that month of rest, I lost 10lbs! Now, when I hit a plateau I just let my body rest for a bit & I am all good again. (o=
http://latestinhealthandfitness.blogspot.com/
Had to laugh at Katieo's comments.
Myself, I'm going to follow Azusmom's advice and watch Judge Judy more often. While on the treadmill, of course 🙂
So, the husband and I were just talking about Duck Hunt and that stupid little dog.
Creepy that he shows up here.
THANK YOU SOOOOO MUCH for posting this! How do you always know what I need to see?
I start back to school tonight (EEK!) after a lovely 3 week break, and that inevitably brings out the self-loathing and less time to exercise, and frequent trips to the pantry for dips into the peanut butter. *SIGH* I need to just be easy with myself and direct my focus elsewhere.
You are awesome! And I love that you're still calling that sweet little bundle of joy Jelly Bean. That's why I call my husband Cinnamon Roll (among other things) – they are my favorite sweet treats! Sorry my comment is so random. Love you Char!
omg, I was just singing this the other day!
"my milkshake brings all the babies to the yard."
Too FUNNY!
and yes, I'm at a plateau. But it's 20 pounds instead of ten.
ugh.
i want to (and do) cry.
often.
🙁
I hate plateaus–it's actually the reason for why I quit working out the last time.
But this year, I'm going back. I re-examined my goals. I realized that I value health and being fit more than losing weight. So when the year started, I decided that I will shun "dieting" (calorie counting) and instead move towards eating healthier. I'm not going to deprive myself, but I will eat in moderation.
I shunned the gym. I have a working treadmill at home and I will use that, while it's still winter. I've forgotten how much I love running.
But when Spring comes, I'm going outdoors. I'll run and ride my bike, perhaps even swim. I recently discovered my old but reliable Schwinn (http://schwinnusa.com/allschwinn_3403201_B0021I150I_Schwinn-Coronado-Womens-Comfort-Bike-26-Inch-Wheels.html).
So this year, I'm going back to my old, healthy habits and will try to take in life!
well, I suppose you could say that I'm in a plateau- those last 10 are elusive. However it's not like those bites, licks and tastes of 10000 batches of cookies and nut butters forced their way down my gullet at Christmas time. So now that the hols are over, I think I'm shaving millimeters off. I think a true plateau is when you really truly are doing everything right and nothing works. That IS totally crazy-making. usually I have a darned good reason for my stalls in progress 🙂
I've found during plateaus that it helps to measure myself rather than weigh. Sometimes I'm losing cm/inches but not weight as muscle weighs more than fat. I also ensure I have 1 pig-out day per week to trick my body and also vary the exercise a bit, even skipping a session or two. That seems to confuse my body enough that when I return to regular habits I start losing again. But my most important tip – don't look at the scales – give them a rest for a couple of weeks and use a tape measure instead 🙂