What is a plateau? When progress stalls completely or you regress. If you have just begun training/weight loss, everything is great; you can make quick progress and see big changes. As your body adjusts and improves, these results will slow and your hard work may seem unrewarded. Don’t give up. You aren’t a failure, you may need to adjust your expectations and/or your approach. Try tracking every set, rep and workout meticulously; focus on small wins – the small changes add up; instead of tracking solely the scale, take biweekly photos and measurements; switch up your workout – add intensity, may need to increase duration, change the moves, order, reps, rest, cross train (don’t just run, do weights, etc), and consider periodization training. Try tracking your nutrition to ensure you’re meeting your needs for your goals, making more quality choices and watching portions closer. Be sure you are getting adequate rest and recovery. You don’t necessarily need to do more with working out, just be smarter about your approach. Ensure you are consistently and successfully completing workouts and balancing good/bad days. Try not to allow yourself to get discouraged or stressed as this will have the opposite ideal outcome. Consistency truly is everything, if you take the weekend off from your diet or drink all night your body knows. You will not make progress doing this I cannot stress that enough. Be honest with yourself about what you are and aren’t doing. Appreciate how far you have come. Think of your health/fitness as a lifelong journey. In life we try new things and make mistakes but we get to know ourselves better and discover what does/doesn’t work with us – it’s the same with this! Grow, learn, and love what you are doing, and who you are becoming!
Plateaus
