15 Tips for Breaking through a Plateau

"Obstacles are things a person sees when he takes his eyes off his goal."

1. JOURNAL, JOURNAL, JOURNAL:
This is one of the most powerful tools you have to help you stay on track or in this case get back on track. Your journal keeps you accountable and makes you aware of the coices you are making. It can help you see where you are may be going over in points for the day. It helps you make sure you are getting in all your Good Healthy Guidelines. Use your journal as a detective tool: Did you have a good week? Look over it at the end of the week and see what you think contributed to that success. Had a not so good week? Again, look over your journal to see what little changes need to be made. Look at last week's journal for clues too, sometimes it takes a full week before the effects of a not so good week shows up.

2. FOLLOW THE GOOD HEALTHY GUIDELINES :
Look at your food choices, are you eating a wide variety of foods? Remember, your body needs nutrients from lots of different sources and if you're eating the same things all the time or too much of one type of food, you're probably not getting the proper nutrition your body needs. Take a look at your food choices, sometimes we have the attitude that as long as our points are met at the end of the day we're doing good, but if we focus on meeting the Good Healthy Guidelines we'll see that we still need to make some small adjustments to ensure we're spending our points in a way that keeps our bodies healthy.

3. WEIGH AND MEASURE PORTIONS:
Have you put the measuring cups away? Too many times our portions get bigger without us realizing it, using measuring cups and spoons and weighing out our portions can give us a better idea if our portions have suddenly grown bigger than we're counting. Remember, portion size does matter.

4. READ LABELS CAREFULLY:
Are you counting your points right for the product that you're eating? If you're eating a bigger serving size than the one listed on the label you're eating more points than you calculated.

5. REMEMBER, ZERO TIMES ZERO IS NOT ALWAYS ZERO:
If you're eating one serving of fat free sugar free gelatin for 10 calories, okay, that's zero points, but if you're now eating 4 servings plus 2 tbsp of fat free whipped topping, you've got yourself one point! Beware of those hidden extras where we multiply portions, and beware of BLT's: Bites, Licks, and Tastes that never seem to get counted on any journal. These add up.

6. TOO MANY REFINED CARBS?:
Are you eating too many sources of simple and refined carbs, the stuff that's heavily processed and no longer looks like its natural food source. Think of it as the difference between whole grain bread and processed white bread, brown rice vs. white rice, popcorn cakes vs. corn on the cob. Try to include more of the natural sources of carbs in your diet stuff like beans, yams, potatoes, brown rice, whole wheat couscous. This is not to say you can't have any refined carbs, just try to limit the amount of them if you're having trouble

7. NOT ENOUGH FAT?:
Okay, this sounds counterintuitive, but according to the Good Healthy Guidelines and for good nutrition you should be adding in about 2-3 points of a healthy fat per day. Please go back to Week One and make sure you are getting in those HEALTHY OILS! Our bodies need enough fat in order to properly function. The Healthy Oils contain an essential fatty acid: linoleic acid, that our body can't produce on its own. That fat is needed for proper metabolic and digestive function. Fat provides essential nutrients our bodies need, it transports fat soluble vitamins that our bodies need, it is needed for proper digestion and metabolic function, it helps us keep fuller longer, keeps our hair and skin nice, and is crucial for proper gallbladder function. If you're on a super low fat diet you can develop gallstones that are no fun and super painful.

8. DRINK HALF YOUR BODY WEIGHT IN WATER EACH DAY:
According to Barbara Levine, R.D., Ph.D., the Director of the Nutrition Information Center at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center and reported in the June issue of Weight Watchers magazine, she says that overweight people need more water than the typical 8 cups a day rule. "Overweight people tend to need more water, because fat cells hold more water than other fat cells in the body. To determine the number of ounces of water you need per day, divide your weight by two. For example, a person who weighs 140 pounds should consume 70 ounces, or about 9 cups. Of course, this is an estimate. The best way to gauge whether you are getting enough water is to monitor the color of your urine. If you're drinking enough, it should be the color of pale straw. If it is a deeper yellow, you're not getting enough fluids" (page 16, June 1999). Lots of times we misinterpret thirst for hunger, try water first, wait 20 minutes, real hunger will not go away.

9. MAKE SURE YOU'RE GETTING FIVE SERVINGS OF FRUITS AND VEGETABLES PER DAY:
Eating the zero point veggies can often help us to fill up so that we're not eating the other higher points foods instead. If you're hungry, try non-starchy veggies first. Lots of members make the Garden Vegetable Soup recipe in the Week 1 booklet and eat a bowl of that before dinner to fill up a bit so that you can get full on the smaller portions you'll be serving yourself. Try a glass of V8 Fusion before a meal during the summer when soup sounds too hot. Variety is good here too, try a new fruit or veggie this week to expand your repertoire.

10. INCREASE THE FREQUENCY OR INTENSITY OF YOUR PHYSICAL ACTIVITY:
Are you exercising? If not, know that you'll be much more successful at losing the weight and keeping it off if you are also physically active. Find something that you enjoy doing and just do it! Start with a five minute walk out of your door, look at your watch after five minutes start heading back, just like that you've done 10 minutes! Next week start adding in a couple of extra minutes, try walking for 7 minutes out of your door, and 7 minutes back, you've now done 14 minutes. Keep adding until you're up to at least 10 minutes out and 10 minutes back. If you're already active, are you exercising at enough intensity? If you can easily carry on a conversation while exercising (you should be able to speak, but it should take a bit of effort) you're not challenging your body enough. Your body becomes really efficient at adjusting to the amount of physical activity you're doing, so you regularly have to adjust either the intensity of your workouts or the frequency in order to continue to reap the maximum benefit from physical activity. Try strength training in order to build lean muscle tissue. As we get older we lose lean muscle tissue which depresses your metabolism in addition severely restrictive diets where we eat too few calories can cause us to lose weight but lots of it is lean muscle which also depresses our metabolism. If we build muscle tissue this can help us to reverse that process and to make us trimmer and stronger.

11. MOVE THE MEALS AROUND:
Do you always have your biggest meal at dinner? Try eating your biggest meal for lunch or even for breakfast, with smaller meals for the remaining meals. If you regularly eat most of your points at one meal your body converts the rest of the food into stored energy...fat...so that if you balance your points out throughout the day better you can actually give your metabolism a boost by keeping it revving throughout the day instead of only one spike at dinner. Food actually helps to boost our metabolism, that's why it's important never to skip meals. There's a saying that you could help losing weight. to lose weight by eating breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper. This gives us the majority of our points early in the day when our bodies can use them because we're active instead of right before bed if we eat them at dinner.

12. TRY VARYING YOUR NUMBER OF POINTS:
Do you always eat at a certain number of points per day? Your body gets very efficient at predicting its intake and adjusts itself accordingly. Keep it guessing. Try mixing up the number of points you have...low one day, middle the next, back to low, then high end of your points. Special note: If you're very active never eat at the low end of your points, always eat middle to high end of your points and take those extra exercise points if you need them...let your hunger be your guide.

13. TAKE YOUR MEASUREMENTS AND LOOK FOR OTHER NON-SCALE SIGNS OF PROGRESS:
Often even when the scale isn't moving, we're still improving our health and our bodies which will show up in other ways other than the scale. Have your measurements gone down? How are your clothes fitting? Can you climb a flight of stairs without being winded? Has your cholesterol gone down? Can you walk now for 20 minutes when before you were huffing and puffing at 5 minutes? How do you feel?

14. ARE YOU ON AN ATTITUDE PLATEAU?:
Are you just tired of feeling like you're going to be doing this forever? Does that translate into that right now your desire to lose weight is equal to your desire for freedom from counting and having to think about points and healthy food choices? If so, then that mental attitude might be the culprit in that you're following a more relaxed adherence to the program but you think you're still doing it to the letter. Remind yourself of why you started this process, look at how far you've come. Is your goal still the same? Is it that you're scared of success, are okay with how you look right now, have you become complacent? Ask yourself these kind of questions honestly. If you're tired of the weight loss routine or have become complacent, try spicing up your food plan by trying more interesting meals and snacks, adding new foods, trying new recipes or new restaurants. Set new goals, setting a new goal can continue to challenge yourself.

15. CONSIDER MAINTENANCE:
A plateau that lasts a long time can be the practice to show you that you can maintain your weight. Sustaining weight loss is a challenge in itself. Consider doing the maintenance process so as to take a break from weight loss. Taking a break from weight loss and focusing on keeping the weight off can be the best thing to do, especially if a vacation or stressful situation is what is keeping you from continuing on your weight loss journey.

“Life's up and downs provide windows of opportunity to determine your values and goals - Think of using all obstacles as stepping stones to build the life you want"