The Writer's Guide to a Stalled Diet

One of the biggest problems most dieters face is the stalled diet. The reason behind this is your body has suddenly become use to your diet and exercise program. It’s settled in, you’ve lost weight, and now it seems like your just maintaining your new weight.

The first part of your diet is the greatest weight loss. Part of it is water, and then the body adjust to no more fatty rich foods, and the weight comes off. Then suddenly stops. You stay the same weight for weeks.

The best thing to do, if you’re not doing this already is eat six small meals a day. Look at your caloric intake, what you’re allowing yourself in calories, and divide into six. Say if you’re eating 1200 calories a day, you have six 200 calorie meals a day, with lots of water in-between. Yes, you’ll be running to restroom often. But you need to flush the system of toxins released by your sudden healthy eating.

If you’re already doing the six meals, try this. Reduce any other fatty items you can in your diet and reduce carbs. That little piece of chocolate might have to go for the time being. Then increase your caloric intake with a healthier item, or replace less carbs with lean protein. Yes, increase, do not decrease calories. Then add, if humanly possible another 15mins of aerobic exercise, such as a longer faster walk or run. The body will kick start again and the weight will start to come off once more.

It’s important to stimulate your metabolism with healthy food. By not eating enough of the right food, the body will hang on to the fat. It’s often called the ‘starvation mode'. For a dieting body to go into starvation mode, it takes a long time of not eating enough, or not eating enough of the right food. The body has a mini rebellion and refuses to let go of fat.

To get the body going, add more healthy foods to your diet, increasing the caloric intake and reduce carbs or anything with added sugars. The body will automatically respond, by working to burn those calories, which in turn burns fat. 

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way with fatty foods. If you increase your caloric intake of foods that are high in sugars and fat, like a fast food hamburger, all you do is feel sluggish and bloated while the body tries to fight through the garbage to digest it. Once you get done, you feel like crap, and hate yourself for eating it. The moral of the story don’t try to stimulate the metabolism with unhealthy food. The key is feeling sluggish after eating too much of something unhealthy. The body is trying to tell you something, like its fighting to digest it.

How to solve the problem:

• Increase caloric intake with healthy food.
• Reduce carbohydrates and increase lean protein.  
• Increase meals to six a day.  
• Eliminate any remaining fatty food from your diet.  
• Reduce dairy products.
• Increase aerobic exercise.

Another reason for stalled weight loss, is gaining muscle weight. If you are working out in a gym in combination of aerobics, machines and weights, most likely you're gaining muscle. This is a good thing, because muscle is smaller, but heavier then fat. If this is the case, start to measure yourself, and that's were you'll see the changes, not on the scale. Still look at your diet carefully, to continue to decrease size you might need to reduce carbs and add more protein in the form of lean meats and protein shakes. Read the labels on protein shakes carefully, they can be high in calories and sugar for energy.

Next week the detox or cleanse. Do they work?