Happy (belated) Valentine’s Day (there, now this post is relevant no matter WHAT day I post it or YOU read it, unless I post it or you read it right ON Valentine’s Day). How are we doing with February? Was Valentine’s Day the final nail in the coffin of a slow and sugary decline since mid-January? Or did it revitalize you and give you renewed energy for your health and fitness goals for the year?
No matter which camp you’re in, this is the point in many fitness and weight loss attempts (aka the six-week mark) where you can experience a dreaded “plateau.” This can happen sooner for some and later for others. It can last days or even weeks (!).
What exactly IS a weight loss plateau? If you’re failing to see ANY sign of measurable progress after two weeks (this means NO change in measurements, NO change in how your clothing fits, NO change on the scales and NO changes in how you look in the mirror or in photographs and NO change in your performance in the gym), THEN it’s a plateau. If you’re still getting stronger in the gym (evidenced by lifting heavier weights and/or for more sets), or your cardio is improving (resting heart rate is decreasing) and/or you can go for longer and/or at a higher intensity than you could before, your progress hasn’t really “stalled” – it’s simply taken you in a different direction than you expected. Like just about everything else in life, fat loss isn’t linear, and there are a lot of routes to get you from point A (where you are now) to point B (where you want to go).
The good news if you really ARE experiencing a weight loss plateau? 1) It’s totally normal. 2) There ARE things you can do about it! I shared just some of those strategies in my weekly Instagram video series (and Facebook posts), and you can read about them in more detail, next!
If you’ve got one child or three, you probably find yourself with less time (or at least less time flexibility) to exercise than you did in your pre-kid life (also known as “BC” – “before child(ren)” – welcome to “AD: after dependent(s)). Going to the gym at 5am used to actually be a totally normal occurrence in my life (weird, I know). Now sleep is more precious than gold (on the other hand, I know some parents who have embraced early-morning workouts in parenthood, since they’re up with the kids anyway!). Or maybe scheduling didn’t matter so much – you could leave the house on a whim, totally unsupervised (you AND the house). Now it’s major-league level logistics to coordinate who is doing what, where, when and with whom.
The Golden Graham Girl 