Plateau!

Yep, I believed I’ve reached one. I know, it sounds lame. It sounds like I just stopped trying to lose weight and so I did stop losing weight. Actually, this plateau thing is real. Everyone reaches a plateau in their fitness lives. Generally, it is because your body would prefer to be in equilibrium rather than losing weight. It doesn’t really like to lose weight and it will adjust to your new diet and exercise regimen so as to reach some kind of stasis. Here are some things that happen:

Decreased Caloric Needs
When you lose weight, your caloric requirements go down too and so the same kinds of diet and exercise efforts don’t cost your body as much…and you don’t lose weight. The thing to do is make sure your caloric intake is below what you need. Now, too far below is not the right way to go. If you drop 500 or more calories below what you need, you’ll start to lose lean body mass. You want to build that, because it is more expensive for your body to maintain…and it looks better and is more useful. So you don’t want to lose that.

End of Adaptation Phase
Your body actually has to adapt to a new work out regimen. When you start a new routine, your body adapts in lots of ways. One of the things that happens is that you start to build or strengthen muscles that you hadn’t been using as much before. This process burns a lot of calories. After a point, you body adapts to that routine, those muscles are “built” and the caloric cost decreases. So eventually, you body becomes more efficient at doing what you are doing and you stop burning as many calories.

You Done Got in Shape
It also is possible that you’ve reached a level of fitness where your resting metabolic rate is slower and your body is handling your workout efficiently. Given the fact that I am still overweight, I am going to assume this is not my problem.

So, basically my body has gotten used to what I have been doing, balanced the caloric intake and expenditure, and stopped burning a lot of extra. So, what can I do?

Adjust Caloric Intake
I need to drop my calories consumed down to a few hundred below what I need at my new weight. There are a couple of ways to gauge what you really need in terms of calories. One is using the Basal Metabolic Rate, which is what you need to keep your body functioning while at rest. In my case, it is 1792 calories per day. Another way to estimate that is to multiply your weight in kilograms by 23 calories. Using this method, I need 1945 calories a day. I assume that the latter includes what you burn by normal daily activities. So, if I want to reduce my calorie intake to a level where I will continue to burn more than I use, I need to get in the 1400 to 1600 calorie range. In order to figure that out, I need to start counting calories. I’ll try it today just to see how it works.

Change My Activity Routine
I need to throw my body a curve…give it the old head fake…zag when I used to zig. Given that I’ve basically been doing nothing extra for weeks, this really shouldn’t be too hard. It is funny that I really started doing just that instinctively on Saturday. I’ve started biking—something I want to do regularly. I also started walking again, but this time I added some interval stair training to the walk. The other thing that would really help is some weight training. Building muscle burns lots of calories and using it burns lots, too. I am not sure what I am going to do about the weight training thing. I read where Robert Downey Jr. was bored with his weight training routine, so for Iron Man 2 he did things like throw fire hoses around. I’m going to get me some fire hoses and get to work. Or, maybe I’ll go to the gym on campus and use the weight room…a new adventure into the manly world of pumping iron.

We’ll see what my new found knowledge does for me…