About this time (6-7 weeks into bootcamp), many people tell me they have hit a plateau. This happens to almost everyone eventually, as he or she gets close to their goal weight. I like to differentiate between two different types of plateaus, a physical one and a mental one. Let’s talk about the first:
A Physical Plateau
This happens when you are doing “everything” you should be doing in regards to exercise and nutrition and the body simply stops responding with progress. The body’s job is to keep you from starving to death. And, even though the days of famine are long gone, the body is still hard wired to deal with this potential crisis. Believe me, it is much easier to get the first 50 pounds off than the last 5 for ANYONE! In many cases, we want to achieve a lower body fat % than what is considered normal to our bodies. Our ancestors didn’t care about how they looked in a bikini. They were concerned with surviving a hard life. In fact, our genetics may well be working against us. In the days of famine, the lean people with little fat stored in their bodies often didn’t make it through the hard times. The people who survived were the ones with slightly higher body fat percentages. For most of us, these “hardier” genes were passed on to later generations, that being us. Now I don’t believe genetics is a “life sentence” and it doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to achieve a desired outcome, it just means that we have to begin making even finer levels of distinctions in our exercise and nutrition choices. We have to have even more discipline. And in most cases, step our game up. So if you have truly hit a physical plateau and what was once working, is now not, here are some ideas to get the progress moving again:
1. Step up the game by making your workouts harder. You’ve probably noticed that during this 10 week bootcamp session, I have gradually made things harder each week. The body has an amazing adaptation curve, meaning it quickly adjusts to the stress you put it under. Which means, until you get to the point that you are content with, you have to put it under more stress in a consistent, gradual manner. If you have been doing bicep curls with 8lb dumbbells for 3 years, you are doing nothing but maintaining what you already have at this point.
2. Change it up – why do I insist on providing you with an entirely different workout every time you show up for bootcamp? Because I know that the body will find the path of least resistance when it is confronted with the same workout time after time. The path of least resistance means the body will find a more efficient way to get through it, stalling your progress and lowering your calories burned. We don’t side shuffle because I’m sick of jogging forward. We side shuffle because the body has to use more energy than it does to jog forward. You know you are getting a different workout at each bootcamp, but what are you doing on your other workout days to change it up? Try a new class. Take a new running path. Jump on a bike this week instead of the elliptical. Do 30 minutes of heart pounding hills sprints instead of that 60 minute walk with friends. Sometimes just switching up one more day a week will get the ball rolling again.
3. Try a few new foods and meals – I know I told you to keep things easy this time around and repeat the same meals over and over so that complexity doesn’t become an excuse for adherence. BUT, if things aren’t working any more, time to throw a couple new recipes in the mix and put a few others on the shelf for a little while. Switching your food a little will introduce new nutrients to the mix, different levels of fiber, resistance starch, sugar and salt content. Not to mention, if may take care of any “food boredom” issues that may have set in. I have included a couple of my favorite recipes for you to try this week in this week's email. They are all very easy and will add a little variety to your meals. Speaking of “food boredom”, that brings me to my next type of plateau, the Mental plateau.
A Mental Plateau
Just about every week someone I know tells me they have hit a plateau, but MOST of the time, it is not a physical plateau they have hit. It’s not that they are doing everything right and their body is not responding. It’s that they are having a hard time doing the right things and fighting off the wrong things. So before you jump to conclusions and convince yourself you have hit a physical plateau, go back to the basics and make sure you really are doing everything you can to continue your progress:
1. Have a plan for the week for both your workouts and ALL of your meals. Write that plan in your calendar or put it on your computer calendar.
2. After you create your weekly plan, go shopping and get organized. Look ahead at your week and make sure you plan how you will deal with meetings, sporting events, social occasions, etc.
3. Stop relying on will power. If you really want to achieve your goals, get the bad stuff out of your house! Do yourself a huge favor: Make it easy to do the right thing and very hard to do the wrong thing. If you are keeping unhealthy food in the house, you are giving yourself permission to fail.
4. Reach out to those people who have similar goals and spend more time with them this week, talking about how you can support each other. Limit time with people, temporarily, who are constantly creating challenges for you.
5. Treat your workouts like your hair appointments. There are few things in life that sit as high on the priority list for women as the hair salon. Those appointments are in permanent marker on the schedule. Your workouts should be too! Guys, what are those things that won’t get budged off your lists? Do you treat your workouts as sacredly?
6. Make your workouts efficient. They don’t have to be 60 minutes to count. Anything is better than nothing, and as I’ve shown you in bootcamp, sometimes 10-20 minutes is plenty (think Tabata Drills). If you want an idea for a great metabolic blasting body circuit that will take you 10-12 minutes, you can find it on the blog: http://foreverfitsandiego.blogspot.com/
So before you resign yourself to a plateau, ask yourself some tough questions. Because, you really do hold all the answers to your success.
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