You’ve been working hard and losing weight- but suddenly the numbers on the scale have stalled. It’s very common to hit a plateau after a period of successful, healthy weight loss. Usually after losing around 10 per cent of your weight, you will need to adjust your diet and exercise plans to give your body another kick start to keep losing weight.

Congratulate yourself- you’ve done so well so far! Now to keep seeing results and get down to your target weight, it’s time to fine-tune your habits and make some new fitness and diet plans that will get your body revved up to lose weight again. You’re almost there! Here are a few strategies you can use to smash through your plateau and watch all your hard work pay off!

Adjust your calorie intake

At the start of your diet program, you will have calculated how many calories you needed to eat and burn in order to reach your weight loss goals, based on your basal metabolic rate, or BMR. But when your weight goes down, your BMR will change as well. A smaller body needs less calories to function, so if you are still eating the same number of calories as you did at the start of your weight loss plan, you will find it harder to shift the last few kilos.

The easy way to solve this is to recalculate your BMR according to your current weight. You can do this quickly using the ‘Metabolic Tracking System’ that you’ll find under the ‘My Progress’ tab. This will automatically adjust your diet plan so you can get back on track!

On the other hand, you also need to check that you’re eating enough. If you’re eating too few calories, you’ll find it harder to lose weight, because the body needs a certain number of calories each day to meet minimum metabolic needs. If you go below this level, your brain sends signals to different organs to tell them to conserve energy and slow down you metabolism. So if you’re eating less than the recommended daily intake for your height, weight and goals, try adding 100 calories a day for two weeks, and you’ll start shedding weight again.

 
Mix up your exercise routine

If you’ve been doing the same exercises since you started your fitness plan, it might be time to shake things up a bit. It is possible for your body to ‘get used’ to a certain exercise after a while, which can make it stop achieving the same results. The reason is that you have become so efficient at doing the activity that your body needs to use fewer calories to complete it.

So to keep your metabolic rate high, give your body a new challenge. It doesn’t have to be drastically different- if you love the treadmill, try the elliptical trainer instead. Or you can mix up your strength training by reducing the number of reps and increasing the weight. Keeping things interesting will also help to reinvigorate your attitude towards exercise and keep you feeling positive and motivated.

Take a break

Sometimes you need to schedule in recovery time for your weight to change. If you’ve been exercising hard every day, your muscle fibres need a chance to heal, so they can come back more effectively, meaning you get a metabolism boost and burn more calories while doing nothing. Make sure you’re including rest days in your fitness plan (work out for 2 days in a row then rest for one day- try not to take more than 3 days off in a row or it’s easy to fall out of routine!) and you’ll notice a difference.