5 steps to navigate a plateau

Here are a few of the common issues that can cause a blip in your weight-loss journey and how you can work through them.

1. Find other ways to measure your success. How your clothes fit, body measurements, fitness level, confidence and your energy level are all examples.
2. Assess your eating and exercise habits. Have you been lax on measuring portions or tracking your intake? Have you been cutting your workouts at the gym short? Sometimes when you stop paying attention, your portion sizes and overall calorie intake increases. You may need to decrease your energy intake, increase your energy expenditure or both.
3. Focus on long-term patterns rather than day-to-day fluctuations. Just as eating a salad doesn't instantly make you healthier, having an occasional treat doesn't cause health complications. Take a look at your food choices over the course of several days. Are you choosing foods for fuel and nutrition most of the time?
4. Have you already met your goals? Are your goals realistic? Maybe it's time to reassess and set new goals.
5. Is your goal weight appropriate for your sex, height and age? When you first start to lose weight, you might lose muscle as well as fat. Exercise builds muscle. Muscle burns more energy and weighs more than fat. When you have more muscle mass, you can burn more calories at rest — as well as look slimmer and carry less fat.