Tried and true....

It's summer time, so many of us are trying to get in shape.

So, it's my guess that most are now aware of the dreaded word: (cue to dramatic music)--

---PLATEAU---

Yes, you start to loose weight, you are all proud of your progress, you eat right! You walk to work! You run everyday! You do everything you should. You haven't touched a potato chip in weeks. You are almost fitting into your skinny jeans again, and then....PLATEAU.

It can drive you to madness, and it's the time you can get completely discouraged, because you continue to make the efforts, and there are no more results. Steady weight. And I Googled around...it can last up to three weeks.

But why?
Well, our body is pretty clever. It will adjust to whatever we are doing. If we are on a strict diet of 1200 calories a day, and walk everyday the same amount of time (spending the same nbs of calories each day). The body will adjust to that. It says, OK, I'll burn less then, because I know I get that much fuel, and I need that much to function.

It can become a vicious circle, because of course, we could eat even less and spend even more...thus starting to loose weight again, but this will never end, and can eventually be dangerous.

What can we do? I read this pretty logical tip, and it does work.

We need to be smarter then the body.
Never let it fall into a pattern, keep it guessing.
So....say you have a daily diet of 1200-1500 calories. You go a day or two of eating around 1200, and then a day or two more around 1500. You can walk 20 minutes one day, do Yoga another day. Go swimming, run, whatever you like to do. But mix it up.

This also mean you won't feel all guilty to eat a meal at McD's on the weekend, because you know this will be a good start to Monday's reasonable food.
(Be careful though, the higher days could trick you into eating WAY more and badly then you should.)

It DOES work...or you can wait 3 weeks for the damn plateau to go away by itself.