Diet Tips To Blast Through Your Weightloss Plateau

Adjust Your Calorie Intake
If you’ve been working out hard to get in shape and lose weight, your calorie needs have probably changed. For most women the tendency is to cut calories and although those who are less active typically do need to cut calories as they lose weight, those who are building muscle and losing body fat sometimes have to increase calories (especially protein calories). If you don’t eat enough your body goes into starvation mode and hoards every ounce of fat and stores everything you eat as fat. The more you cut back the harder and harder it is to lose weight. The best thing to do is check your bmr, and make sure you’re eating at least 500 calories above that. Check out the bmr calculator for your ideal calorie intake based on activity level, height, weight, etc.

Be Selective About Carbs
Carbs are generally a great source of energy but if you’re stuck on a plateau cutting back on processed foods, fruit juices, and even low-fat dairy (which has a high amount of carbs) can make a huge difference. Instead try doubling up on the fibrous carbs like, kiwi, strawberries, blueberries, apples, broccoli, carrots, green beans, jicama, or tomatoes. If you must eat starchy carbs try to limit yourself to two servings of only the best starchy carbs (high fiber cereal, oatmeal, brown rice, or baked potato w/out all the fatty toppings) per day, and make sure to eat them only in the earlier part of the day when you’re body is burning more calories.

Drink A Gallon of Water A Day
According to Dr. Robertson medical director of the Southwest Bariatric Nutrition Center in Scottsdale AZ, "water is quite possibly the single most important catalyst in losing weight and keeping it off". It acts as a natural appetite suppressant by keeping your stomach full and fending off dehydration, which can lead to false cravings/hunger. Most importantly water helps your body metabolize stored fat by helping the kidney´s flush out waste. When you don´t drink enough water, the liver which works to provide stored fat for energy, also takes on the task of helping the kidney´s eliminate waste and becomes less effective at metabolizing fat. Drinking your water ensures that the kidneys will be able to do their job. As an added bonus drinking eight glasses of ice water a day burns about 62 calories because your body has to work to raise that water´s temperature to your body´s temperature. That equals about 430 calories per week.

Monitor Beverage Calories
At this point water should be your only beverage of choice. But if you’re still not convinced by the last paragraph, the following is a list of popular beverages that could be sabotaging your diet. Not only are most of these drinks jam packed with sugar the calorie content is outrageous.

Tropicana Orange Juice 6 oz. 110 cal. 26g carbs 22g from sugar
Starbucks Chai Latte Nonfat Milk 16 oz 211 cal. 0.7g fat 14g prot. 37g carbs
Pepsi 24oz 300 calories 0g fat
Jamba Juice Berry Lime Sublime 24oz 427 cal. 3g fat 3g prot. 103g carbs
Arizona Iced Tea 20oz 135 cal
Bud Ice Beer 12oz 148 calories 0g fat
1 Margarita 169 cal. 0.79g fat

Cut Out Late Night Eating
There is a common misconception that calories in vs. calories burned determine your weight. If you’ve ever starved yourself and not lost weight then you know this is not true. Weightloss depends on a lot of factors including how much you eat, how often you eat, and when you eat. According to Allan Geliebter, Ph.D., a research psychologist at the Obesity Research Center at St. Luke´s-Roosevelt Hospital in New York, eating most of your calories at night often leads to being overweight. Your metabolism peaks in the early evening and is much slower when you’re sleeping. Eating a large late night meal, especially one high in carbs, stimulates insulin and turns on fat storage so those calories that you eat late at night are more likely to get stored as fat. Stop eating at least 3 hours before you go to bed and you could easily lose up to 10lb in a month.

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