Ever gone on a diet, started losing weight, and then hit a dreaded plateau? The scale just won’t seem to budge any more no matter what you do or how little you eat…

While they can be discouraging, plateaus are simply part of the process. They’re a sign that it’s time to assess and adjust, not only your diet but also possible lifestyle factors.

If you’ve been feeling stuck when it comes to weight loss, here are three common reasons why diets stop working (or don’t work) and what to do about them.

Why It Impacts Fat Loss: 

In order to lose weight, you typically need to lower calories but, of course, you can’t lower them indefinitely. Otherwise, your body adapts negatively by slowing metabolism, making more stress hormones like cortisol, and lowering production of hormones like thyroid and testosterone needed for everyday health.

What to Do:

Try taking a diet break and bump up calories to maintenance anywhere from a day to a few weeks, depending on how big of a calorie deficit you’ve been in and for how long.

And if you’ve been dieting for more than around 12-16 weeks, I’d recommend switching your focus altogether from fat loss to health for awhile. (If you stay in a deficit for longer than that, those negative adaptations are more likely to happen.) 

In this case, I’d recommend doing what’s called a reverse diet and slowly bringing calories back up. I’ll be sharing more on this next week, and I also created a detailed reverse dieting bonus guide in my detox program coming soon.

Why It Impacts Fat Loss: 

Your body stores excess toxins in adipose tissue, a.k.a. body fat, to protect your organs. So when you’re exposed to more toxins than your liver can filter and get rid of, your body will try to hang onto fat even if you’re dieting because it needs those storage sites.

What to Do:

Eat to support your body’s natural detox system. See tips in my last post here.

Why It Impacts Fat Loss:.

Simply put, our bodies response is to store or hang onto body fat when we’re too stressed as a survival mechanism.

And while we typically think of stress as the emotional kind, it can be from anything that taxes the body in some way like poor sleep, excessive caffeine consumption, a hectic schedule, overtraining, and even undereating and toxic load as mentioned above.

What to Do:

Prioritize health and think about any ways you can reduce stress on your body. There’s certainly a range of ways to do this, and of course it can depend on what types of stress are impacting you the most. Generally, here are things that can help: 7-9 hours of sleep each night, deep breathing, going for a walk, reducing caffeine, taking a rest day, and eating enough nutrient-dense foods.

If it’s been awhile since you’ve prioritized eating for health and detoxification, now is the perfect time as summer winds down. In fact, this is what I’ll be doing and I’d love to invite you to join me in The Paleoish Performance Detox next month!