Dieting plateaus are the enemy of anyone trying to lose weight.  These plateaus are extremely frustrating.  You are suffering through the torture of a restricted calorie diet and yet you're seeing no results on the scale.  Your body has stopped losing weight.  Why is this happening and what can you do?

Dieting plateaus occur because the body is extremely efficient and determinedly focused on staying alive.  If you are the average person, then you burn approximately 2000 calories per day.  If you go on a 1200 calorie diet, you're creating an 800 calorie, per day, deficit.  Since 1 pound of fat is equivalent to approximately 4000 calories, this means you should be losing 1 pound of fat every five days.  In a perfect world, this scenario would continue indefinitely until you reach your target weight.  The body, however, sees things differently.  The body perceives your restricted calories as a lack of adequate nutrition.  The body does not realize that you are on a voluntary diet and that food is readily available.  Instead the body thinks that food must be in shortage and that you must be in danger of starvation. To cope with this potential danger, the body will act to slow the metabolism down as quickly as possible.  The body's goal will be to get the metabolism down to 1200 calories to meet the new 1200 calorie intake.  When this occurs, your weight-loss days are over.

So how can I avoid a dieting plateau?  One way to help avoid a dieting plateau is to incorporate a "free day" into your dieting plan.  Once a week, feel free to eat whatever you want in whatever quantity you want without feeling guilty.  This will provide a tremendous amount of calories for your body.  The body will then be tricked into thinking that the shortage of nutrition is over.  When free day is employed on a regular basis (only once a week), it should decrease the likelihood of your body putting the brakes on your metabolism.  It is also important to note that research has shown that you will lose more weight when you incorporate a free day into your diet on a regular basis.

Another strategy that will help the avoidance of a dieting plateau is the consumption of six small meals per day.  If you only eat one or two meals per day, your blood sugar will be low for the majority of the day.  When this happens, your body, figures that it is experiencing a food shortage.  Despite the fact that you're providing the body with adequate nutrition once or twice per day, the majority of the day is spent in a low blood sugar state.  This will encourage the body to slow the metabolism. When you consume six meals per day, the body is constantly receiving food which helps to keep the blood sugar more level.  The body then feels more confident that food is readily available and recognizes no immediate danger or reason to slow the metabolism.

Exercise provides yet another strategy to keep your body from going into a metabolic slowdown.  When you engage your body in weightlifting activities, the body is encouraged to maintain or add additional muscle to the body.  1 pound of muscle burns approximately 35 calories per day, at rest.  It is a highly metabolically active tissue.  More muscle in your body equals more calories burned.  This equates to a faster metabolism and consequently more fat lost.

Cardiovascular exercise will plain and simply burn calories.  If your body has slowed its metabolism down to the 1200 calorie mark, but you burn 600 extra calories with cardiovascular exercise then you have effectively pushed your daily metabolic expenditure to 1800 calories.  This means that approximately every six exercise sessions you'll keep your body burning close to 1 pound of fat.

Losing weight is strictly a numbers game.  It is simply calories in versus calories out.  The goal is to keep the calorie gap between intake and expenditure as wide as possible.  As long you keep this gap wide you will experience continued dieting success.  Allow the gap to close and you'll experience a plateau.  Heed the advice of this article and you should successfully avoid dieting plateaus.