Four Surefire Fixes for Your
Toughest Weight Loss Obstacles From Team Beachbody - Click here for resources, tools and
information to help you to reach your health, fitness and positive lifestyle
goals!
We've compiled a list of our members' four
toughest weight loss obstacles and what our experts say about overcoming
them.
 1. You're exercising, but not losing weight. You've
been working out for weeks now, following your program to a T, and yet the
scale hasn't moved. You're completely depressed and ready to give up. But
don't! One of our members, Ivette R., experienced the same thing you're going
through and went on to become a Beachbody Success Story and starred in the Slim
in 6® show alongside Debbie Siebers!
In her own words, here's how Ivette did
it:
I was scared to weigh myself, so I waited
until the third week to climb on that scale. I was very disappointed. I did not
lose any weight. Actually, I gained three pounds. I was about to quit, and my
husband sat with me and told me that I was gaining muscle now and that shortly
I was going to start losing fat. I went to your Web site and wrote all of my
sorrows out to see if anyone was listening. I was very surprised that Debbie
herself wrote back to me explaining the reason why I was gaining weight and to
hang on—that I would start noticing the difference sooner than I thought.
She really motivated me to continue. It was just like she said. Within one
week, I just started dropping weight and inches like crazy.
Weight loss is based on many factors that
affect each of us differently. Plus, in a workout program you are building
muscle, which weighs over twice as much as fat. This means that you're actually
shrinking even if you weigh the same as when you started!
Bottom line: The scale is not
your friend. "You should really throw out your scale," says Siebers. "A tape
measure is cheaper and far more effective for measuring results."
 2. You can't
control your eating. Your coworker baked all weekend and brings in a
tray of brownies-to-die-for on Monday. Your husband surprises you with
reservations to the best steak house in town. How do you stay on track amid all
this temptation? According to Kathy Smith, you'll want to start by writing it
down.
Keeping a daily journal is important to
reaching any fitness and health goal, and in my latest
program—Project: You participants track their hunger and satiety
levels before and after each meal as part of their journaling. This helps them
become more and more in tune with their body's cues. Are you famished? Are you
content and comfortable? Or are you overly full and uncomfortable? Recognizing
when you're satisfied is imperative to weight loss. If you're still hungry
after a meal, it could mean several things:
- Your body hasn't registered it's
full yet.
- You've eaten too quickly.
- You're dehydrated.
- You're shortchanging one of your
food groups.
- You're PMS-ing.
- You've been skipping meals, or
are not eating enough at each meal.
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Bottom line: If you keep a
diary of everything you're eating, it then becomes easy to see where you can
shave calories, and it makes you less likely to cheat.
 3. Your results have hit a brick wall. You're
working out regularly, following a sensible eating plan, and yet you can't seem
to lose those last 10 pounds. If you reduce your calorie intake even more, your
body might go into starvation mode or you won't have enough fuel to push
through your workouts. If this is your dilemma, you're not alone. Beachbody's
Fitness Advisor, Steve Edwards, has seen it thousands of times:
Hitting a plateau is inevitable. Whether
you're very overweight or a professional athlete, it's going to happen to you
at some point. So the best advice that I can give is not to panic about it. If
you stay with your program and eat well, results will happen eventually. They
have to. This, however, in no way means that you can't help yourself shorten
the plateau.
By far the most effective solution is to
change your routine. Your body tries to stay comfortable. When you change
something, you disrupt the pattern and your body is forced to respond. You
don't necessarily have to start a whole new program. Sometimes something as
simple as adding more weight or speeding up your cadence is all you need to get
results happening again.
Edwards' favorite plateau-busting program is
Power Half Hour. It was designed by Tony Horton to add to
Power 90®. "Because you've just finished a program," Horton
says, "the workouts are body-part specific, which means that you can mix it up
and do them any number of ways. This way, you don't stagnate, but accelerate,
your results."
Bottom line: Variety really is
the spice of life.
 4. You can't get motivated. "Let's face it, we all
have days when we'd rather do almost anything else other than exercise: take
out the trash, run errands, even go to a museum," says Beachbody CEO Carl
Daikeler. But as CEO of this health and fitness company, Carl has the
responsibility to make fitness a priority, and here are some mental tricks he
uses to help himself get to it:
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I'll tell
myself I'm only going to exercise for 10 minutes. Who can't handle 10
minutes? Even if I'm totally exhausted, it's only 10 minutes! Once I get moving
and my blood starts pumping, my endorphins kick in and I start to feel more
energized. And once I hit the 10-minute mark, it's usually easy to keep at it
for 10 more. Before I know it, I've gotten a world-class workout done for the
day.
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Shoot for seven
perfect days. When seeing ahead to a 90-day or six-week goal is
daunting, I simply break it down to an easier goal: seven straight days of good
eating and good workouts. That's an accomplishment, and it makes re-upping for
the next seven that much easier.
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Music.
There's a reason we invested so much money in Turbo Jam and
P90X Extreme Fitness® music, because music will push
you. I have a 45-minute cardio soundtrack that I use to get me amped whenever
motivation is a little light. (And no, it does not have "Eye of the Tiger" on
it.)
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And finally, I find
that the Beachbody virtual gym, is an invaluable tool for me to make
sure I get my butt out of bed. Make an appointment, choose a Success Buddy, and
the pressure's on to log in and show up on time. As CEO, I sure don't want to
NOT show up, so I do, every time. |
Bottom line: Motivation
outweighs ever other factor - if you don't have it, find it. Don't pretend you
can coast along without a concrete strategy to maintain it. Think back to what
got you to order from Beachbody in the first place, and keep that in mind the
next time you struggle to Push Play. |
