A keto plateau can be the most de-motivating and stressful experiences during your weight-loss journey. It can be frustrating to face the weight loss stall if you know you’re doing everything right. You might come to a point where you check and find no improvement at all. What could be more disheartening than that?
You have been on the keto diet for some time, and everything was working fine. But then it stopped; the weight that seemed to melt away is no longer budging. The fat-burning experience suddenly came to a weight loss brick wall.
Before pinpointing the reason, let’s first find out why this is happening. To answer that let’s first understand what weight loss plateau is. Then identify the factors responsible for weight loss stall?
What is a Keto Plateau?
A keto plateau is essentially the stoppage of weight loss on a keto diet. It is the phase where you no longer see any change in your weight. You are usually in a keto weight loss plateau if you have experienced no weight loss over the course of at least a month. Typically, you shouldn’t classify stalled weight loss of less than 4-5 weeks a “plateau.” However, even if you are following all keto diet rules, a plateau may happen and you stop fat loss. This can happen to anyone and is fairly normal. By following some tips and making some changes in your routine, you can start regaining your weight loss.
Understanding Fat Loss vs. Weight Loss
A normal misconception that many of us have is the difference between fat loss and weight loss. In contrast, both may seem the same, but they are not. Fat loss is the reduction of body fat and is more specific than weight loss. Weight loss is a reduction in the overall body weight. This weight includes muscle, fat, and water from the body.
When you start a diet, the first thing in your mind is to lose weight. Well, not exactly. By wanting to lose weight, what you really want is to lose the fat. The primary goal of weight loss is to preserve the muscle while losing the fat loss. This is the significant difference between fat loss and weight loss. In fat loss, we tend to lose the extra fat, while in weight loss, we lose the muscle size. We want to retain muscle because more muscle burns fat. In most cases, for those needing to lose more than 10 pounds or so, weight loss is true fat loss.
How to Identify a True Keto Weight Loss Plateau
A true keto weight loss plateau is that one phase in your ketogenic diet is when you stop losing weight. When despite doing following all of the keto diet rules, your weight loss comes to a screeching halt. Questions like ‘I tried everything, why has my weight loss stalled?’ or ‘Am I doing something wrong?’ could be stressful. A true keto weight loss plateau happens when you’ve followed a low carb diet plan, focusing on fat consumption just as the diet prescribes.
During the early stage of any diet plan, many people lose weight very quickly. But that weight loss is the water weight. After a point, the weight loss can slow down and, like all diets, move in a non-linear way.
For a true keto weight loss plateau, you need a consistent trend of weight loss. A keto plateau needs to be preceded by at least three months of consistent weight loss. This will help you to validate that you were actually losing weight on keto in first place. Some people experience weight loss stalls between 3 months to 6 months into the ketogenic diet. It is important to note that weight loss is not a one-dimensional process. Our body adapts to new changes, and when it happens, its nutritional needs also start to change. So, breaking a keto plateau starts with recognizing that you’ve hit a plateau. It could be because of the fluctuations in water weight, muscle glycogen, or stress.
Below are defined the nine methods on how to break a weight loss stall.
First Method to Break a Keto Plateau: Incorporate Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent fasting is all about what and when. It is an effective way to end the weight loss plateau. In intermittent fasting, the most important thing is not WHAT you eat but WHEN you eat. Fasting for extended periods each day can help your body burn fat fast. There is scientific evidence which points towards the benefits of intermittent fasting as well.
Mark Mattson, Ph.D., John Hopkins neuroscientist, has studied intermittent fasting for 25 years. According to him, the human body has evolved and can go through without food for many hours or even days. Incorporating intermittent fasting in your ketogenic diet can help burn calories and hidden carbs.
Intermittent fasting harmonizes perfectly with keto. Fasting is a ketogenic diet as it burns fat through ketosis to produce energy. It is also essential to notice that fasting can boost metabolism. Hence, giving the digestive tract a well-deserved time to rest. Combining keto with intermittent fasting has helped many people break the keto plateau.
Checkout this article on starting intermittent fasting.
Second Method to Break a Keto Plateau: Temporarily try Carb Cycling
If you are on the keto diet, carb cycling shouldn’t be a foreign word for you. Any low carb diet involves cutting out a certain amount of carbohydrates. Carb cycling is a practice of staggering the number of carbohydrates you eat. Some days you eat more carbohydrates while somedays you eat less. The major benefit of a low carb diet is that it helps with weight loss and insulin sensitivity.
Below is an example of how to do the 5-day carb cycling method using 200 grams of carbs:
--Day 1: 150 grams
--Day 2: 100 grams
--Day 3: 50 grams
--Day 4: 125 grams
--Day 5: 200 grams
By following carb cycling, you will introduce new stimulus to your body cause it to react. When that happens, make sure you track your carb intake. If you consume too many carbs, you could begin to put on weight. Practicing this way of eating has notable results in the body. It gives the energy to perform for the next week’s exercises.
It will jumpstart your metabolism. Hence, enabling the fat-burning process to resume and breaking a keto weight loss plateau.
Here is a great resource for carb cycling
https://www.libifit.com/using-the-carb-cycling-diet-to-shed-pounds-fast/
Third Method to Break a Keto Plateau: Track Calories and Cut Calories
If you hit a keto weight loss plateau, you should start to track your calories and possibly even cut them. Sit down and make a list of all the things you have been following in your ketogenic diet. This will help you analyze your calorie intake, which might be the reason for the weight loss plateau. Even though counting calories is not imperative on a keto diet, this is not a license for you to just eat uncontrollably.
Eating out at restaurants, too much snacking, drinking alcohol are ways to add calories unknowingly. Keep a regular check on your food intake and make a journal. Whenever you find any excess calorie intake than necessary, begin to cut it out.
You have to make yourself aware of how many calories you are actually consuming. Counting your calories for a few days can be eye-opening. To make it easy, you can write your food intake in a journal and monitor the calories consumed.
Fourth Method to Break a Keto Plateau: Start Resistance Training
While dealing with a keto plateau, feelings of frustration and dejection will haunt you. One way to relieve that frustration is resistance training. Resistance training is an excellent way to break a keto weight loss plateau. Any practice that involves pushing, pulling, and applying strength is resistance training. The simple way to provide resistance to the body is to move against gravity, such as pushups or plank. To resume the fat loss, resistance training can be very beneficial as it reduces belly fat.
Pushing weights or doing body weight exercises challenges your body and muscles in new ways. Introducing new stimuli to your body whether it is through diet or exercise will cause your body to react. Resistance training can be done at home or in a gym. Resistance training also prevents unwanted muscle metabolism when you’re on a low carb diet. There are several great resistance training workouts and programs. Check out this article on workouts for endomorphs. Even you are not an endomorph body type, you can certainly benefit from the workouts in this article.
Fifth Method to Break a Keto Plateau: Eat More Lean Protein
Protein is an essential part of a balanced diet. But before that, let’s first discuss what lean protein is. Seafood, or meat, or poultry can be labeled as lean protein. It contains less than 10 grams of total fat and 4.5 grams of saturated fat. It also has less than 95 milligrams of cholesterol per 100 grams. Lean protein plays a major role in limiting your saturated fat intake.
It is recommended to consume higher of amounts of lean protein when you are facing a weight loss stall. Some of the lean protein you can take are beef, ground beef, pork, deli meat, etc. The other options in lean protein are skinless chicken or turkey breast, eggs, tofu, and legumes.
A well-formulated ketogenic diet recommends a protein intake of 1.2 g/kg to 2.0 g/kg. However, it may vary depending on your body type.
Consuming more lean protein and less fat will help to increase lean muscle and provide you with healthy calories.
Sixth Method to Break a Keto Plateau: Increase Your Workout Intensity
When you are experiencing keto plateau, you should consider increasing your workout intensity. Through the help of personal trainer, do some heavy weight lifting workouts. The term “heavy” is relative to your strength. Both men and WOMEN, can do heavy weightlifting and resistance training. These types of intensive workouts will help boost fat loss. If you want to speed fat loss, don’t be afraid to get in the gym (or in your home gym) and lift heavier weights.
Increasing workout intensity does not only include weights, it encompasses all types of exercising. If you are running…run faster. If you are walking…walk faster or further. If you are doing HITT or circuit training, rest less between intervals. The idea of increasing workout intensity is making your workouts harder.
Seventh Method to Break a Keto Plateau: Reduce Snacking
Excessive snacking can cause a weight loss plateau and even weight gain. Snacking can be a nightmare for your keto weight loss journey. It fills your body with plenty of empty calories. Below are few tips to help how to stop snacking and breaking the keto plateau:
- Proper meals intake: Proper meal intake must be practiced if you want to break the keto plateau. Eating enough can stop the excess craving. Also, make sure you eat on time. Untimely eating is not beneficial either.
- Sufficient water intake: Drink the proper amount of water required for our body. Water helps boost metabolism, flush out toxins, prevent damage to kidneys. It also regulates body temperature. Water is a natural appetite suppressant. Therefore, never skip the water.
- Stop buying too much: Whenever you are shopping, make sure you don’t buy excess or bulk snacks. Determined a fixed budget for the snacks to check on how much you should buy. Also, make it hard for you to get your hands on snacks. Don’t buy them and have them conveniently in the pantry.
- Observe the time of snacking: Keep in mind you have to save yourself from mindless snacking. Know the cause of your snacking. In many cases, people start eating when they are stressed, bored, anxious, or lonely.
- Distance yourself from stress: Stress plays a significant role in increasing craving and hence snacking. Often, people start eating out of impulse when they are stressed. Keep a regular check on your mood. If you want to eat unnecessarily, it might be the stress cause
Eighth Method to Break a Keto Plateau: Decrease Dairy and Nuts Intake
Dairy and nuts are favorites of many people. It is wise to decrease the dairy and nuts intake. Nuts are a legitimate part of the ketogenic diet. However too many nuts can become a problem. Nuts are high in calories and can result in negative effects. Here are some of the nuts you can consume on the ketogenic diet within reason: Pili nuts, macadamia nuts, walnuts, pecans, or hazelnuts.
Ninth Method to Break a Keto Plateau: Reduce Alcohol Intake
Alcohol could be a culprit in your weight loss plateau. The amount of calories in alcohol can cause your body to enter a fat loss plateau or even gain weight. Not keeping an eye on your alcohol intake can make your body burn the alcohol instead of anything else—ketones, fat, or carbs. To suppress the cravings to some extent, you can drink small portions of wine. Drinking alcohol in excess of that, on a regular basis, can be devasting to your weight loss.
Conclusion
Experiencing a keto plateau can be demotivating. It could be heartbreaking after all the extraordinary efforts you put in. After following a keto diet and denying yourself, a keto weight loss plateau is not a fun place. However, when you are on a weight loss stall, don’t be disheartened. It is normal. There is no need to lose your confidence and quit. It can happen to anyone.
By following the simple tips mentioned above, you can easily break the keto plateau. You can restart by reevaluating your eating habits, stress, sleep pattern, etc. Also, some significant steps such as controlling alcohol habits can be beneficial as well. No matter what, losing confidence negatively impacts your weight loss journey. Also, feeling discouraging can be sabotaging for your mental health.
Always be positive and do your best. Make sure to sign-up for our newsletter and continue to check out our site for ways and methods to help you on your health and weight loss journey.
