Dr. Alison discusses why you are hitting a weight loss plateau and what you can to do move forward!
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Hello and welcome. This is Dr. Alison DiBarto Goggin. And today we are talking about hitting a weight loss, plateau, meaning if you then trying to lose weight for ever, and you feel like you’ve tried everything and nothing is working, or you started losing weight, losing weight, and now you can’t release any weight whatsoever. We’re going to talk about what might be causing it and what to do. But first, before we jump in, I’d like to invite you to two things. Really. I have a free five pound challenge that the starting in January, it’s going to be running all year long, but we’re going to run our first live class in January. So you’re welcome to join us. The link is in the comments below, we’re going to talk about all things, functional medicine to help you lose weight bust through those plateaus. And I have a free little busting through eight weight loss plateau guide that I’ll also put in the links in the comments around this.
So let’s talk about why we hit these plateaus and what we can do about it. So the number one thing that I see is, especially with women is stress and no one wants to be told, well, just don’t stress out anymore. Or you’re just so stressed out. That’ll help you lose weight. If you just calm down, if you just forget about it and that’s really never going to happen. So we really have to find ways that we work with ourselves and ways that we work around ourselves. So it really looks like stress really looks like belly fat as number one, or you have low thyroid symptoms. Like your hair is falling out. Your fatigued can’t lose weight, but your labs are coming back normal. That’s a sign that, that could be stressed. Pms is another big one where if you’re having major mood, disruption, early spotting heavy bleeding is also, you assign them serious stress and cortisol issues.
So the three things that we’ll focus on, there’s a million, right? But I just wanted to give you three little tips that you could start doing today. So number one is get to bed before 10:00 PM. Stop working, stop checking your emails, get off of social media. And the reason why is that we start making growth hormones and upping our metabolism at night after 11:00 PM. So if you’re up past that time, your body is not going to make healthy hormones. And we catch our second wind. And our second wind is that burst of cortisol, which is our stress hormone. It keeps us up and we’re like, Ooh, let’s keep going. Let’s keep watching Netflix. Let’s keep drinking. Let’s keep having fun or working, or, you know, burning that midnight oil. So if you go to bed earlier, as soon as you’re tired, even if it’s so early, you’re like, this is insane to go to bed this early, still do it, still do it.
So that way you reset your body. Okay. The other thing I would ask you to do is to take two things off of your to-do list. Either take them off, completely ask for help, hire somebody to help you, whatever it is, take those things off of your to-do list. If you can’t take them off of your to-do list, I would encourage you to give yourself some space and grace around it. The number one thing I think I hear from my patients as my house, my house, my house, the laundry, the dishes, the cooking, and the cleaning. I’m like, okay, I hear you, but you’re not living in a place where people are going to come over every single day and judge you, right? You live in your home. So it’s live in it. Embrace the mess. Let somethings go. And just know that housework is really infinite.
It’s never going to be done. It’s not something that you could check off your list. So relax a little bit. Give yourself some grace, some space to get those things. Either done. Let them go. We’ll get it done later in the week. It’s always going to be there. Okay. And then the next thing is quiet time. We’re just so overstimulated that I feel like we’re always putting out cortisol and I just be on his head to tell my son, turn off the video games, stop shooting, Nerf guns. Like I need to record a podcast. And he won’t because he’s nine or he’s eight. He’s almost nine. And so there’s just so much noise all of the time. We never get that quiet to reset to hear ourselves. So I would encourage you just to find 10 minutes a day. You don’t even have to meditate.
Meditating would be icing on the cake with the situation. But if you could just sit and quiet, no phones, no apps or social media, no music, no TV, just quiet. And that might mean you have to hide in the pantry. I’ve done that before. Hide in your closet or before you go to bed yourself, 10 minutes of no phone. No, no TV. Just some space to breathe. Okay. Okay. The next thing that I see people hit a plateau with is because they’re skipping carbs. Now, most people are skipping meals and that’s why they hit a plateau. And that’s all totally different. Think that we’re going to talk about in the five pound challenge. I’ll talk about that all day long. The skipping carbs is really detrimental for your health. Carbs are important for fuel, but they also need to be at the right timing. So if you’re struggling with cravings for sugar or donuts, if you’re skipping meals, if you find yourself like trying intermittent fasting, and then after dinner, you eat everything in the pantry, you’re lacking carbs and you need to really balance that out.
So one tip would be to eat carbs at night, no healthy carbs like oatmeal or bananas or keenwah to help balance your mood, to help give your brain some fuel as you’re sleeping. So your brain will have sugar sensitive weaken you up. Okay. That’s one thing to do. Don’t eat carbs alone. So the most common thing is, Oh, I go to Starbucks and I get a mocha and a blueberry muffin. And that’s my breakfast. That’s a ton of carbs, a ton of sugar. So I would encourage you to add in eggs and peanut butter, add in some type of protein and healthy fat to balance that out and then eat carbs. After working out, a lot of people are tempted to skip meals, exercise on an empty stomach, and then they don’t eat afterwards. And that is detrimental to your weight loss program. Okay. So when you work out eat before, has some healthy fats and some quick sugars, and afterwards you can have carbs as well, because if you don’t, your body will be looking for fuel looking to rebuild.
And what we’ll do is it will break down the muscles and not fat. It’s so annoying. I know. So have a quick carb, like this is the time that all the experts and myself will tell you, like, this is the time to have a cookie. If you’re going to have some quick things that your body can use right away to refuel Reese and get that storage back into those muscles instead of breaking down your muscles, okay, don’t skip meals. If you’re working out, don’t skip meals. After working out, you have to refuel your body.
Otherwise you’re going to be tearing down muscle and storing fat. And you’re going to be wondering why you’re killing yourself in the gym and not seeing any progress. Okay. And then the next thing I would recommend is exercising for your hormones and your body type exercise is so important for your adrenals, for your immune system, for your stress, for balancing hormones, for your brain, for your sleep. It has to be the right type of exercise. So, so we’re going to go into this in next week’s podcasts, which I’m really excited about. But if you have adrenal fatigue, if you have PCLs, if you have high testosterone, if you have auto-immune conditions, you need to work out low and slow. You don’t want to over trigger those situations in your body. So if you’re working out and this goes for men as well, this goes for everybody. If you work out,
You feel really good. And then you have your snack and then you go and have to take a nap for two hours, or you’re done for the rest of the day. You’re working out too hard and you reversing your progress. You’re breaking that muscle. You’re stressing out your adrenals, you’re over triggering your immune system. And you’re not going to lose weight because your body is so stressed out. It’s never going to release weight. Okay?
If you don’t have any serious types of health issues, most people can work out to their blood type, which is O a B an AB. So if you’re a type, Oh, you do great with weightlifting. If you’re a type a you’re definitely a great yoga person plays probably all my long distance runners, marathoners are great. Type a as I love that type of thing. And if you’re a B or an a B, you typically meet somewhere in the middle, you can do those high intensity workouts or tennis.
You can do whatever your body feels best in, which is what I would strongly recommend for everybody is doing the exercises that you feel good with finding joy in your movement. If you don’t love the workout that you’re doing, find something else. You don’t have to suffer through anything. There’s so many programs and options out there, free paid at the gym, get a trainer dance. It doesn’t matter, but movement is essential. So it doesn’t have to be two hours in the gym start really low and slow as well. 10 minute walk, 20 minute block. And another good thing is if you’ve never done any type of exercise before is to give yourself distance schools.
I’m looking out my window right now. So maybe like you go to the stop sign day, one, stop sign, awesome. Come back home. And the next day you try and get to the next stop sign. Awesome. Come back, call me the next day. You tried to get to the stoplight, right? And do you start giving yourself these little increments? You don’t have to be a hundred percent. You’re not going to get into the gym once and look like Arnold, just be patient with yourself, keep working and really learn to trust your body. So that way you give it what it means and do the blood work due to testing, figure out exactly where you stand. What’s going on, get the help that you need. So if you want, you can schedule a free consultation so we can talk about what your goals are, what you’re struggling with, what worked, what hasn’t worked, and really figure out a plan for you to help you lose weight, feel better and feel like yourself again. So thanks for tuning in and we’ll see you next week.
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