So today I’m going to tell you what to do when you ‘plateau.’
I’m going to:
- tell you why it happens
- Give you a game plan to get over your plateau and start seeing results again.
First of all-
Let’s define the difference between a Maintenance phase and a Plateau:
A Maintenance phase is when you are feeling pretty good about your body and your fitness and you aren’t driving towards a particular goal (like weight loss). Instead, you are maintaining your fitness through regular exercise and good nutrition that’s become normal for you and it feels good.
A plateau is when you’ve achieved a certain amount of fitness success and it seems that it all of a sudden what you are doing stops working. It was working – great. And then what was magic at first starts to bring diminishing returns and then it feels like you are busting your butt and getting no where.
Basically – a plateau sucks.
And here’s why it happens. You are ignoring the principal of Progressive Overload. The principal of Progressive Overload states that:
If you want to see continued improvement, you need to continually challenge yourself.
Now I know you are thinking
duh
but seriously – let this sink in:
So now you might be feeling kind of frustrated or overwhelmed because you are thinking I’m busting my butt- how can I challenge myself more?
It’s actually pretty simple. There are 4 variables we can play with to progress our workouts and our nutrition program. In this infographic, I’ll go through them one by one.
By the end, you should have a pretty good plan for how to bust out of your plateau!
If you really want to bust out of your plateau, consider signing up for my online 28 Day Transformation Challenge. See why 99% of past participants said ‘This Program changed my life”.
If you liked this post, help me out by leaving a comment and sharing the post with friends!
Loved the articles this week Oonagh; great pictures and information!
Thanks, Cathy! Glad you found it useful!
This is super helpful Oonagh! Will try to shake things up a bit.
Awesome, Tara Lynne! 🙂
Superhelpful breakdown and some great tips. Thanks!
No problem, Fiona – glad you found it helpful!
Definitely leaving a comment, then.
Excellent post! Easy to read and follow information! #inspired! whoohoo!
Thanks for making this flow chart! Makes it so much easier to navigate weight loss!
Love this post. Came just when I needed it!
Love this info graphic Oonagh! Great article. I’ve definitely hit a few plateaus in the past and it can be really frustrating. Nice to have this laid out like this to help with those tunes. Thank you!
Fabulous information Oonagh! You’re like the Oprah of fitness.
Love this and your book. Is there another book in the works?