How To Track For Weight Loss & Break Through Plateaus
Tracking your food is critical for weight loss & breaking through plateaus
Plateaus happen. You are not going to lose weight every day. It’s unrealistic to think you are going to so don’t get too upset about it. Tracking your food is super important. No matter what meal plan you follow, track your food. That way, you can go back and reflect on what you ate in a particular day and see how it made you feel and how it effected the scale. I use the 2B Mindset tracker but you could use the Ultimate Portion Fix tracker or just pen and paper to track what you eat each day.
The tracker above is the 2B Mindset tracker I use. If you want to do this meal plan with me, freaking join me! I would love to teach you this, swap our recipes, lose weight and get fit together!
DIGGING DEEPER INTO MY OWN PLATEAU
I myself went through an 11 day plateau. So I decided to dig in deeper as to why this was happening. I took a look at my 2B Mindset tracker and I focused on my:
Water Intake
Workouts
Stress
Sleep
Bathroom Habits
Foods I Have Eaten
I’ve been doing a great job with my water intake, crushing my workouts and sleeping well so I know I am good there. However, there were a couple of trends I noticed with the foods I have eaten. When I started adding in more cauliflower and cheddar cheese, I wasn’t losing any weight on those days and that started the plateau. Cauliflower sits in my stomach like a rock and makes me feel a little gassy (sorry TMI). It was the cheddar cheese, thousand island dressing with greek yogurt that played a part in the plateau as well. Those things were leading into constipation for me. Every single time I ate cauliflower, I saw weight gain the next day. I guarantee it’s not the cauliflower, but the toppings on top of it so for a week, I stopped eating cauliflower.
I also noticed that I was using Himalayan pink salt and garlic powder so I switched that and just started using garlic salt. For some reason, that made a difference! Finally, I added more carbohydrates to my breakfast.
Often times when we think “weight loss”, we think “eat less” and sometimes that’s not the answer.
When you are losing weight, you should feel good, energized and you shouldn’t be starving all day.
If you do feel starving all day, you need to eat more!! I have been told that if you under eat, your body holds onto any fat as excess fuel instead of burning it off so that is actually working against you. I have my shake and oats in the morning for breakfast and I am finding that the extra carbohydrates in the morning are keeping me fuller for longer and I am seeing better results. When you are not starving all day, you have less cravings and you have less of a tendency to binge or overeat.
IF YOU ARE STUCK, ASK SOMEONE FOR HELP!
All that being said, if you are stuck, look at what you are doing and ask someone. That’s the benefit of being in a Virtual Bootcamp and having a coach! They know what they are doing and they can help you figure out what you can tweak and sometimes it’s little small tweaks like no cheese and then you can lose weight and break the plateau.
Remember, even if you get over a plateau, you may plateau again.
I know I am going to plateau again but I am ready because I always track my food and I can always look back and figure out what the trigger is and then make tweaks based off of that.
Plateaus are an opportunity to learn something about your body and yourself, it’s not an opportunity to quit.
If you do that, you’re going to be stuck. If you’re unhappy with where you are at, don’t unpack your stuff and sit there. Look at what you are doing and get creative. I promise you, make some changes and remember if you want it bad enough, you will make the changes.
Remember that you can do this!
You are never ever stuck unless you decide to quit.
So don’t be a quitter girl, you are better than that!