Experiencing a plateau in every diet, including the ketogenic diet, is very common. Weight loss is not always something you can expect to continue in a persistent process. One day, you might lose 5 pounds, 7 pounds, or maybe 10 pounds within the first weeks of your keto diet. Your pants and other clothes get loose, that’s why you feel that your diet is taking off.
However, unexpectedly, you’re entering the keto plateau. This period is when you suddenly stop losing weight due to various reasons. One reason why you’re experiencing a plateau might be because your metabolism started to slow down after losing some weight.
Other factors could be your age, your hormones, how much you move, or your stress level. Plateauing could be somehow stressful, frustrating, and irritating at some point.
On the other hand, if you’re going to focus on the brighter side, a plateau can be one of the best things that can happen in your journey. Although our topic is how to break it, we’re also going to talk about what you can learn from it.
A Wider Definition of Plateau
Normally, people decide to go on a keto diet to achieve good body results - they want to lose fat, lose weight, and they want to live healthier than ever. That’s why at first, they seem to get excited and enthusiastic because they get to see that their diet is starting to really take off.
However, due to some reasons that I just said earlier, they suddenly stop losing weight. They’re already going through an incredible body transformation, their body is shifting and changing, and everything just stopped. To be quite honest, that could be truly devastating and disappointing, right?
If you’re experiencing a plateau, it could mean that the foundation that you’ve made and established got depreciated. What does it mean? Here’s an illustration. Let’s say you’re building a house. The very thing you’re going to lay down is the foundation. With a strong foundation, you’ll be able to build a second floor.
However, when you start building the second floor, you’re starting to see that the house is not yet stable and it’s slowing down, making it seem that the house can’t be continued to build. However, what you’re going to do to fix that problem is you’ll build the floor to establish some stability so that you can successfully build the second floor. After that, you’ll be able to do the next level, and so on.
The same thing with your keto or fat loss journey, at first, you built a foundation that’ll help you to go on to the next level - your body transformation. But when you’re already on the transformation stage, there came a period where you just stopped losing weight.
Remember, it’s your keto journey that’s plateaued; it’s not mainly your performance. When you experience a plateau, what’s happening inside your body is establishing a new normal, new baseline, and new stability.
In my 25 years of experience, I’ve never seen somebody’s weight loss or fat loss journey go steadily down. It’s always going to plateau from time to time. There are some reasons why you shouldn’t feel frustrated and stressed about plateauing.
Experiencing a Plateau is Beneficial for your Health
A plateau is important for your health. It’s actually from an illness perspective. It’s much safer for you to establish some levels of plateaus, because, in that way, your body gets to metabolize fat.
At the same time as metabolizing fat, your body stores toxins in your fat. And it'd rather be stored there than anywhere else because it doesn’t have to be used. But if you’re on the fat loss journey, your body has to bring out those toxins that are released back into your system and your body has to detox it out.
When your body plateaus, it’s quite possible that it’s doing that process to slow down fat loss so that your body can then start to detox everything that’s been lost so far. That’s very beneficial for your health because if you kept persistently losing weight, the toxic load would do up and you would feel worse and then, later on, get sick.
If you’re on your keto journey, one of your main goals is to avoid sickness, right? You don’t want to get sick. So you need to know that experiencing a plateau is quite beneficial for your health because if you don’t know this information yet, you might start to get mad and frustrated, and then quit. Once this happens, you’ll just go back to your old unhealthy routine.
When you experience a plateau, don’t think that you’re failing on your keto journey. Actually, it protects you from being ill and unhealthy!
Plateau Helps You Learn the Most About You
Plateau helps you learn about your temperament and how you’re feeling. Some people start on their keto journey and their diet is taking off because they’re drinking our ketones, making their weight loss productive.
However, they’ve been following a more structured low-carb lifestyle, so when a celebratory time happens, they slowly drift away and they begin to stop following that healthy lifestyle and stop being active because they’re getting more focused on other things. This is a great time when you plateau. It’s time for you to reassess.
Ask yourself: “Am I still following my original keto diet plan?”. If the answer is no, then you probably need to go back to what you were doing that helped you achieve good results in the first place.
Don’t lie to yourself. If your lifestyle has changed due to some circumstances, don’t say that you haven’t changed it. Take a moment and take some time to reflect. The only time I ever recommend you to measure anything is when you plateau because it’s the perfect time to assess many things with regards to your keto diet.
Take some time to ask yourself these things: “Are my carb intakes going higher? Am I less active than I was before? Am I sleeping less? Am I eating very late at night? Am I staying hydrated? Am I moving my body less?”. You must identify the answers to these questions by yourself. Reassess properly so you get to learn on a plateau.
What makes a plateau so perfect is it lets you learn and helps you stay healthy. Once you accept the plateau as an important part of your keto journey, you can break it and you’ll take off.
A Wrap-up on How to Break a Plateau
Go back and reassess. Make sure your carbs are lower. Do not eat too close to the bed, meaning, do not eat late at night. Keep your body moving and be mobile as much as you can. Appreciate plateaus as it is the most important time for you to learn to grow and launch yourself to another phase of your life, health journey, and transformation.
I also highly recommend you to do the reboot with us, because if you’re not going to this very important part of your keto diet every month, you’re missing the boat. Getting a reboot is a great plateau buster to help you get through your healthy journey.