REBECCA L.
Stall Busting Tips to remember
Jul 27, 2010
Found this decent article giving some stall busting advice. I want to keep this around for my next stall...
1. Make sure you really are stalled. Take your body measurements with a tape. Check how your clothes fit. Try on a piece of clothing that was tight before. A real stall is one that lasts longer than 4 weeks, anything else is your body adjusting it's self to the new lifestyle and burning fat.
2. Don't go hungry. Eat smaller more frequent meals, and make sure you have some protein with every meal and snack. Avoid going more than 5 hours without eating (except overnight, then make sure you have a protein-containing breakfast).
3. Don't over restrict your calorie intake, it will just force your metabolism to slow down to "starvation mode". Increase the amount of protein and fat with your meals. Eat some cheese, fried pork rinds or a handful of nuts as a snack. Use good olive or flax oil on your salads. Use heavy cream and egg yolks to make sauces for fish, eggs and vegetables.
4. Bump up your exercise level. Increase the duration and/or the intensity. Change your routine. Add weight lifts if you are just doing aerobics. And if you're not exercising yet, get moving!
5. Avoid eating carbs before bedtime. This will trigger insulin, which will inhibit fat-burning while you sleep and in fact, will initiate fat STORAGE.
6. Drink more water and other zero-carb fluids to enhance fat hydrolysis, and to flush ketones.
7. Keep a diet diary. Record the time and amount of what you consume. No one else will ever see it, so be brutally honest. Get a good food counts resource, or at least a pocket-size carb gram counter. For women it is good to note hormone levels and changes as these greatly effect weight loss.
8. Check your salt intake, too much sodium causes the body to retain water. Avoid diuretic food items such as those with caffeine. Diuretics can inhibit fat burning during ketosis. During weight loss higher fluid intake will encourage weight loss.9. Food Allergy & Intolerances - A significant percentage of low carb dieters report that over-consumption of cheese and dairy products will put them in a stall quicker than anything else, even when the carbs are not "hidden" but are accounted for in the daily total. There is some suggestion it may be an intolerance or allergy to the casein protein in cow's milk dairy products. If you have been eating a lot of dairy foods lately, try cutting way back, or even eliminating altogether for a week or two, and see if this breaks the plateau. Food allergies and intolerances are difficult to pin down, but are known to trigger weight gain, fluid retention, sinus congestion, skin rashes, and digestive upsets, diarrhea etc. The most common food allergens are - wheat and wheat gluten, cow's milk dairy products, corn, soy and chicken egg whites.
10. Medications - There are a number of medications that can and will hinder your weight loss. Most notable are diuretics ("fluid pills"), both prescription and over-the-counter types. These will initially seem to make you lose MORE weight, as you lose excess body fluid. But when you are in active ketosis the LACK of fluid will inhibit fat-burning. Many antidepressants cause weight gain as well. Steroids and hormones, such as cortisone, birth control pills and estrogens will cause weight gain.
