I have been thinking a little bit about plateaus both in weight lifting and with diets. A fitness plateau seems to happen just about out of nowhere, everything seems to be going well and then inexplicably all gains, or losses, stop. The first thing we should look at when we have a plateau is why it is happening. There does not seem to be a good reason for a plateau but I believe that it is mostly based on our internal expectations.
If you want to stop someone dead in their tracks tell them that they have never looked better. We are always striving but mostly striving to get a bit better and when we have gone beyond our comfort zone whether we know it or not we will start to stagnate as our mind and body start to rejig our reality of how we should look, feel, and think.
So how are we going to break through our fitness plateau? Outwardly it is usually best to start working around the problem. I used to have a limit of a 225 pound bench and could not break through this barrier for the longest time. I would try different sets and different types of exercises and finally to break through what I needed to do was really increase my shoulder and triceps strength and not very miraculously my bench press increased. Dieting is the same way. If you hit a plateau start looking around your weight loss. Look at your whole diet, look at your exercise, look at your rest, and look at your metabolism and energy levels.
Finally though, these physical changes may not be enough to get the weight loss or strength gains that we are looking for. What we really need to do is change our perception of who we are physically. I have watched my wife for years lose weight and then gain back and then lose down to almost the exact same level and a roadblock will always come up, getting sick, binging, or just a stop no matter what she does to change it. I truly believe that the only change that is needed once you have the knowledge of what to do and how to do it is to go back to the picture in your head of who you are, what you look like and what you feel like.
Sit down and make a list of how you look and feel about yourself and change your thoughts. All you have to do is see on paper what your perception of yourself is today and what you look at as a restrictive vision and start looking at yourself and your life in a new way. You have this ability and you can do it yourself. Try this today and break through those fitness plateaus
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