If you have lost some weight and then found your body suddenly refusing to let any more weight go, you have reached a weight loss plateau. 

This can be incredibly frustrating because obviously whatever you were doing up until this point WAS WORKING!

Now your body seems to be protesting. 

But why?!

Well, the short and accurate answer is, “it depends”. Oh boy, another frustration! You want answers and you want them now!

Well, research shows that there are multiple factors that can cause a weight loss plateau. 

However, instead of giving you a long list and asking you to try to figure it out, I thought it would be easier to help you understand YOUR OWN personal reasons why YOU have hit a plateau. 

Best Weight Loss Plateau Solutions

There are three major reasons why someone would hit a plateau so I suggest you explore these tools first. 

AND I want to give you some super-duper valuable tools to help you figure this out. 

You may have to pull out the big guns for this one and I’m here to help.

FIRST: Assess your caloric intake and the quality of your food. Like really.

The tool that you are going to use is a dietary intake app.

This one is easy because there are a ton of trackers out there. Just pick one you like. We like Lose It and Cronometer.

Whether you ARE tracking your calories already or not, consider these 3 things:

This is important!!! Don’t brush it off! Investigate!!

SECOND: Use a fitness app in conjunction with a heart rate monitor. 

It is possible that your cardiovascular fitness is now more efficient and you need to push yourself harder. 

Using a heart rate monitor will help you understand several wonderful things about your body!

If you feel you might need some professional help with all this, contact me for a consultation.

THIRD: Know your heart rate variability and track it. 

Heart rate variability is the variance in the rate of your heart rate from beat to beat. Unlike your RHR, we are looking for a high heart rate variability as you become more fit. 

Heart rate variability (HRV) is an amazing tool that I recommend to ALL of my clients! It tells you how stressed you are and also indicates levels of inflammation in the body. It doesn’t tell you WHAT is causing your HRV to be high or low…but it does tell you that something is. 

sport science and information technology

There are multiple studies showing that HRV does relate to overweight and obesity. People that are overweight tend to have lower HRV. 1,2,3,4

Also, we know that HRV is a very accurate predictor of cardiovascular health and many other conditions including insulin signaling issues5,6, other hormonal imbalances7, sleep disturbances8, and inflammation9, which can all affect your ability to lose weight!

So, even though HRV may seem a little “out there”, inconvenient, or simply unknown to you, it is actually THE most important factor to consider when determining the cause for a weight loss plateau. 

Measuring HRV requires a device to monitor your heart rate accurately and that will sync with an app or device that measures heart rate variability.

I recommend the Polar H10 Bluetooth Chest Heart Rate Monitor (don’t buy from Amazon, buy from the source to ensure you’re getting what you pay for) and that syncs with the free app called Elite HRV. I like the Elite HRV app and they have the “morning readiness” score. 

There are other ways to do this. But I found using the Polar monitor with the free apps to be very economical. 

Once you have measured your HRV Morning Readiness score daily for 2-3 weeks you’ll start to see a picture of what affects your HRV.

So after you have established some pattern be on the lookout for the following factors that can block weight loss. 

To summarize. It is far more efficient and much better for your health in the long run for you to figure out why YOU are at a weight loss plateau. Don’t guess, test. 

Using a good diet app and really assessing how much you are eating and the quality of your food should be the first thing you do. 

Also, assess your training and make sure you are consciously training in zones and not just “getting your heart rate up” or slugging away on a treadmill day after day. Be sure to add resistance training as well. 

And finally, assess if there are underlying issues making it more difficult to lose weight now. Consider sleep, stress, inflammation, and of course over-training. Use HRV to get a window into these factors and to learn oh so much more about your body!

If this stuff intrigues you and you are looking for strategies about what to do next for your health or weight loss journey, please click below to set up a free strategy call with me.

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