Yep. It's totally true. I never would have believed it until I had it happen to me. When I first started actively trying to lose weight last September, I initially lost quite a bit. 10 lbs in the first 4-6 weeks. I was stoked. I've lost a total of 38 lbs now but December was ROUGH. Not because of holidays or food. I just plateaued. HARD.
I lost 2 lbs the entire month of December. The less I lost the less I ate. At my lowest I was eating only 800 calories a day. I didn't feel hungry or starved. I ate what I wanted and that was 800 calories. I could not understand WHY I wasn't losing weight so I took to the great Google oracle to find out.
I began searching how to break a plateau and somehow landed on Jillian Michaels website. Now personally I do not particularly like her methods. They may work for some but from what I've seen of her, she is very narrow minded. I do not believe you have to exercise until you puke in order to lose weight. Read my first paragraph again if you don't believe me. But she had an article on why she doesn't believe plateaus exist. It was late and nothing else I'd read seemed like it was of any use so I started reading her article.
She says she doesn't believe in plateaus. That what happens to most people is they either begin eating more without realizing it OR eating less thinking they'll lose faster. Either way is not good. I was on the eating less end. In her article, she asked to give her three days. That for three days to increase your calorie count so your body gets out of starvation mode. Against everything my entire brain was telling me I began eating 1200 calories a day. By the third day I'd lost 2 lbs.
Now I eat 1200 calories a day and since Jan 1st I've lost eight lbs bringing my total up to 38. So if you're dieting and stuck, I'd suggest you take a look at how much you're eating because as stupid as this sounds, you can eat too little. Really, that's a thing.
