What do you do when your tried and true workout routine stops working for you?  A fitness plateau can be your body’s signal that it’s time for a change, experts say, or a sign that you’ve been looking for progress in all the wrong places.  ”A plateau is a period where you stop making progress,” said Marshall Roy, a New York City-based personal trainer at Equinox, the national chain of fitness centers. “It isn’t a death sentence and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s feedback from your body that what you’re doing has stopped working.”

The human body will adapt to become as strong or lean or resilient as you train it to be, Roy explained. So if you keep giving it exactly the same challenge it will not progress.  ”Say you’re a woman who wants to lose body fat. You’ve been doing Pilates for a couple of months and experiencing the results you want. Then you stop seeing it,” he said. “It may be time to try strength training or swimming.”  Roy believes best way to avoid plateaus is to have a long- term, progressive, goal-oriented plan. He said people are generally too quick to abandon a solid routine to follow the latest craze or celebrity endorsement.

“We call it training A.D.D. (for Attention Deficit Disorder),” he said. “They hop around different styles. It doesn’t work. How would you know if you’re making progress if you’re always changing? Consistency is how you track your progress.”  Roy suggests giving a workout at least eight, and preferably 16, weeks to allow the body to adapt to it.  He also notes that in fitness, as in nature, everything happens in cycles.  ”There is a time for progress and a time for recovery and maintenance,” he said. “If my client is an accountant, I’m not going to plan a brutal workout (at tax time) in April. Summer is a great time for a teacher to make strides.”

 Sometimes, he said, the problem lies outside the gym.  ”Ask yourself: have I changed my diet? Do my workouts lack vigor? Has my stress level increased?” he said. “Try to isolate the variable that led you to stall. Most of the time it’s a lifestyle factor that’s the reason.”  Shirley Archer, a fitness expert and spokesperson with the American Council on Exercise, said whether you’re doing aerobics, strength or flexibility training, fitness plateaus, while no fun, are inevitable if you always repeat the same workout.  ”SAID (Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand) is a tried and true training principle,” she said of the tenet that the body will adapt to the specific demands placed upon it. “It guides our training.”

Our bodies adapt to what we do and become more efficient over time, Archer explained, expending less energy to perform the same activities.  ”Studies show that in as few as six workouts, our neuromuscular system has adjusted to a particular stimulus,” she said. “In other words, we’re no longer surprised and accept that activity as part of the new normal.”  

Add variety, said Archer, who went on to quote what she calls her best rule of thumb: “If your mind is bored, your body is bored too. Mix it up.”

I fell in love with this story. A tiny town in Oregon has started their own “Biggest Loser” campaign. 

Every Tuesday a lime cardboard sheet goes up in the only grocery store in the town with the name of the town’s biggest loser of the week.  20% of the town’s population is involved and together they have lost more than 600 lbs.

There are weekly weigh-ins followed by a group meeting in a small conference room.  Everyone cheers for the biggest loser of the week.  The weekly winner gets a trophy of a pound of fat to take home(!).  Local business assist by offering gift certificates as prizes. After the meeting, the biggest loser group heads over to the school gym, which is the only place to work out without having to drive for hours.

Seven day a week dieters walk, meditate, and perform resistance training and aerobics.  The only pieces of equipment are the floor mats from the school and bargain resistance bands they have found on the internet for $5. Before they got the resistance bands, they used water bottles filled with sand.  When they climb stairs they have to climb actual stairs, the old fashioned way.

There is only one grocery story in town, which makes it very hard to cheat. Store co-owner Betty McNeil says some cash-register conversations go like this: “Two hundred thirty calories in that cupcake. Do you know what you’re doing? Do you really want that?” she says, laughing.

Then she notes that townspeople have to leave town to cheat. “It’s 20 miles to the next Twinkie,” she adds, laughing again

“The Merc,” as the locals call it, also aims for positive reinforcement with more fruit, vegetables and yogurt in its coolers. Demand for the good stuff has skyrocketed. And of course there are the signs in the storefront window charting the town’s thinning waistlines.

Around the corner, the Shamrock Bar and Restaurant weighs in with a daily “biggest loser” special.

The participants have had miraculous results. Blood pressure is down, in at least one case knee surgery no longer required.  It has also brought the town together in a positive, healthy way.  The weight-loss contest wraps up at the end of the month.  The winner gets the pound of fat and $600 (unlike $250,000 grand prize from the Biggest Loser TV show).  After the weight-loss contest ends plans are in place to keep the momentum going. Participants vow they will not give up and they set a goal of an upcoming  half-marathon.

Betty McNeil thinks the poor economy helps keep the weight off. “It’s given us something else to think about,” McNeil asserts. “We’ve had so little control over what’s happened to our retirement. What can you control? Well, your diet. And your weight loss. And your physical activity. You can control that.”

We can learn a lot from this town, like….

-It’s easier to lose weight if you’re doing it with buddies. So seek out good friends with similar goals and give each other support and encouragement.
-It doesn’t take a chance at winning a quarter-million dollars to get motivated. Treat yourself with small rewards that have no calories, like new shoes.
-It doesn’t take fancy gyms or expensive equipment to get you moving.  No matter where you live or how bad the economy gets, you can ALWAYS find ways to get physical!

GGS bottom line: Get inspired by this story!  Tie on some trainers, grab a friend and get moving!!!

Ahhhhhh…..we tell ourselves daily why we SHOULDN’T exercise.  Here are some excuses that have been (too) effective for me over the last few years:

Top 10 Workout Excuses:

1. My PVR is getting too full and I need to free up some space for tonight’s shows.
2. I would rather get my PJ’s on and snuggle with the cat
3. Way too busy with the laundry
4. Don’t want girls to be jealous of me and men to eye me up and down
5. Makes me all wet with sweat – yuck!
6. I will never look like Angelina Jolie
7. They have made some breakthroughs in plus-size clothing
8. Don’t want to die too healthy and besides doctors need the money
9. My book is just starting to get good
10. No pain is no pain- perfect!

Let’s get serious now as I overcome the above list with…

The Top 10 reasons why we should all exercise:

1. To sleep better-don’t want to be a cranky”Girl”!
2. To reduce stress-we are all superwomen doing too much
3. To own a pair of skinny jeans before they go out of style
4. To get the endorphins going; our ‘natural feel good drug’.
5. The cardiovascular benefits-no huffing and puffing up the stairs
6. Toning muscles-more muscles=more calories burned
7. To increase energy-need to be able to keep up with the kids
8. Good for the bones, posture and back-especially for those of us almost halfway to 80 years old
9. Get some alone time-especially if you have young kids
10. To live a long, healthy life- I would like to be a great-great granny one day (and those doctors have enough money anyway!)

Stay tuned for my series of  tips to keep us Girls motivated through our weight loss/ fitness journey. 

I don’t know about you, but I find this time of year a bit depressing. Christmas and all its fun and treats and parties are over, the new year has come…and past, our Vancouver weather is full of rain, rain and more rain…and the shine is starting to wear off my motivation.

My energy level dips with the gloomy days and wouldn’t it be nice to stay in bed all cuddled up with a good book, or to sit and watch tv all day with a soft blanket, glass of wine, some cheese and the fireplace cranked up?

Thank goodness I joined the Peninsula Runners marathon running clinic.

Because, well, let me just say…this video sums up the reason why I need to get running:

On Wednesday, I felt absolutely listless and grumpy as I hadn’t slept well at all after having a small cyst removed from my shoulder the day before. It didn’t hurt at all, until I fell asleep. Who knew 3 small stitches on my shoulder blade could be that irritating every time I rolled over!

So I was really tired and was NOT looking forward to my evening run…well, maybe more like ‘dreading’ my evening run. Let’s face it, it’s pretty easy to lose motivation as the day wears on anyway. And while the run itself was to be around 6 miles, the hard part was the 3 mile tempo run which I was scheduled to run at a pace I just wasn’t sure about. Yikes!

I was so grumpy that I decided I’d better try to take a cat nap in the afternoon. Unfortunately, I’m not a good daytime napper.

When my husband came home and entered our bedroom, he took one look at my face (the only thing poking out from my big comfy pile of pillows and duvet covers) and promptly left again.

I could hear him hastily warning the kids not to come into my room. Guess I looked as grumpy as I felt, lol!

Half an hour later, though, I was up, dressed and ready to run.

Albeit, not cheerfully and everyone kept their distance from me, peeking at me out of the corners of their eyes. I laced my runners, waved goodbye and fled before I could think twice.

So what happened to get me out of bed…?

My girlfriend. It was my turn to drive to the running group and I had to go pick her up.

Instant accountability – and thank goodness, because without her, I’d never have gone! And guess what…she was exhausted from a long day of work and said the same thing to me.

You know the ending to this story….we went, we ran, we came home….pumped!

I felt energized and so, SO much more cheerful. I mean, irritatingly happy. I sat down in front of the tv, cranked up the fireplace, wrapped myself up in a soft blanket, had a little snack and my (sweet) hubby made me a giant spinach, blueberry and mango smoothie.

Heaven!

All that and I’d burned off 600 calories too.

I was SO glad I went.

And holding onto that thought – how happy I’ll feel after I work out – will help motivate me for my next run.

And if that fails, well, that’s what friends are for, right?!