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When you find that your weekly weight loss has stalled that’s often known as a ‘weight loss plateau’ and many dieters find the sudden lack of progress deeply frustrating. Herbalife’s Nutrition Expert Susan Bowerman helps you understand why your weight may plateau and give you some ideas to make sure you continue to meet your goals so that your weight will start moving again.

Five tips to move off the plateau:

• Use a food diary to keep track of your calorie intake - You may have been more careful when you started your diet — weighing and measuring everything that passed your lips — but you might not be as accurate as you once were. This will get you back on track.
• Replace two meals a day with a protein shake to help you stay within your calorie limit. When you make your shake, you know exactly what goes into it — and how many calories are in the protein powder, the milk and the fruit — so it takes the guesswork out of calorie counting. Use the shake for two meals a day, have a healthy third meal, and fill in with snacks of low fat protein foods, vegetables and fruits.
• Dine out less often - No matter how careful you think you are when you go to a restaurant, it's usually difficult to accurately estimate how many calories you're eating, because it's often hard to tell exactly how foods are prepared.
• Step up your activity, particularly strength training - If you've been working out for a while and haven't increased the intensity of your activity, you might not be burning as many calories as you used to. Add some new moves to your exercise routine, increase the intensity, and pump some iron.
• You might actually be at the right weight - If you can, get your body composition checked. Muscle is ‘denser' and takes up less space than body fat — so if you are carrying more muscle than the average person, you might weigh more than you think you should. If your body fat is within normal range, then you may not have much — if any — additional weight to lose

Around 60-70% of the human body is composed of water, so it's fair to say that water is vital for survival. It functions to keep our body temperature regulated, allows us to breathe, is essential in digestion and excretion, assists body movement, just to name a few!

Drinking 8-10 glasses of water each day is recommended, but during exercise or when in hot environments, we need to drink more, because we sweat more.

But is water enough? Or do you need a sports drink to stay properly hydrated?
Sports drinks will keep you well hydrated and give you energy if you're participating in high intensity exercise for more than an hour. However, if you're not exercising to this level, plain water will do just fine.

What defines a sports drink?
Sports drinks (sometimes called electrolyte or isotonic drinks) are developed to contain the right level of carbohydrates (5-8 g/litre) and electrolytes (such as sodium and potassium) to keep you well hydrated; replacing what is lost from the body during exercise.

Other drinks that contain high amounts of carbohydrates stop water being absorbed quickly and therefore can delay hydration, so are not suitable before exercise.

So if you're doing a high intensity workout, choose a sports drink. But, if you're not working out to this intensity and drink them as part of your everyday routine you may end up putting on weight because of the extra carbohydrate content.

If you don't like the taste of plain water, add a slice of lemon, orange or a sprig of mint to give your water some flavour without adding the calories you'd get by using cordial.

Hydration tips for exercise

• Make sure you're well hydrated before you exercise - start drinking approximately two hours before
• Keep your fluids topped up during exercise
• Always remember to re-hydrate after exercise – it's essential for recovery. Try to drink one to two glasses per hour until your urine is pale again

Is it water or is it fat?

The good news is that temporary water weight gain is just that – it’s temporary, and it’s water… not fat. (it would be nearly impossible to gain three pounds of fat overnight. To store a pound of fat, you’d need to eat 3500 calories more than you need – which means you’d need to eat more than 10,000 extra calories to gain 3 pounds of fat in one day.)

Tips for reducing temporary water weight gain

Temporary water weight gain can often be tackled with a few simple dietary changes.

• Reduce your salt intake
  Focus on foods that are as close as possible to their natural state, since the more processed a food is, the more sodium it’s likely to have. Keep salty snacks, soups, condiments and sauces to a minimum and use the salt shaker lightly in cooking and at the table.
• Cut back on refined starches and sweets
  Rather than highly refined carbohydrates like white bread, regular pasta and white rice, turn to whole grain varieties. Since they take longer to digest, they’re less likely to cause a big spike in blood sugar – and insulin – when you eat them. And, switch from sugary drinks to water or tea instead.
• Drink plenty of water
  It seems like that last thing you’d want to do – put more fluid into your body when it already feels overloaded. But drinking fluids will help your body to eliminate excess salt and water. Aim for 6-8 glasses a day.
• Push potassium
  Potassium plays a critical role in maintaining fluid balance in the body, and needs to be in the proper balance with sodium. Potassium is found in abundance in fruits and vegetables, but most people don’t get nearly enough potassium in the diet. Try to have a fruit or vegetable at every meal or snack.

Written by Susan Bowerman, MS, RD, CSSD. Susan is a paid consultant for Herbalife