If you're like a lot of people out there, no doubt you've tried a number of diets to different degrees of success. You might have lost weight but you generally get to a certain point and then nothing you do can help you shed more pounds. This plateau that most people hit, is typical with virtually all diet plans. There isn't any way of avoiding this plateau if you do not deceive your metabolism.

You've probably already faced the plateau problem which will probably have caused you a whole lot of frustration and ended more than one diet plan. This is an unusual thing that takes place to even the most successful dieters sometime near the third or fourth week of the diet they have chosen. Up to that moment, the weight drops off and then it just stops and nothing you do can get your body to lose more weight. This is one way your body responds to the changes that you have made. Your body shifts into a protection mode to prevent you from starving and it will slow down your metabolism. This, then, stops you from being able to shed more weight.

This is what causes people to think they aren't capable of losing the weight they want, and they give up trying. At this stage they return to eating, and gaining their weight back plus even more than they shed usually. The way to stop this is to choose a diet where your calories just get shifted. What you really are trying to do is consume a different number of calories each day, which is supposed to fool your metabolism. If this works, it helps to keep your body from flipping the switch and going into protective mode. It will keep your body's metabolism rolling at its current rate instead of slowing down and you'll keep on losing pounds. Once you arrive at this point, you have passed the plateau and your diet will continue to work the way that it was supposed to.

It is really simple to integrate this type of plan into your everyday routine. Among the most widely used methods of calorie shifting is the 14 day method. This method goes for 2 weeks: you do regular things for the first eleven and then during the last three you eat anything you want. Switch your food throughout each day to fool your metabolism and then eat whatever you want to keep yourself from reaching the plateau. This will also help you from being frustrated with a strict diet regimen. You can actually continue repeating these 14 days until you feel satisfied with the amount of weight you have shed.

The 2 day plan is another way, where you eat regularly for one day, and the other day you cut your calories by 20% to 35%. You can keep doing this every two days for as long as necessary to get your weight off. This is a program that you should try, because it could be exactly what can get you past your plateau, to where you will lose all the weight you want.