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Weight Loss Plateaus And How To Break Through Them
By Tom Venuto, author of Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle
Weight loss plateaus can be frustrating, even maddening! It happens especially when you get down to that “last 10 lbs” or when you drop a lot of weight, and you hit the “good” body fat category, but you’re an “overachiever” and you still want to get even leaner… all the way to “ripped”, or at least lean enough to see your abs. It’s a challenge, but there IS something you can do about it. I revealed the answers in a recent teleseminar called the Super Lean seminar, which I recently had transcribed and I've posted it below for all my website visitors. Breaking a weight loss plateau is not difficult, it simply requires out of the box thinking. You will find the solution fascinating because part of it is the most counter-intuitive move you can imagine. QUESTION: Tom, I know you often say that to get to the point where you can see your abs, you need to reach single-digit body fat. But what if I hit a weight loss plateau at about 12% body fat? What do I need to do to break the weight loss plateau and get my fat% down to single digits? Should I do more cardio, more weight-training, or change my diet somehow?” ANSWER: You could use any of those strategies. You could manipulate your calories, do cardio more often, do more cardio sessions weekly, or increase the cardio intensity. You could also change your weight training. You shouldn't limit yourself to only one option. One of the problems I see with quite a few programs is that they’re too dogmatic. If you hit a weight loss plateau, the person with the most flexibility in their approach is the person who’s going to be most likely to get through that plateau. The first thing though is to understand what a plateau really is. This is important, because if you were losing weight, but now you’re not, there’s only one thing that that could mean; you were in a calorie deficit but you’re no longer in a calorie deficit. You may be wondering why that happens. There are four primary reasons you hit a weight loss plateau: The first reason you hit a weight loss plateau is because your metabolism decreases. While this does not completely stop fat loss, it does slow down fat loss. If you’ve been cutting calories, especially if you cut them severely, your body adapts by decreasing the metabolic rate. That’s sometimes known as the “starvation response” or “Adaptive thermogenesis.” The second reason you hit a weight loss plateau is that you need fewer calories after you lose weight. Calorie needs are directly tied into your body weight. One problem is that after people lose a lot of weight, they tend to keep eating the same way they were eating when they were heavier. So they’re feeding a smaller person the way they were when they were a bigger person, but when you’re a smaller person, you don’t need as many calories, even at rest (your basal metabolic rate is lower). A third reason you hit a weight loss plateau is that when you move that smaller body, you’re not burning as many calories. If you strap on a weighted vest or heavy backpack and go out and hike up a hill, you can tell, obviously, that if you’re lugging around extra weight, you’re burning more calories. So now can you see why, after you lose weight, you burn fewer calories? The fourth reason you hit a weight loss plateau is that most people either cheat on their diets or they forget to record part of their food intake. This one requires a little bit of honesty with yourself. Even if you don’t do it intentionally and you don’t “cheat” per se, unconsciously, we’re all terrible at estimating how much food we eat. Some studies have even showed underreporting calorie intake as much as 50%. In other words, you say, “I’m only eating 1,200 calories a day, but i’m stuck at a plateau!” but you’re really eating 1,800 calories a day which doesn’t give you much of a deficit. All of these reasons for plateaus get amplified in the later stages of a diet, because biologically speaking, your body is doing everything it possibly can to get you to go off your diet and to get weight to stabilize. After a long period of dieting and after a large weight loss, your body cranks up the appetite, stimulates cravings and tries to trick you into eating more. The leaner you get, the longer youve been dieting and the more aggressively you cut calories, the more your body tends to defend its weight, and hold on to remaining body fat. So it’s really common to hit that plateau when you’re dieted down and leaner. Usually it’s nowhere near as difficult for the overweight person to start losing weight as it is for the lean person to get even more lean. The last 10 lbs is usually a lot harder than the first 10. If you think about it, it’s pretty unnatural from a biological perspective to walk around with really low single-digit body fat. It’s not beneficial from a survival-of-the-species point of view to have low body fat. So this metabolic adaptation becomes more pronounced the leaner you get. you’re also at a higher risk of losing muscle, because extra muscle is not econmical when there’s a calorie shortage. Having extra muscle is like having an engine that’s bigger than you need - It’s like a gas guzzler. The ultimate answer to why you plateau, why that last 10 pounds is so hard to lose and why it’s hard to break into those single digits is that you were in a calorie deficit but for all of the reasons mentioned above, you’re no longer in deficit. The way to break the weight loss plateau then is to: (1) re-stimulate metabolism and re-set fat-burning and starvation hormones, and (2) re-establish the deficit. (3) KEEP AFTER IT! The question was, “How do I do that? More cardio, more weight training, manipulate my diet?” You could do all of the above. Eating less or exercising more can both increase a deficit. But one thing you might want to do first, is give yourself a little break. Take your calories up to maintenance level, maybe for a week. The idea there is not to try to accelerate fat loss, because what you’re actually doing is removing your calorie deficit for a short period of time. What you’re trying to do is facilitate the fat loss when you jump back into it. It gives your body a physiological break from the stress of dieting; it resets some of those starvation hormones and stimulates your metabolism so when you go back to the calorie deficit, your body responds again. You also get mental break from the diet as well, which makes it easier to stick with the program when you go back to it. You could also use a calorie cycling approach, to help prevent yourself from hitting another plateau, and we already covered calorie and carb cycling in the last call. I also recommend, because so many people underestimate how much they eat, don’t take any chances. Count your calories, or at least become really aware of the portion sizes and maybe even consider keeping a journal. You’ve probably been told many times by a lot of different “experts” that you don’t have to count calories. But when you’re in a plateau, I’d recommend that you stop guessing and really get serious about what you’re taking in. Then what you need to do is reestablish that calorie deficit using every tool at your disposal. Use nutrition by pulling back your portion sizes. Or use cardio. And by increased cardio, I mean increasing energy expenditure. You could increase your frequency. You could increase your duration. But increasing energy expenditure is not necessarily doing longer workouts, just burning more calories. You could also take the same amount of time that you’re spending right now and increase your intensity. The whole idea is just burn more calories and stimulate metabolism, which gives you your deficit back again or you can pull back your food intake and give yourself a deficit again from the food side. There’s more than one way to do it and I don’t think that you should lock yourself in. Use all of the variables and remember that there are TWO sides to the energy balance equation, not one. # # # I Hope you enjoyed this excerpt, and mostly, I hope you put the information to good use!FYI: The burn the fat e-book has an entire chapter devoted to breaking plateaus including a long checklist of fat loss plateau- breaking strategies. You can get more information on that at: www.BurnTheFat.com Train hard and expect success always, Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS  About Bodybuilding & Fat Loss Coach, Tom Venuto Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilder, an NSCA-certified personal trainer, certified strength & conditioning specialist (CSCS), and author of the #1 best selling diet e-book in Internet history, "Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle.” Tom has written hundreds of articles and been featured in IRONMAN, Natural Bodybuilding, Muscular Development and Men’s Exercise. To get more information about Tom's e-book about natural fat loss, visit the home page at: www.BurnTheFat.com
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