February 8th, 2008
Plateaus: Why your fat loss stopped
This week, I’m posting an excerpt from one of two recentteleseminars where I was a featured speaker. Recently I had them transcribed and turned into ebooks and MP3 audios that I gave to my customers and members and I wanted to share some of it with you and all the rest of my newsletter readers and blog visitors. This excerpt in particular I think you’ll find fascinating because it explains the real reasons why people hit fat loss plateaus. 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… read on to find out.
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EXCERPT FROM THE “SUPER LEAN” SEMINAR
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QUESTION: Tom, the first question says, “Tom, I know you oftensay that to get to the point to be able to see your abs, youneed to get to single-digit body fat. What if I hit a plateauat about 12% body fat? What do I need to do to break the plateauand get my fat% down to single digits? Should I do more cardio,more weight-training, manipulate my diet somehow?”
ANSWER: You could do any of the above. You could manipulate yourcalories, add cardio type, duration or frequency. You could increasecardio intensity. You could change your weight-training. You shouldn’tlimit yourself.
One of the problems I see with quite a few programs is that they’retoo dogmatic. If you hit a plateau, the person with the mostflexibility in their approach is the person who’s going to be mostlikely 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 nowyou’re not, there’s only one thing that that could mean; you werein 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 plateau:
The first reason you hit a plateau is because your metabolism decreases. While this does not completely stop fat loss, it does slow down fat loss. If you’ve been cuttingcalories, 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 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 theywere a bigger person, but when you’re a smaller person, you don’tneed as many calories, even at rest (your basal metabolic rate is lower).
A third reason is that when you move that smaller body, you’re notburning 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 is that most people either cheat on their diets or they forget to recordpart 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 atestimating how much food we eat.
Some studies have even showed underreporting calorie intake as muchas 50%. In other words, you say, “I’m only eating 1,200 calories aday, but i’m stuck at a plateau!” but you’re really eating 1,800calories a day which doesn’t give you much of a deficit.
All of these reasons for plateaus get amplified in the later stagesof a diet, because biologically speaking, your body is doing everythingit possibly can to get you to go off your diet and to get weightto 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, themore 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. Usuallyit’s nowhere near as difficult for the overweight person to startlosing weight as it is for the lean person to get even more lean. The last 10lbs is usually a lot harder than the first 10.
If you think about it, it’s pretty unnatural from a biologicalperspective to walk around with really low single-digit body fat.It’s not beneficial from a survival-of-the-species point of viewto have low body fat. Sothis metabolic adaptation becomes more pronounced the leaner you get.
you’re also at a higher risk of losing muscle, because extra muscleis 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 isso hard to lose and why it’s hard to break into those single digitsis that you were in a calorie deficit but for all of the reasonsmentioned above, you’re no longer in deficit.
The way to break the plateau then is to:
(1) re-stimulate metabolism and re-set fat-burning andstarvation hormones, and
(2) re-establish the deficit.
(3) KEEP AFTER IT!
The question was, “How do I do that? More cardio, more weighttraining, manipulate my diet?”
You could do all of the above. Eating less or exercising more canboth increase a deficit. But one thing you might want to do first,is give yourself a little break. Take your calories up to maintenancelevel, maybe for a week.
The idea there is not to try to accelerate fat loss, because whatyou’re actually doing is removing your calorie deficit for a shortperiod of time. What you’re trying to do is facilitate the fat losswhen you jump back into it.
It gives your body a physiological break from the stress ofdieting; it resets some of those starvation hormones and stimulatesyour metabolism so when you go back to the calorie deficit, yourbody responds again.
You also get mental break from the diet as well, which makes it easierto stick with the program when you go back to it.
You could also use a calorie cycling approach, to help prevent yourselffrom hitting another plateau, and we already covered calorie and carbcycling in the last call.
I also recommend, because so many people underestimate how muchthey eat, don’t take any chances. Count your calories, or at leastbecome really aware of the portion sizes and maybe even considerkeeping 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 aboutwhat you’re taking in.
Then what you need to do is reestablish that calorie deficitusing 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 longerworkouts, just burning more calories. You could also take the sameamount of time that you’re spending right now and increase yourintensity.
The whole idea is just burn more calories and stimulate metabolism,which gives you your deficit back again or you can pull back yourfood 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 youshould lock yourself in. Use all of the variables and rememberthat there are TWO sides to the energy balance equation, not one.
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I Hope you enjoyed this excerpt, and mostly, I hope you putthe information to good use!
FYI: The burn the fat e-book has an entire chapter devoted tobreaking plateaus including a long checklist of fat loss plateau-breaking strategies. You can get more information on that at: www.BurnTheFat.com
Next week, I’ll send you another excerpt from the “super lean”seminar, with my compliments!
Until then,
Train hard and expect success,
Tom Venuto
Fat loss coach
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