Few things are frustrating as hitting a weight loss plateau. You’re doing all of the right exercises the right way, disciplining yourself to stay clean on your diet and cutting back on the amount of food you eat each day. Still, your weight on the scale won’t budge. If only you could figure out a way to restart your fat loss journey!
Well, we’re here to help. In this article, we reveal four of the most common reasons that people get stuck on their weight loss journey and what you can do about it.
Your Meals are Too Large
Instead of two to three large meals, you should be consuming 4-6 smaller more frequent meals per day. Smaller meals eaten every three hours accomplish the following:
- It provides a constant supply of nutrients such as amino acids to your muscle tissue throughout the day.
- It keeps down your insulin levels so you’re less likely to add body-fat.
- You don’t overload your body with a lot of extra calories that it doesn’t need and that will, consequently be stored as excess body fat.
You’re Starving Yourself
When you severely limit your calories your body will switch into starvation mode. This will cause it to stubbornly cling to every ounce of fat that it can. The best thing you can do is to eat a diet that is balanced with ample amounts of muscle supporting protein, while controlling carbohydrates and fats to meet your daily caloric needs. Everybody’s different but as a general rule of thumb you should never consume less than 10 calories per pound of bodyweight. So, a 130-pound person should not go below 1,300 calories per day.
You’re Gaining Muscle
It’s important to focus on losing fat, and not just weight. If you’re exercising with weights at the same time that you are dieting, you could be gaining some muscle weight at the same time that you’re burning off unwanted fat pounds. The added muscle might be off-setting the pounds of fat that you’ve lost and the scale, consequently, not budging. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Muscle tissue is metabolically more active than fat tissue. It’s also common knowledge that the more muscle you carry, the more fat you’ll burn, and the leaner you’ll look, regardless of how much you weigh.
You’re Doing the Wrong Type of Cardio?
If you are trying to lose weight by focusing on slow steady state cardio, it’s time to mix things up with high intensity interval training (HIIT). HIIT training involves performing short bursts of high intensity training followed by even shorter rest periods. This is repeated for a number of rounds. The original form of HIIT training was based on what is known as the Tabata protocol.
The Tabata protocol involves doing an exercise at maximum training intensity for 20 seconds, followed by a 10 second rest. This is repeated 8 times. For example you might do 20 seconds of burpees, rest for 10 seconds and then repeat this sequences for a total of 8 rounds.
High Intensity Interval Training will not only burn a lot of calories during the workout, it also brings on what is known as the Enhanced Post Exercise Oxygen Consumption (EPOC) effect. This means that you body’s oxygen demand increases significantly for between 24-36 hours after your session so that you have higher metabolic demands. The result is that you will be burning more calories, even as you watch TV hours after your training session is over!
You’re Not Supplementing Correctly
Once you’ve got the fat loss fundamentals mentioned above firmly in place, smart supplementation can fast track your path to getting lean. Smart supplementation means reaching for a formula that crushes your appetite and provides an energy boost without the jitters that come with too much caffeine.
Summary
Losing body fat, as opposed to raw weight, consistently is a challenge. Try implementing our four weight loss plateau hacks to keep the fat loss going.