Stuck in a fat loss plateau? It’s one of the most frustrating times for anyone who’s been following an intense workout and nutrition plan. If things were going along great and now it seems like your plan is broken, feelings of defeat might start to set in.
Fortunately, with a few smart steps, you can get out of the plateau and back onto seeing the results you desire.
Here’s how.
Assess Your Calorie Intake
Since fat loss, to a large degree, boils down to your calorie intake versus expenditure, this is the first thing to look at.
Are you tracking your calories and macros properly? This is one of the most common reasons for a fat loss plateau. During the initial part of your meal plan, you were religiously tracking every bite of food you ate. You were weighing, measuring, and inputting that data into some tracking program.
Now however, you’ve gotten a bit lazy. You figure you know enough to just ‘eyeball’ the portions.
If this is you, you may need to go back to step one. If you are not accurately assessing how much you’re taking in, this could be the problem at hand. You may be taking in more calories than you think you are.
Accuracy is everything.
Consider A Refeed
If you are tracking accurately, you may have a whole other problem. If you’ve been on a very low calorie diet for quite some time, eventually your body is going to start to adapt. A hormone in your body called leptin, which regulates your total calorie intake as well as your current body fat stores will begin to shift, and with that comes consequences.
Your metabolic rate will begin to slow down and with it, fat loss comes to a halt. Energy levels also typically plummet and getting your workouts in will feel like a drag.
If you can’t remember the last time you had your calorie intake at maintenance levels, a refeed is likely in order. This entails eating a higher calorie (and carb) intake for a period of 1-3 days, depending on how aggressive and long you’ve been dieting.
Bring your calorie intake to maintenance levels, increasing your carbs to at least 150 grams a day or so, and hold it there. Give your body a chance to reset itself so that when you do move back to your fat loss diet again, you start burning fat more effectively.
Remember that this is not a period to indulge in all the junk food you’ve been craving. Keep your food choices similar to what you have been eating, just eat more food overall.
Add Supplementation
Another step you can take to help get yourself out of a fat loss plateau is to add some smart supplementation. L-Carnitine for instance, is a perfect natural product that will speed up the way your body is using fat stores as a fuel source, giving you an edge on fat burning.
When taken properly, it can also help spare muscle glycogen levels, allowing you to workout harder for longer as well.
Furthermore, it also enhances your energy, something that most dieting individuals could definitely use a bit more of.
Use CarnipureTM in the morning and afternoon for best results.
Revamp Your Workout Program
Finally, if none of the above work, you might want to consider revamping your workout program. While most of the time a fat loss plateau will occur due to nutrition reasons, in some cases, it could be due to a stale workout program.
If your program hasn’t changed since you first went on it, your body isn’t being challenged any longer like it used to and that could be the real reason you aren’t seeing results.
Try some new exercises, decrease your rest periods, add a few more sets, or swap your steady state cardio for some HIIT instead.
Just do something to create some change and get your body responding again.
So next time you find yourself stuck in that dreaded fat loss plateau, consider walking through these steps. Are any of them impacting you?
Make a few changes and you’ll quickly find yourself back on track to seeing progress once again.
