Back when you first started on your fat-loss journey, it was smooth sailing. You started to make better food choices, you started lifting weights and ...
Back when you first started on your fat-loss journey, it was smooth sailing. You started to make better food choices, you started lifting weights and doing some cardio and week in and week out, the fat was coming off. But then, all of a sudden, your rate of fat loss seems to have slowed and then from there it seems to have stopped entirely. That doesn’t make sense does it? You’re still eating well, you’re still getting your training in, so what’s the problem? So what did you do? You lowered your calories and that seemed to yield a little more results, but then again, you hit that brick wall, and nothing. So you lowered them again, but this time, you didn’t lose any more fat. You tried more cardio and even that didn’t work. Talk about frustrating. What happened?
You’ve tried high carb, low carb, lots of cardio, little cardio, fat burners—the list goes on—but nothing seems to work anymore. That flab isn’t going anywhere.
Frustrating, isn’t it? It’s like riding a bike, and yet not getting anywhere. In essence, you’re just spinning your wheels and getting nowhere for all your efforts?
Your problem may be a damaged metabolism—a very real phenomenon—caused by prolonged dieting. I know that may sound scary, but it’s not as bad as some people make it out to be. With all the extremely low-calorie eating and hours of cardio that some people do day in and day out, it’s actually very commonplace. Rest assured, you’re not alone.
And I’ve got some good news for you. There’s a pretty simple way to repair your sluggish metabolism. Contrary to popular—albeit ill-informed—opinion, metabolic “damage” is not permanent and metabolism does not shut off. Yes, it slows down, but this is actually a normal and expected response when you’re eating sub-maintenance calories.
There is a physiologically-based adaptive response that the body undergoes when eating in a caloric deficit. The hormones that govern metabolic rate and fat loss respond in a way that serves to preserve bodyfat. And the effect is magnified the leaner you get (which is often associated with the longer you’re trying to lose fat). End result? Slower, if not altogether stalled, fat loss. No matter how good your nutritional program, if you’re eating in a caloric deficit, your metabolism will attempt to adjust accordingly.
Ok, enough of the whys. How do we get that metabolism humming again? First off, you need to lose the short term thinking and adopt a longer term mindset. This is critical.
Even though this might go against ‘common wisdom’, you’re going to have to eat more, at least for a little while. Yes, you read that right – eat more, not less. You might find it hard to wrap your head around this concept, but trust me, it’s necessary. However, just ramping right up to an appropriate caloric intake isn’t necessarily the right approach for everyone. There is more than one way to approach the repair but I’d suggest you do it in steps - systematic and regular increases. This has the benefit of one, allowing you to gradually get used to eating more food, two, potentially preventing some fat regain, and three, maybe even causing some fat loss. So one approach is to determine how much you’re eating on an average day and then take your present intake and just add 10-20% to it every few days until you hit maintenance calories.
Now that you’ve decided to take control of your metabolism and have adjusted your calories to maintenance levels, you want to maintain this level of calories for at least two weeks. Then once things are humming along again, you can return to a caloric deficit. Might you gain some weight at maintenance? Maybe, but some will surely be water, muscle glycogen, etc. Basically nothing to worry about – easy come, easy go. Again, long term versus short term thinking. You need to correct the problem before you can move past it. Two weeks at maintenance will make further fat loss much more likely when you return to your caloric deficit. Chances are you’ll start feeling a lot better though, and you’ll have some great workouts.
There are many great, yet underused fat-loss strategies out there. Planned periods at maintenance eating can be found near the top of that list. Remember, the purpose of the two weeks at maintenance calories isn’t to maintain; it’s to make the subsequent calorie deficit more effective at fat loss. Think of it as a ‘resetting of the system’. Then you hit your deficit again and presto, more fat loss.
With a slow metabolism you can generally assume somewhere in the neighbourhood of 14x bodyweight is going to approximate maintenance calories. It might even be a bit lower depending on how severe your caloric deficit has been and for how long, but keep in mind that metabolism is only going to slow so much. It doesn’t shut off. These maintenance numbers are an approximation, but so are the more complicated equations that can be used to determine caloric requirements.
After the two weeks at maintenance are up, you return to your caloric deficit. However, this time take a moderate approach and shoot for approximately 12x bodyweight in calories. If you’re female and a bit lighter in bodyweight to begin with, you might need to start lower in order to create a sufficient fat-burning caloric deficit. Stay there for a couple weeks, assess your progress, and make adjustments as needed. If you’re getting leaner and your measurements have decreased, stay there. If you’re not, try decreasing calories by another 10% and reassess again two weeks later.
Remember, these caloric recommendations are just approximations; they’re starting points. Everyone is a bit different, so the key to long term success is being able to trouble shoot your program. A quick closing note on that very topic. You need to stay on top of your program. If what you’re doing is not generating the desired fat-loss results, working harder at that same ineffective plan isn’t magically going to start working. If it’s broken, fix it. If your program is not netting you any fat loss, you need to make some adjustments to your program. Don’t keep spinning your wheels doing something that is no longer working for you. Getting the results you’re after? Stay the course. Not getting the results you’re after? Make changes.
There is no reason to continually suffer the effects poor prior fat-loss efforts have had on your metabolism. There is no reason you should have to suffer a permanent sentence of stalled fat loss. Planned periods at maintenance calories are the key. However, there’s more to this strategy than simply repairing a slow metabolism. They can and should be used periodically throughout your fat-loss phase to promote continue fat loss. A periodic resetting of the system will go a long way to maintaining healthy metabolism and and continued fat loss.
