Why people get stuck at losing weight — and how to fix it
Does this sound familiar?
You start a new diet (whether it’s keto, IF, clean eating, flexible dieting, etc…) to lose weight. You hope this time to be different because someone online told you that *this* approach is the best way to lose fat.
So you go ahead and give it a try.
I mean, sounds quite promising to not try it.
Monday comes by and you start doing this diet. You start the diet with the right foot and things start looking quite good.
You don’t feel hunger and you start feeling food but above all… you start losing some weight after a few diets or just starting it out.
Maybe this means you’ll be losing a lot of weight quite fast.
But weeks start going by, and by week 3 you stop seeing any progress.
So this is where things start going downward.
You start cutting out calories, doing hours of cardio on a treadmill and stop eating the food you enjoy.
And while these can and might give you results, you realize that no matter what…
you still get stuck.
Just know that getting to a point where you stop losing weight is quite normal.
Here’s why.
Chances are you have heard about the term metabolic adaptation before.
Well, it’s the fancy way of saying that the body adapts to changes you make in order to keep you alive. The body will always look for a balance.
That being said…
When you create a deficit (by whatever approach you do it) and you all of a sudden stop losing weight as you do it when you started, it’s normal.
But the good news is… it’s quite simple to get past these moments.
You only have to continue being on a deficit.
Sounds obvious and quite straightforward (and it is), but fitness experts and everyone on the internet start overcomplicating this process.
It’s no wonder why it’s common to see people eating so low on calories (sometimes less than 1,000kcal a day), doing 2 hours of cardio at least 3 times a week, feeling hungry all the time, yet… not being able to lose another pound/kilo of weight.
I talk in greater detail about how to minimize these moments you get stuck (and of course, how not to get into this last scenario to lose weight) in my ebook Fat Loss On Demand.
But here’s the gist of it:
From whatever amount of food you’re eating right now, don’t go and cut your food intake by half or start adding hours of cardio.
If anything, a 10% deficit from what you’re doing will be fine (or adding 5–10 minutes of cardio to your week — if you’re doing cardio already — will do the job).
How you do the deficit is up to you.
You can lower calories, increase energy expenditure, or a mix of both.
Know that what matters is to make progress as a weekly result, not daily. Sure, you want to track your progress every day, but see how it differs from the previous week or two.
Taking decisions based on daily fluctuations is also a big reason why people start worrying about why the scale isn’t moving and then want to change things when in many cases they might haven’t even needed to change anything.
Now, if you want a more detailed way on how to make sure your next diet is the last one you’ll need to lose those pounds for good, you’re gonna want to grab a copy of my “Fat Loss On Demand” ebook.
Whether you get the ebook and its Bonuses, know that losing weight doesn’t have to be complex or confusing.
Just have what I call the building block of all diets in place and you will make sure that with every kilo of weight you lose, you don’t gain it back.
Keep working hard.
Ivan @ Fitnessthetic
