Weight loss plateaus suck.
If you’re reading this and your weight loss efforts have stalled, I’m gonna assume that you’re following the eat less, move more, calories in vs calories out model of weight loss.
I’m also gonna assume you’re on a calorie deficit diet. And now you’ve hit the dreaded weight loss plateau. In this video, I’m going to show you 6 simple and proven ways on how to break through a weight loss plateau immediately.
How to break through a weight loss plateau
1. Get some sleep
People often miss the boat on this but if you wanna lose weight, then this is your starting point. It’s your lowest hanging fruit. This part is so important that even if I give you the best diet advice and the best workouts on the planet, but if you don’t get this right, you’re not gonna be able to break through your weight loss plateau.
If that’s news to you, that’s a very good indicator why you’re stuck.
Studies show that over a third of American adults are not getting enough sleep on a regular basis. That number probably to the rest of the Western hemisphere. Why is that important? Well, according to research, lack of sleep has a direct relation to weight gain, and eventually obesity, and raises your risk of developing heart disease and other illnesses.
According to one study, those who averaged five hours of sleep were 73% more likely to be overweight than those who slept seven to nine hours. 73 freaking percent! All because you’re not getting enough sleep.
The math is pretty simple. The less you sleep, the more you weigh. You need to take your sleep seriously. I’ve literally never met anybody who complained about getting adequate sleep.
So how do we fix this? Captain Obvious here. Get some sleep. Ideally anywhere between 7-9 hours in a pitch black room every night. Try to stay away from any screen that emits light at least an hour before you go to bed. That’ll help your body align with your natural circadian rhythm.
2. Track your macros
If you don’t track what you eat, your diet will always be a guessing game. Even thought you’re “eating healthy”. You simply can’t control what you can’t measure. And we’re terrible at estimating how much food we actually eat. In one study, obese people reported consuming about 1,200 calories per day. However, a detailed analysis of their intake over a 14-day period showed that they were actually consuming nearly twice that amount, on average. Talk about complete denial.
Let’s use nuts for example. A lot of people of people snack on them. Right? And it’s generally considered healthy for you. But there’s a big difference between snacking on a handful of almonds that you carefully measured vs eating an entire bag.
Listen, tracking your calories and macros can provide concrete information about how much you’re actually taking in. I know it can be tedious at first but this will allow you to make the necessary adjustments in order to break your weight loss plateau. I use an app called MyFitnessPal to track my macros and it’s been a complete game changer when it comes to my diet. If you’ve never heard of the app before, then make sure you check out my video tutorial.
3. Cut Back on Carbs
If you have excess body fat that you wanna lose and you’ve hit a weight loss plateau, the most direct path to breaking that plateau is by cutting out carbs. Especially processed carbs and sugar.
And the simple explanation on this is out of all three macronutrients, carbs, especially refined carbs spike the hormone insulin the most. And if you’ve been watching my videos, you’ll know that insulin is a very important hormone in your body. It’s the hormone that controls your body weight. All you need to know is that if your insulin levels are high, you can’t access your body fat for energy. You just can’t. So high insulin blocks fat burning. Which means that the opposite is also true. I’m talking about the high fat, low carb diet.
Multiple studies have now confirmed that low carb diets are extremely effective for weight loss. How effective? Check out my private coaching clients.
And back to cutting out carbs. One large review of 13 studies with follow-up lasting at least a year found that people who consumed 50 or fewer grams of carbs per day lost more weight than those following traditional weight loss diets. This diet by the way is more commonly known as the ketogenic diet.
It’s an unbelievably powerful tool when it comes to breaking through a weight loss plateau. The keto diet reduces your appetite, it increases fat loss compared to a standard high carb/low fat diet, it lowers triglyceride levels, it increases levels of good HDL cholesterol, it reduces blood sugar and insulin levels, and is unbelievably effective when it comes to reversing metabolic syndrome.
Low-carb diets have consistently been shown to reduce hunger and promote feelings of fullness more than other diets. In addition, they cause your body to produce ketones, which have been shown to reduce appetite.
This may lead you to unconsciously eat less, making it easier to begin losing weight again without hunger or discomfort. Who knew that eating more cheese, butter, eggs, and bacon could be the key to breaking through your weight loss plateau. If you wanna know more about the keto diet then make sure you check out my video about it.
4. Manage Stress
This is a big one. Stress is such an under appreciated topic but nonetheless just as important part of breaking through your weight loss plateau.
Here’s the problem wth stress, specifically chronic stress. In addition to promoting comfort eating and triggering food cravings, it also increases your body’s production of cortisol.
If you don’t know what that is, Cortisol is known as the “stress hormone.” and it triggers the fight of flight response in your body. Your pupils dilate, you get a surge of adrenalin and your body floods your blood with glucose for immediate use. And in short term situations, this isn’t a bad thing. This is what allows you to outrun somebody that’s trying to rob you or you can use that extra energy to fight off that person. Either way, it doesn’t matter. You’re only dealing with stress for that short amount of time.
The problem is in today’s modern society, that’s not what happens. Right? From students stressed out of their minds studying for exams, to relationship problems. Maybe you’re going through a long drawn out divorce process and you’re dealing with legal problems, maybe you’re having a hard time making ends meet. Or maybe you’re going through a combination of all those things.
Either way, you’re constantly stressed and it never goes away. And that’s the problem. Chronic stress means you’re producing too much cortisol and your body’s response to this is to put on weight. Usually around your belly. So if you’re chronically stressed, that’s a very good indicator why you’re not losing weight.
Listen, stress is a part of life. It’s like death and taxes. But there are definitely things that you can do to help manage it better like practicing meditation, journaling, and finding a community.
5. Slow down your workouts
Raise your hand if you’re currently racking up a dozen or so hours of cardio workouts each week or you’re hitting the gym every day for prolonged training sessions targeting every single muscle fibre in your body.
If that sounds like you, then your workouts might actually be contributing to your weight loss plateau.
Remember, exercise is good for you. It has many benefits. But weight loss isn’t one of them. 90% of your body composition success is determined by how you eat.
The details of your exercise program, specifically the amount of calories that you burn which is what we commonly consider the determining factor for weight loss is much less influential than you might think. Listen, just because it says you burned 300 calories on the treadmill doesn’t mean that you can have a donut afterwards. It doesn’t work like that. You simply can’t outrun a bad diet.
Reducing body fat is all about hormone optimization through a low insulin producing diet and of course exercise has a place but not until you’ve moderated the wildly excessive insulin production in your diet and again, cutting carbs especially processed carbs is the fastest way to get there.
This might be a tough pill to swallow but the calories that you burn during your workout minimally contributes to your fat loss goals. Instead, exercise stimulates a compensatory increase in appetite. So you eat more calories when you burn more calories. That’s why the calories in vs calories out model doesn’t work. And I think we’ve all been there before. Think about how big your appetite is after a long hard workout. You just wanted to eat everything in sight, right?
Listen, I love working out. I’m a competitive weightlifter. But I encourage you to reframe your perspective from more is better to brief and intense is better. Make your hard workouts even harder but not longer or more frequent.
You don’t always have to go balls to the wall every time you go to the gym. It doesn’t always have to feel like a near death experience. In fact, for the average Joe who just wants to look good shirtless, you can actually get extremely healthy and fit with just a few hours per week of basic walking and moving around doing comfortable cardio workouts, combined with a couple of strength workouts and some high intensity interval training workouts.
Try not to be married to such a regimented routine. Like you don’t always have to do legs on Monday, then on Tuesday you do chest, and so on. You don’t have to be consistent. In fact, it’s better if you’re inconsistent with your workouts.
6. Fast intermittently
If you’ve followed tips one through five and you’re still having a hard time losing weight, then intermittent fasting might just be the ultimate way to break your weight loss plateau.
And the concept is pretty simple. It involves going for short periods of time without eating, typically between 16–24 hours. This pattern of eating has been credited with promoting amazing health benefits like:
- Improved mental clarity and concentration.
- Fasting induces fat loss.
- Lowered blood sugar levels.
- Improved insulin sensitivity. I mentioned this earlier how important insulin sensitivity is when it comes to controlling your weight and breaking through weight loss plateaus.
- Increased energy.
- Fasting reduces inflammation.
- Lowered blood cholesterol, particularly your small LDL particles. The stuff that actually causes heart disease. F
- Helps prevent Alzheimer’s disease and even reverses the aging process because of the growth hormone response in your body.
Pretty impressive, right? And I always say that weight loss might be the least impressive benefit of fasting when you consider all the improvements in your bio markers from simply taking a break from eating.
A review of several intermittent fasting studies found that it led to a 3–8% weight loss and 3–7% decrease in waist circumference within 3–24 weeks. Talk about the ultimate way to break your weight loss plateau.
Now this is one of my favourite questions to ask anyone with excess body fat that wants to lose it but is stuck with the conventional wisdom of being in a caloric deficit for too long while eating six small meals a day.
What do you think will happen if you take a break from eating? Seriously. What do you think will happen if you don’t eat? That’s right. You’re gonna lose weight. A lot of weight.
Listen, it’s not about eating less, that’s just gonna slow down your metabolism. It’s about eating the right types of food that turns you into a fat burner and fasting intermittently.
Remember, body fat isn’t just there for looks. It’s stored energy waiting to be used. Think of it as granola bars strapped to your body. All you have to do is give your body a chance to access it. When you take a break from eating, like let’s say you skip breakfast, think of it as your body eating your fat stores for breakfast.
But again, the key determinant of that is insulin because you have to open up those stores of body fat for you to burn, and that only happens when your insulin levels are low. And the easiest and fastest way to drop your insulin level is through fasting. That’s why it’s so effective when it comes to helping you break through your weight loss plateau.
As always, if this was helpful, share it with a friend who could benefit from it as well!
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