How To Break Through A Weight Loss Plateau

Let’s talk about the dreaded weight loss plateau.

If you’re trying to lose weight, I don’t think there’s anything more frustrating than being stuck. Because here you are, you feel like you’re doing all the right things, you lose weight at the beginning. Then, boom. You’re in weight loss plateau city.

Unfortunately, most people get stuck there. Or worse, they never get out. They start trending the opposite way and they start putting all the weight back on they initially lost. Sound familiar?

Today, I’m gonna show you 4 ways on how to break through a weight loss plateau so you can start losing weight again. More importantly, keep it off for good.

How To Break Through A Weight Loss Plateau

If you want to know how to break through a weight loss plateau, the first thing you need to do is you need to have an honest conversation with yourself. This is called intellectual honestly. A person is being intellectually honest when he or she, knowing the truth, states the truth.

You need to be honest with yourself. 

Because if you’re not. I could give you the best information on the planet. But if you’re in denial about some of the things you’re doing or you’re just unwilling to change, it’s not gonna work. It’s just not. You’re only gonna be cheating yourself.

So step number one is to take responsibility for your actions. The sooner you can admit this to yourself, the sooner you’re gonna break through your weight loss plateau. 

What I mean is, the faster you can admit to yourself that, it’s my fault. I’m obviously doing something wrong. How do we fix this? The faster you’re gonna start losing weight again. Cool?

You need to ask yourself 4 questions and you need to be intellectually honest when you answer them.

1. Have you made enough changes to your diet?

I want to start with this because I see this come up in the comments of a lot of my videos. 

They usually fall somewhere along the lines of, I’m doing this type of intermittent fasting schedule. And if you’re new, I talk about intermittent fasting a lot on my channel. It’s awesome. You should try it. 

But let’s say you’re doing it, but you’re not losing weight. And I always ask these people. And I try to reply to as many comments as I can. What do you eat? Tell me what your diet is like. 

It’s the exact same thing when people get their workouts in. They get their 10,000 steps. They go to the gym every day but they’re not losing weight.

And the common theme is they’ll say, I still eat this and I still eat that. They still eat bread, rice, and oatmeal every day. They’re basically still eating the same food but just less of it.

Here’s the plain honest truth about this. You can’t keep eating the same stuff that got you here. You can’t keep eating the same thing over and over again expecting a different outcome. That’s the definition of insanity. As an every once in a while treat? Absolutely. But not every day.

Rice and bread are prime examples of this. It’s a big part of everyone’s diets. Whether you’re Asian, North American, or you’re from Latin America, or wherever. You’re probably eating a derivative of grains which is bread and rice. 

But if it got you to a point where you’re overweight, you can’t keep eating it. It cannot be part of your daily diet. I just think it’s kinda lame when people say, “But I grew up eating it. I grew up eating rice.”

So? Change. I’m Asian. I grew up eating rice. I also had a Dad bod because of it. So I don’t eat it every day anymore. Do you know what I mean?

You have to let go of your old identity so you can make room for this new and more awesome version of you to emerge. You have to make space in your life. And you do that by actually committing to changing your diet.

Stop with the thinking that everything in moderation is okay. It’s not. Because it goes both ways. You’re basically also saying that obesity in moderation is okay. 

2. Are you still drinking diet soda/using artificial sweeteners?

This is a big one for a lot of people. Because in theory, this is the dream. You’re drinking something that’s “zero” calories. So you drink this stuff guilt free. So we go to town on it. And it quickly turns into a nightmare. Because I can almost guarantee that this will stop your weight loss goals on its tracks.

But maybe you already know that diet soda isn’t good for you. But you then you discover Stevia and Zevia which is a soda that’s sweetened with Stevia. Same thing. And you think you’ve just hacked weight loss.

And I always like to say that there are levels to this. The higher you get, the better. 

For example, if you’re addicted to coke and you switch to diet coke, then that’s a step in the right direction. Albeit, a very small step. Then you switch to Zevia or putting Stevia in your coffee. That’s great. That’ll get you pretty far if we’re being honest. 

But it doesn’t mean that it’s optimal. Because when you hit that dreaded weight loss plateau again, and you just can’t seem to get rid of those last 5 or 10 lbs, all artificial sweeteners needs to go from your daily diet. Especially when you drink this stuff while you’re intermittent fasting. Why? Because it breaks your fast. 

So think about that. You’re fasting, you think you’re doing good. But you drink diet soda or you put stevia in your coffee? You’re actually inadvertently breaking your fast multiple times ever time you drink this stuff.

So there was actually a study done where they had the test subjects taste artificial sweeteners in their mouths and spit it out. It didn’t even enter their system. They didn’t swallow it. 

When they measured their plasma insulin levels, the taste of artificial sweetener was enough to trigger an insulin response. And when you trigger an insulin response, that breaks your fast. And your body now shifts into fat storing mode.

Because when you taste something sweet, your brain gets the signal that food is coming in. So it sends a signal to your pancreas to start producing insulin. 

But because there’s actually no food coming from these non-nutritive sweeteners. Your brain gets confused. 

So it sends even stronger signals in the form of hunger for you to eat something. Notice how usually get hunger pangs whenever you drink diet soda or put artificial sweetener in your coffee an hour or two after? This is why.

Plus, and this is really important, diet soda and artificial sweeteners also destroys your gut microbiome. The gut is basically your second brain. We simply did not evolve to drink this stuff. 

Our Paleolithic ancestors never drank diet soda or used artificial sweeteners. And we’re still genetically identical to them. Our gut microbiome wasn’t designed to process artificial sweeteners. It’s completely foreign to the human body. 

That’s why diet soda is often linked to obesity instead of weight loss. Diet coke for example was only invented in 1982.

I totally understand if you have some reluctance about this because I was addicted to Stevia. Back then, I would put 3 packets in my morning coffee every day. I was also stuck and couldn’t seem to lose those last 5 pounds. It was the last thing to go for me as well. And when I gave it up, the weight also came off. 

3. Are you still snacking?

I’ve mentioned insulin a couple of times already but again if you’re new to my channel, insulin is your storing hormone. 

Every time you eat, your insulin goes up. Your body shifts not fat storing mode. And when your insulin levels are high, you cannot access your fat stores and burn it for energy. You just can’t. It gets locked away. And insulin is the key. 

A lot of experts consider insulin the master hormone. Because it’s the hormone that controls your bodyweight.

That’s why intermittent fasting is so effective for weight loss because it keeps your insulin at baseline, and you’re able to tap into your almost unlimited fat stores and burn it for energy. 

Unless of course you’re inadvertently breaking it by drinking diet soda and using artificial sweeteners. 

Snacking is the complete opposite of fasting. Because it basically puts your body in fat storage mode all day. Your insulin never gets a chance to get back down to baseline. 

Just when its on its way down from your last meal, but then you eat again an hour or two later, there it is again. You get another spike. 

This by the way is why people don’t lose weight when they’re on a severe calorie deficit but they’re grazing on food all day. You never get out of fat storage mode and your fat stores get locked away even though you’re barely eating anything.

The other problem with snacking is we don’t usually snack on the healthiest stuff. We usually snack on chips, candy, chocolate, flavoured yogurt, rice chips, granola bars, protein bars, or fruit. And we’ll talk about fruit in a second.

And snacking is usually a sign that you’re not satiated from your last meal. Or maybe you’re just bored. And if you’re trying to lose weight, you should probably distract yourself with something else that doesn’t involve shoving food in your mouth. But let’s say you’re just not satiated and you’re hungry. 

4. Are you eating enough fat?

Because of the fat phobia that’s been ingrained in our heads since the 80’s, fat is usually something that we try to avoid. Up to this day. I get anxiety every time I hear someone order a skinny vanilla latte with 5 pumps of sugar free syrup whenever I’m at Starbucks.

And a lot of people still believe that fat makes you fat because it’s calorically dense. It’s gonna clog up your arteries and it’s gonna give you a heart attack. No, no, and no. You should check out this video where I debunk that myth completely.

Fat is essential to every cellular function in the human body. Fat also plays a key role when it comes to satiety because it activates cholecystokinin which is one of your key satiety hormones. 

Think about a nice piece of ribeye steak for example. It’s very hard to overeat it. Because your satiety hormones gets triggered when you eat fats and protein. Which then sends a signal to your brain that you’re full. You can stop eating.

If you’re still scared of fat, they’ve done multiple overfeeding studies where the subjects purposely ate an excessive amount of calories to see what would happen. Just to put this fat phobia myth to rest once and for all.

Sam Feltham is one of the more popular ones to do this. He ate 5,794 calories every day for 21 days. That’s almost 3 times the amount of daily recommended calories for the average man. More importantly, his diet consisted of a low carb, high fat diet of natural foods.

In theory, he was supposed to gain 16 lbs of fat if we’re using the standard calories in vs calories out method. Which is the default weight loss model for a lot of people. Everyone just screams to just go on a calorie deficit to lose weight, right? Well this is the opposite. 

But after 21 days of eating 5,794 calories every day, he only gained 2.8 lbs. But more importantly, he dropped more than an inch off his waist. So he gained weight, but it was lean mass.

And you can bet that he was fully satiated from eating almost 6,000 calories every day. You should check out this video where I debunk this calorie counting method completely.

Just remember that weight loss in its very essence is not about counting calories. It’s about controlling hunger. And fat is an unbelievably powerful tool to turn off hunger. Don’t be scared of it.

As always, if this was helpful, share it with a friend who could benefit from it as well!

Need More Help?

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