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Hi I am following proper diet and doing exercises regularly. But why can’t I lose more weight, as expected? Have I hit a weight loss plateau?
This is a common question that comes to the mind of many of us in our weight loss journey. The common feelings are:
My friend or colleague is getting better result following same diet and exercise
Something is wrong with my diet
My weight loss plateau has come and I cannot lose more
My exercise may be not right and hence results are not upto mark
Perhaps I have some underlying disease condition which is undermining my progress
As a witness of Getindiafit group where several people are following weight loss journeys , I have seen these questions coming in mind of several clients. But that’s a great sign. You have to introspect your fault or shortcomings before blaming it on your guide or your diet/exercise regimen.
Weight loss is a science as well as an art. If you follow the science properly, do the recommended diet, exercise, lifestyle modifications and take care of the medical causes, you have to lose fat. But surely a person with 30% body fat can lose weight much quicker than a 15% body fat guy. Our body, like the laws of the universal, try to move towards a set point. You cannot force it that easily when you are so near it.
Diet, exercise and lifestyle modification can be boring but effective. You cannot follow exactly same diet and exercise pattern throughout your life. You have to modify as well as mix and match these intelligently so as to stay happy and fit. You should deprive yourself for life in quest of fitness. Here comes the marriage of art and science, for your weight loss and fitness journey.
But still we, as mortals tend to be unhappy with not meeting expectations, comparing and contrasting with others. Rather than getting frustrated, let us discuss what the hell has happened, so that why we cannot break the plateau or what has caused the slowdown.
My friend or colleague is getting better result following same diet and exercise:
Imagine a bodybuilder with 10% body fat and a fat, sedentary office guy with 30% body fat. Do you think same exercise and diet will cause same effects on weight loss?
The fat guy can easily lose 30% fat with simple effort whereas our bodybuilder will struggle to shed even 3 to 4 % with much higher effort.
Even the same food cooked at home and eaten outside are different. There is a term called ‘hidden calories’ where you cannot calculate the amount of oil, sugar, spices and other ingredients inside it. The guy preparing the food at home, measuring the weight of each component and calculating their macros are at better control of things.
Our body does not like to shed fat below a certain level. Fats are necessary to survive, that is why 3% for men and 10% for women has been set as essential body fat. You can’t go below that. Even staying at those ridiculously low body fat is almost impossible. Thus for higher body fat guys it is much easier to lose weight. Also remember, if you are at a higher body fat level, it is generally easier to shed weight in the beginning (although it is mostly water weight lost due to carb restriction you have started). It gets tougher in later stages, by the way.
Genetics, age, dietary history etc. also play an important role too. Recent studies prove the role of obesity gene running in family. Genetics can be altered too, but that is not easy. Some people with booming metabolism find it a cakewalk to lose weight. The teenagers or those at their twenties have higher resting metabolism, better insulin tolerance and capacity to build muscles easier. No wonder the younger guys can lose fat much easily than older or middle aged guys.
Also consider if you have been through deprivation in diet over long period of time. Remember, long term diet with negative calorie balance can lead to metabolic slowdown. Body tries to hold onto fat more stubbornly. The metabolism, has to be revved up (maybe by refeeding, weight training, HIIT), to break the plateau you have faced.
Have you compared the intensity at which the you are working out with others. Just going through some machines randomly with lower weights in gym is a hell lot different from somebody doing regular heavy squats and deadlifts. Someone doing ass busting HIIT for 30 minutes are miles ahead than one walking on treadmill at 6km/hr for more than 30 minutes. Yes, intensity and nature of exercise matters a lot in weight loss.
Even some diseases and metabolic disorders can hinder your weight loss journey. Somebody with hypothyroidism, insulin resistance, PCOS etc. will find it challenging to lose weight. More on it later.
Thus never compare yourself to anyone else. Every person is different and his journey is going to be different. Even the speed of weight loss is also going to change with time. So, you can neither compare it with yourself previously nor with your friend or colleague.
Something is wrong with my diet:
I have already mentioned the hidden calories in food. Watch out for the terms like ‘crunchy’, ‘crispy’, ‘creamy etc. These means extra fats delivered to enhance taste. The Mocha, Frappuccino etc. with cream and sugar variations of so called harmless coffee, can provide around 400 calories. So called healthy fruit juices and smoothies can easily destroy your weight loss plan with lots of fructose and sugar.
Even those healthy salads provide lots of calories and fat with those dressings and toppings. Australian dietician Paula Norris has uploaded a picture of two seemingly identical salads on her Instagram. While both looked delicious, one salad contained just 535 calories, while the other contained 995 calories. https://instagram.com/p/BfG7fjnBPlS/?utm_source=ig_embed
The Indian street and restaurant food is even more screwed up. The huge amounts of oil used to cook vegetables and the sugar/full fat milk in the dairy products like yogurt, sweets etc. can be calorie bombs. You can’t get any labels with calories nutritional values for outside cooked food. So try to measure every raw ingredient going into your cooked food for accurate and best measurement. Guesswork has alway failed to measure macros correctly.
Even for cooked vegetables, beware of the amount of oils used. Even low calorie, fibre rich vegetables, can soak high amount of oil and turn into calorie rich fatty food. There is also chance of getting higher amount of trans conversion (most unhealthy fat!) on prolonged cooking at high temperature. Even olive oil, well known as good oil, can convert into trans fat when cooked at high temperature.
Let me give you a simple data to prove my point. 100 grams of uncooked mushroom, which contains 22 calories whereas the same amount cooked in oil can soak to an amount to yield 157 calories!
So, be on guard. To err in diet is easy and you need to be very cautious about it.
My weight loss plateau has come and I cannot lose any more:
Your body has a set point. It gets really difficult to overcome that easily. That is why you can see fat from love handles (in men) and thighs and buttocks (in women) is present in even lean people. So, yes. Weight loss plateau is real and it can be a frustrating experience for many weight losers.
But there is good news too. You can overcome this too. Common methods used are:
Re-feeding once a week or fortnight: Where calorie intake with higher carbs, is increased for a day once a week or may be in a fortnight / month as per client requirement. This is used to address the slowing metabolism. It changes the leptin, serotonin and thyroid level which can boost the metabolism again. This also replete the glycogen level when there has been prolonged carb restriction. In keto dieters weekend carb intake is used (known as cyclic keto diet or CKD for such reasons). Some people call it cheat diet too but it is not cheating, a misnomer.
Weight training: This can easily increase the sagging metabolism and build muscles, the most metabolically active tissue in the body. But simply lifting light weights with low intensity is not enough. If it doesn’t challenge you, it is useless. More on it later…
Reverse dieting: Here calorie intake is slowly increased (maybe weekly and fortnightly) and as weight training plus cardio is added, you get the best of both worlds. Weight training and increased calorie intake keeps your metabolism going on and the cardio and the diet (although more calories but still lower than TDEE) keeps the negative energy balance to lose weight. Please read my post on fat loss calculation made easy, for detailed understanding.
Intermittent fasting: Intermittent fasting (IF) can help with weight loss along with many other benefits including:
• Accelerated fat burn
• Better insulin regulation and growth hormone secretion
• Easier to limit calories
• Better workouts
IF doesn’t affect what or how much you eat, just adjusts when you eat it. It can be done with carb restriction.
My exercise may be not right and hence results are not upto mark:
Are you doing proper exercise for weight loss? Simply walking on treadmill, cycling, rowing and other cardio or aerobics may act upto a point. Even weight training in lower intensity becomes ineffective. Weight training plateau also can be common. How to overcome this?
First remember that weight training is your first priority amongst exercises for weight loss. If you want to lose weight, you must lift heavy, as first priority exercise. Cardio or aerobics are done if you can squeeze more time after completing your weight training schedule for week. Again, HIIT is a more preferred cardio exercise rather than slow cardio now a days for weight loss. More or HIIT below…
Let us talk about weight training first. Weight training without proper intensity is not effective after a certain level. Lifting light dumbbells for curls or bar only squat is simply not enough. It is proved beyond doubt that progressive overloading with right intensity is a must in strength training.
Simply think this way. After a lighter set at 60% of your 1 rep max, choose such a weight that you cannot lift more than 6 times (i.e. Your 6RM). If you can lift more with good form, consider the intensity needs to be increased and repeat the same set again with higher weight. If you can complete the set with failure achieved exactly at 6th rep, congrats… your intensity is spot on. One or two sets of such intensity (where you fail at just 6th rep) is enough.
There are few other popular methods of breaking plateau too. By plateau you can think a condition when you cannot progress in terms of load or reps in 3 weeks. If the above method fails consider the following popular methods:
Forced reps – The last few toughest reps (where you will fail without help) are assisted by a spotter at the sticking point of the lift, commonly used in bench press, squats, curls etc. But spotter must give minimum help at the sticking point only.
Negatives or eccentric training – A load is taken 10-20% more than 1 rep max (may be used more in advanced people) and the concentric (lifting part) is assisted by spotter and the lowering part is done slowly but controlled by you. It is commonly done in isolated movements.
Supersets – Isolated movements where 2 sets of antagonistic muscles (like biceps /triceps or quads/hamstrings) are worked one after another, with little or no rest in between, for better effect. This works both muscles better. Sometimes agonist muscles of different groups are also used as supersets.
Rest pause – After reaching failure a 10-15 seconds rest is taken to replenish some ATP store and squeeze some more reps. A second rest interval can be taken and repeated too. This is commonly done in machine movements.
Drop set – Here after reaching failure, weight is dropped and a few more reps can be squeezed. 2nd drop and repeat can be even more effective. This is commonly done in pin loaded machines and in dumbbells too where you choose slightly lighter dumbbells. (commonly called running the rack!)
Pump training and going for burn – Commonly done in isolation movements where a lighter load is used and done in higher reps (more than 20). After reaching failure, try partial cramping at a partial range of movement to get the ‘burning’ feeling. This is commonly caused by lactic acid accumulation in fatigued muscles.
Isometric – Where the force is exerted but muscles do not contract. Prolonged contracted phase at different parts of ROM helps a great deal to increase its strength. Commonly used technique is pressing against pins in bench press.
Relaxed form – Seem to be like an odd one out but it helps to move more weight and recruits the stabilizer muscles to a greater degree. Commonly used in case of cheat curls to move heavy shot by bodybuilders.
In case of stalled progress in cardios, you may add HIIT (high intensity interval training) to just kick start the gains again. In HIIT, alternate cycles of high and low intensity cardios are used. The ‘high intensity’ interval is correct only if you fail to continue it past 3 minutes. But if you can easily coast on more than 3 minutes that means intensity is lagging.
Normally you should reach fatigue within a minute or two and then rest or continue at a lower intensity.
Commonly cycles, treadmills, elliptical, battle roads, rowing machines can be used for HIIT. For an easy example, suppose you easily jog on a treadmill at a speed of 8km per hour for half an hour. Now start an HIIT programme of 8 intervals of sprinting at 12 km per hour for 1 minute alternating with 6 to 7 km per hour jogging for next 1 to 2 minutes. Continue this for 8 to 10 cycles. If you are not hitting fatigue by 1 to 2 minutes of sprinting, simply increase the speed or incline.
Not only these fancy cardio machines, you can easily do these with burpees, squats, push ups, outdoor sprinting/jogging cycles. Just select the cardio you love and press the gas to fatigue by a minute and slow down… and repeat. If you are not fatigued as hell at the end, you have to press for more… HIIT scores over continuous low to moderate cardio in all comparative studies in terms of fat loss, increased insulin sensitivity, muscle mass conservation (long endless cardios can deplete your muscles)
But whatever exercises you do, for weight loss permanently and in a healthy way, your first priority must be weight training. If you still get time do HIIT in middle days. Consider cardio as nothing other than means to create calorie deficit as in cutting down calories in food.
Perhaps I have some underlying disease condition which is undermining my progress:
Few disease conditions can undermine your weight loss journey:
Polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) – An extremely common condition in women where insulin resistance occurs leading to weight gain. Read my post on details on weight loss in PCOS.
Insulin resistance/pre-diabetes and metabolic syndrome – These go hand in hand. Proper medications, lifestyle modification, weight training + HIIT (simple cardio always not enough) and proper diet can help. Normally low carb and low G.I. food is recommended.
Hypothyroidism – Causes metabolic slowdown and weight gain. Thyroxine hormone along with exercise plus dietary restrictions (avoid brassy vegetables like cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli)
Psychological problems – Depression and anxiety disorder can cause lots of overeating. Even many of their medications add to the weight gain. Good diet and regular cardio exercises can help a lot to improve symptoms as well as helps in weight loss.
Thus, to diagnose and treat these common diseases early is a key to your weight loss programme. A simple blood test of complete hemogram, lipid profile, blood sugar (fasting and postprandial), HbA1C, thyroid profile, LH/FSH (for women only) and an ultrasound of whole abdomen is sufficient to screen the above diseases.
Besides, a liver and kidney function test can be done. This will go a long way in prescribing perfect diet and exercise for the disease undermining your progress.
All the best in breaking the weight loss plateau…
nicely described.. what would be the weight training schedule to gain muscle and fat loss..
https://easyfitnessidea.com/beginners-workout-for-fat-loss/
Please read this for a beginner’s schedule for both…
One of the most common reasons for plateau among those who go on a weight loss journey is – Stress.. Taking a few days off from training and providing enough carbs just will do the trick in such cases
True. I felt this in my case too. Good point.