Losing Fat is Hard

Mindset & Fat loss

Fitness professionals like to make out how easy losing fat is, I mean it’s just moving more and eating less right? Well yeah it kinda is just that, producing a calorie deficit by using more energy than you take in. Yet, what isn’t spoken much about it how hard it is to actually achieve this. Here I am going to touch on some of the areas people struggle with and create a bit of a troubleshoot, to hopefully help some of you guys drop fat. I’m not an expert but I’ve been consistently losing weight for the past 7 months, coming from just over 190lbs to now under 170lbs.

So what’s so hard?

Making sure you’re in a calorie deficit.

This is really the start of your fat loss journey, and to be frank it can make or break the entire process. Why? Because most people plunge deep into a diet, they drop calories too fast and add in cardio too quickly. End result is a short term loss in weight, followed by a rebound binge or complete stall. Either way you are not going to be losing fat for long. So you have to find out how to create a deficit, and make it sustainable.

When fat loss stalls, what to do?

Now if you have created a deficit there is going to come a point where you stall out, because our bodies adapt down to burn less energy. This is inevitable and predictable, and will happen. So whatever amount of calories and exercise you previously did now no longer produces a caloric deficit. This can be a real sticking point, especially if you are already doing a lot and not eating a lot. And like I said above, how hard this sticking point is depends on how well you initially set up, but regardless of that each stall gets harder and harder to get over.

When are refeeds/diet breaks appropriate?

Many people will have heard about refeeds, and probably know that they can be a very useful tool in fat loss. However, many have no clue how to go about them successfully. So people decide to wing it, and many use these days as an excuse to have a cheat meal. These can really damage your progress if you are not careful, because typically cheat meals consist of a lot of food, high in fat and therefore high in calories. They are un-calculated and can get right out of control, doing the opposite to what we want them to do.

When social occasions arise, what to do?

This is a biggy, because our social environment really impacts our diet. Say you work in an office and someone brings in treats from their holiday. Or it is someones birthday and you are invited to have some cake. Or god forbid someone invites you out for a drink or meal. These can be approached successfully but are often not, they are often seen as an opporunity to break their diet. People see having a treat as failure, and once you have failed you may as well eat your heart out right. One slice of cake turns into two, plus a cookie and maybe a tub of ice cream later. Just like a cheat meal, this can undo a tonne of hard work.

Keeping motivated for training.

When you are in a deficit you obviously have less energy, as you get leaner this energy deficit gets harder and harder. You go to the gym and cannot hit the weights you used to, progress just doesn’t come. There are no personal records being made, your 1 rep maxes are falling. Not only do you get weaker but just getting through your workouts and recovering takes a lot longer. A session that used to take an hour to complete takes two. This makes training very unappealing.

Find foods that keep you satiated.

The food you once ate becomes less and less filling. You seem to be constantly hungry, even after porridge and egg white omelettes you are searching for food. You hit your macros by midday and try and get through the rest of the day. This might build for days, leading an inevitable diet break, and for some a full on binge, that might last days.

Cravings, making you want to break your diet.

You have a meal plan and want to stick to it, you’re sticking to the 10 foods that burn the fat. Or maybe you just eat clean, and that means nothing processed, you are restricted. There are no no foods, you’re not allowed. And like anything you are told you can’t have you want it more. Your cravings grow and grow, until you snap and what comes next? You guessed it a binge.

Low energy levels.

It’s common sense that when you are trying to burn more than you eat you are going to be low on energy. Especially because so many either drop calories very fast and particularly carbohydrates, our bodies main fuel supply. This makes training hard, let alone life in general. Personally being a full time personal trainer having low energy levels is hard to deal with. Many eventually give in to this, again either binging or dropping their NEAT (non energy activity thermogensis) so low that fat loss stalls.There are many more factors making losing fat hard, but there are so many easy and simple things you can do to make things a hell of a lot easier. As you can see there is a recurring theme here, not setting up the diet right and restriction, causing problems and leading to an inevitable binge and a fat loss journey ruined.

Next week I am going to give you some very simple approaches to help with your fat loss quest.