How to get past the hurdles
Last time we touched on why losing fat is hard, and now we are going to delve into each of these hurdles. I am going to give you some tips and tricks on how I approached these and got over them. Fat loss is hard, getting into single digit body fat is even harder, but the same principles apply, just I have had to find every trick in the book.
So what’s so hard?
Making sure you’re in a calorie deficit.
How do you know you’re in a calorie deficit? You first have to estimate how many calories you burn, there are various calculations that can be performed for this one you might want to try can be found
here. Once there you need to create a deficit by moving more and eating less. Now you should be in a deficit you need to track your progress to make sure you actually are. This means taking weight measurements, I recommend you take these at least 4 times a week first thing, and take the average for the week. A loss of 1% of total bodyweight is a healthy and quite sustainable rate for most. If your losing much more or less, you need to adjust your calorie intake or output. For women you might also need to take weekly photos and focus on monthly weight changes instead of daily or weekly, due to the hormonal differences between the sexes.
When fat loss stalls, what to do?
So you will come to a point where the fat just won’t budge anymore, this is when you need to either reduce the amount you’re eating again or increase your output. What you decide to do is very much individual, and down to many aspects. Yet the key is to get into a deficit again. I will note however that dropping 25g of carbs each day would account to 100kcal a day and 700kcal a week. Think how long it would take to do 700kcal vs. dropping a slice of bread out of your diet a day, one seems much easier. However, when food intake gets low the idea of doing 700kcal of cardio gets more appealing. There is a careful balance to be made.
When are refeeds/diet breaks appropriate?
The only people who should be having a refeed are those who are lean. If you are pushing above 15% body fat as a male or 25% as a female you don’t really have a need for a refeed. However, diet breaks may be necessary for anyone, because these have many purposes over and above reducing the negative impacts on your metabolism. A general rule is for every 12 weeks of dieting you take a break. A catch all approach would be to eat at maintenance for a period of 2 weeks. This can vary depending on body fat levels, hormonal responsiveness and psychological factors.
When social occasions arise, what to do?
Plan plan plan. This is my main tip. Diets should be permissive, not restrictive. However, this means you need to plan occasions in. So if you know you are going out later for a meal with family, put it in your food diary early and adjust round it earlier in the day. If you find it hard to avoid treats available at work, make sure you have your own snacks on hand, that fit within your diet. Whatever you do, don’t stress out, if you do slip up, just make sure to get back on track.
Keeping motivated for training.
Getting weaker is no fun, feeling tired is no fun. I know what this is like and training gets tough. What you must do is focus on the process, know you are lifting at your best, and take you eye off the number of kgs pressed and focus on doing your best. The key is to get the work done, performance losses are inevitable and stressing about them doesn’t help the situation.
Find foods that keep you satiated.
This was an interesting one for me, high volume foods seemed to do the trick for a very long time. Such as going for veggies, slow cooking your oats and eating things such as puffed wheat. Great choices are butternut squash, mushrooms, cucumber, leafy vegetables, puffed wheat, beans, lentils, salsa, american mustard, egg whites, courgettes and many more. Yet the point will come where nothing fills the hole. I also found I was bloated a lot of the time, but still hungry, and this wasn’t good for my training and wasn’t comfortable. So I made a switch to starchier carbs, and focussed on making meals and enjoying my foods. Tricking yourself into thinking your eating more is also useful, using smaller bowls, plates, and cutlery. I like to stuff my smaller bowls and eat with a tea spoon, this makes it look like more food and it takes me longer to eat.
Cravings, making you want to break your diet.
This is where flexible dieting really helped me. No foods were off limits, but the amounts were, I have to account for everything. However, so long as I account for what I eat and adjust my other choices round it, I could pretty much eat anything I wanted. That was a major plus. However, sometimes there are things we just cannot fit into our diets. So good ways round it is to make homemade varieties, such as using low calorie wraps for pizza bases, and switching to low fat cheeses. You can also make great tasting protein pancakes and cakes themselves. Something else that helped me was chewing gum, coffee and diet sodas, these gave me a sweet kick and curbed hunger for a period of time.
Low energy levels.
This is almost unavoidable, you have to accept it. However, small things can go a long way. Such as caffeine, energy drinks and coffee have been very handy indeed. However, don’t abuse these as we do get de-sensitized to caffeines effects. I personally restrict myself to 3 larger caffeine servings a day. This is normally 3 Americano’s, I could easily drink more but I know more would lead to more, so having a limit is a good idea. Another thing that helped me in times of low energy was sugar free gum, the flavour it provided kinda hyped up my brain, sounds odd but there is some research showing that flavours can actually help with energy levels. Furthermore, having some good music can really help.
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When it comes to getting through long cardio sessions, having a distraction is great. I could get through 500kcal of low intensity cardio easily if I had someone to talk to. If there isn’t anyone around, and for the most part there wasn’t for me, then podcasts are a good alternative.I hope some of my experiences and tips help you in your fat loss pursuits!