The $84,000 Dollar Question
You’ve probably experienced fat loss before when you’ve either gone on a diet or started a new fitness program, right?
And you may have even experienced great results in the first 2-4 weeks. Like, 3-10 pounds of fat loss… or something like that.
Heck, maybe your fat loss exceeded that time line, and you lost fat on a weekly basis for 2 months or so, but you weren’t quite satisfied, and wanted to lose a little bit more fat..
And then….
IT STOPPED DEAD IN ITS TRACKS.
If you’ve experienced that, I feel your pain, I really do.. I get email questions on a weekly basis about this problem.
And the answer lies in the ‘Ole “Eat Less, Exercise More, & You’ll Lose A Bunch of Fat” myth…
And why it’s DEAD FRIGGIN’ Wrong…
Okay, If you’re not sitting down, go ahead and take a seat… if your office door is open, close it…. Because what I’m about to tell you is NOT what you hear everyday. And, quite frankly, is counterintuitive (meaning, you might look at me and think “you’re a fuggin nut-job, Todd, wtf.)
But honestly, if someone would have told me this years ago, I could have gotten rid of my beer belly A LONG time ago…
WHY FAT LOSS STOPS AND HOW TO TELL YOUR BODY TO KEEP LOSING FAT
When we go on “calorie restrictive diets” (calorie restrictive diet in this context is consuming fewer calories per day than your body requires to maintain its weight) we burn fat (and other stuff too, like glucose & muscle tissue in extreme cases.) And when we couple that with a moderately intense workout program, the calorie deficit increases even more.
So let’s look at an exercise example to illustrate this.
Let’s say we need 2000 calories per day to maintain our current weight, but we decide we want to lose weight. So we restrict our calories to 1750 per day and that puts us at a 250 calorie deficit per day. Since we want to lose a pound of fat per week, we also add a daily exercise routine that puts us at an additional 250 calorie deficit. So the total calorie deficit per day is 500 calories per day, right?
Alright, so we’re in a 500 calorie per day deficit, and in the beginning, our body responds by shedding pounds in the way of fat (in most cases). Not 100% will be fat, your body will also shed water weight. So initially, the scale may dramatically decrease, then level off after a few weeks.
It’s after these few weeks pass that you get to a crucial point that needs adjusting.
Since you’re in a calorie deficit and also exercising, your body responds initially in 2 ways:
1) It sheds pounds in the form of fat, water, glycogen
2) Muscles become stronger, more dense, and grow in size (which means there’s a “counter weight” to the fat loss in respect to looking at your weight on the scale)
Because your body is responding to your nutrition and exercise program by increasing your muscle size & density… Your maintenance calorie requirements (remember, this is the number of calories you need per day to maintain your current weight) automatically increases by the sheer fact that you now have slightly higher lean muscle mass.
Without going into a scientific dissertation, an interesting fact to note is that muscle is where fat is burned. The more you have, the more fat you burn.
And this is where it can get a little tricky for us. If more muscle means more fat loss, then in this scenario, we should be good to go, right, because we just added some muscle to burn more fat?
On the surface, this is completely logical..
But WRONG (almost).
It’s right because it does mean you’re able to burn MORE calories and fat now that you have more muscle, but It’s WRONG in the fact that if there aren’t tiny adjustments made to account for the additional calories we’re now burning, we’ll fall into what I call “The Hamster Wheel Effect.”
Since studies show severely calorie restrictive diets cause our body to hold on to fat stores and tap into protein & muscle tissue (since that’s where the nutrients are stored), without adjusting your calories to take into account for the INCREASED metabolic rate…
Fat Loss SLOWS..
…because your body will stop burning fat as fuel and tap into muscle tissue – the very same muscle tissue that’s allowing you to burn more calories.
So, now instead of burning fat around the clock, we sort of turn into hamsters on a spinwheel. We continue the regular calorie deficit at the OLD calculations, continue to exercise and build fat burning muscle, and our body continues to break down that same muscle to use for fuel INSTEAD OF USING AND BURNING FAT…
Do you see what I mean?
It can become a never-ending-cycle.
But here’s the Good News…
YOU CAN BREAK THROUGH THAT CYCLE IF YOU CATCH IT AT THE RIGHT TIME
Remember how fat loss stops because you’re now burning more calories, like, automatically just because you increase your lean mass? Well, All you have to do to beat this sucker is recalculate and ADD calories to your new daily intake.
Counter intuitive to what you’re normally used to hearing, I know.
But to account for the lean muscle mass increase, these additional calories will prevent your body from breaking down muscle tissue to use as fuel and convince it that YOU’RE OKAY and that it’s cool to keep burning FAT as fuel, because you’re gonna keep feeding it.
So, if you’re in a rut, or have gotten in a rut in the past and just gave up..
NOW IS THE TIME…
Jump back on the wagon, and this time, instead of getting frustrated because your fat loss has stopped between weeks 4-8, increase your calories slightly to take into account for your new fat burning machine…
AND YOU’LL KEEP ON TRUCKIN’
I Promise… but don’t take my word for it, give it a shot… what have you got to lose? 
Talk soon,
Todd
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