CategoriesFat Loss Nutrition

5 Reasons Your Fat Loss Has Stalled in 2019

We’re smack dab in the middle of that time of year where people start to falter on their New Year’s resolutions. It’s okay, you’re certainly not the only one and there’s no need to be too hard on yourself.

Fat loss can be tricky, and oftentimes what derails many people are simple “things” they may be oblivious to. My buddy, P.J. Striet, who’s a fantastic fat loss coach, was kind enough to contribute today’s guest post.

Enjoy.

Copyright: klenova / 123RF Stock Photo

5 Reasons Your Fat Loss Has Stalled in 2019

I know: you vowed and resolved to get all “shredsville” come January 1st.

If it’s working out for you thus far, fantastic…commence to kicking more ass.

But if you started out strong that 1st week or two of the new year, and now maybe things seem to be flaming out like season two of your favorite binge show you had such high hopes for, well…it’s no mystery as to why.

Here are FIVE likely culprits (for many it’s more than one as if one breaks down others seem to synergistically follow) and how to get back on the track to looking like Rambo or Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2.

#1: You Were Not in The Correct Caloric Deficit to Begin With

A common problem I see in New Year’s dieters (or frankly with anyone who decides to lose fat at any time) is that they take a qualitative approach. That’s a fancy way of saying they vow to “eat clean,” make better choices, exercise portion control, etc.

And hey that’s great.

That’s a positive step in the right direction for many.

However, the reality is…what gets measured gets managed.

While qualitative nutrition methods can work, I typically only see them working for a short while before someone stalls. It’s kind of a crap shoot: maybe you are in a caloric deficit on some days and on others maybe you are not. And over the course of time, you will eventually stall using the “I’m trying to eat cleaner/better” approach.

If you want to bake the best cookies, you don’t look at the box and say “Ok, I need eggs, milk sugar, oil” etc. and just start throwing random amounts of those in a bowl and mixing them up, hoping for a jaw dropping finished product. No, instead, you’d not only have the right ingredients, but you’d also measure out the ingredients-what the box calls for to get the best result-in the proper amounts.

So, if your fat loss has already started to sputter out into the new year, you may want to consider moving towards a more quantified approach.

That means setting calories somewhere between 10-12 calories/lb. of body weight, making sure protein is where it needs to be (.8-1g/lb. of bodyweight), and drawing up a meal plan for yourself which fits that mold. I can virtually guarantee you’ll start moving again.

#2: You Have A Concrete Meal Plan but Your Compliance Sucks Dog Ass

Shock-A-Khan alert: having a perfect, macro-optimized meal plan on paper means little if it’s not implemented and followed. For whatever reason, that’s a difficult thing for people to wrap their heads around but I digress.

In my experience in working with hundreds of fat loss hungry clients over 20 years, compliance to a plan has to be 90%+.

That’s the result getting range.

Fall into the 70’s or 80’s?

Expect maintenance (at best) or a little regression.

Fall below that?

Well…I don’t think I have to tell you and won’t insult your intelligence (although many are dumbfounded as to why they are not dropping doing things half the time, but, once again…I digress).

via GIPHY

Many will say “that’s just too regimented and stringent…that just doesn’t fit into my lifestyle!” Well, sorry: It is what’s required. If you want the prize, you have to do what’s necessary. Your prior lifestyle put you in a bad spot-to a point where you wanted to change and lean up-so you can’t really expect things to mesh with YOUR lifestyle…not logically.

This is now your new lifestyle.

Beyond that, 10% or so of the time, you can loosen it up a bit.

Let’s put that in perspective.

If you eat four times a day, 365 days/year, that means you can be off your plan 146 times per year and still get some great results.

That’s hardly dietary prison.

It’s just the lifestyle.

And, again, if getting leaner and losing fat (and then maintaining it) is something you say you want to do, then you can hardly moan about what it entails. You are not being forced. It’s a choice.

#3: Your Preparation Is “No Bueno”

This goes hand-in-hand with point #2.

Preparation drives compliance and compliance drives results. If your prep isn’t up to snuff, the entire thing falls apart.

Yes, meal prep is a big component of this.

There is no “ideal” way to meal prep, and different strategies work for different people based on life circumstances. Some bulk prep for the entire week. Others bulk prep for a few days or bulk prep only certain items (like cooked meats) for a few days and then do it again mid-week. Some people bulk prep some items for the entire week and prep “on the spot” for other foods. Some people do a hybrid of all what I just listed.

No matter what you do or how you choose to do it…you need to DO IT!

 

Preparation also means getting in your calendar (Sunday IS A GOOD DAY FOR THIS 🙂 and trouble-shooting the week ahead, identifying potential roadblocks, and, MOST IMPORTANTLY, plotting out your desired off plan meals/special occasions (TRUE special occasions…NOT “Wine Wednesday”).

Get in your meal adherence tracker (there are several online or just create one in excel or google sheets)) and mark it all off ahead of time, to include your pre-determined off plan meals.

I tell my coaching clients to mark every meal off for the week as 100% compliant and then back track, plotting out when they might be or want to be off plan while staying within the result getting range of compliance (90%+). Then you have the entire week laid out in front of you and you expect success.

It’s on paper.

It’s then just a matter of doing what you said you’d do and honoring the contract you made with yourself.

#4: You Are Getting Caught with Your Hand in The Cookie Jar (Extras)

If you have a sound, quantified meal plan, are following it with a high degree of compliance, are prepared…but your fat loss is stalling, or you are regressing…you might want to be honest with yourself about the extras.

The bites.

The licks.

The spoon fulls.

The hand fulls.

The four glasses of wine you forgot about last week.

The two times you finished up your kids’ uneaten chicken tenders or mac and cheese.

Just understand, a little of this + a little of this + a little of this will eventually not be so insignificant anymore and can either drastically reduce or wipe out the caloric deficit you are in on paper. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had to dive deep with clients who are reporting 100% compliance to a plan which has them in a large deficit but are either consistently stalling or regressing (because it’s rarely physiologically possible for that to be happening). When I start to ask them if “maybe they forgot about some things”, the vast majority of the time, well, they have.

If this is “you” …clean it up.

#5: Your Off-Plan/”Cheat” Meals Are Outrageous

As I said above, there is room for deviations from your meal plan (10% or so) while still getting great fat loss results.

That said, if your off-plan or “cheat” (and hey you are only cheating yourself) meals leave you feeling and looking like that guy Kevin Spacey fed to death in the movie Se7en…waaaaayyyyy too much.

“But I only had two cheat meals last week!” is a common thing I’ve heard from clients over the years.

When I ask them what those entailed, Joey Chestnut would have been appalled.

You can, in fact, derail all your weekly progress in a meal or two (typically on the weekends).

It’s really not that hard.

So, if you are going to be off your plan (and you can), it needs to be kept mindful. You need to act like and eat like an adult. You can’t look at these meals as a reward (are you a dog?) or an opportunity to “get it all in”.

That’s disordered, low-achiever thinking.

Wrap Up

So, after all that, if your New Year’s attack on fat isn’t going quite as you’d enthusiastically hoped for on January 1st…where are you falling short? It’s one or more of the above…trust me. Be honest and introspective with yourself and course correct.

If you don’t, you’ll be back again January 1st, 2020 vowing to do the same deal, and this whole thing stays on repeat like a bad Spotify workout playlist.

About the Author

P.J. Striet is a 20+ fitness industry veteran and the owner of Revive Fitness Systems LLC, an online coaching company solely dedicated to helping the general adult population meet their fat loss goals. His work has been featured in the likes of Shape, Women’s Health, Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, Vanity Fair, and he has also contributed to several popular fitness industry books, in addition to authoring his own, The 60-Second Sweat.

You can find out more about him and his services at www.revivefitnesssystems.com or on his IG HERE.

CategoriesFat Loss Strength Training

The Tenets of Fat Loss

UPDATE:  The original title of the post was The Tenents of Fat Loss.  As in “tenents,” a word that doesn’t even exist.  I meant to say tenets. My bad (and thanks to the 17 or so people who pointed out my mistake.).  There I go again making up new words!

I don’t claim to be an “expert” in anything.  Actually, that’s false.  I am an expert in somehow forgetting to clean all the dirty dishes in the sink before I leave for work every morning, much to my girlfriend’s annoyance.

Oh, and I can crush 90’s movie trivia.

But other than those two things, I don’t claim to be an expert in anything.

Which is why I’m amazed as to how often that claim – being an expert –  is tossed around. Especially in the fitness industry. I once had a 20 year old – Like, still an undergraduate 20 year old –  email me and claim he was an “expert” in lumbo-pelvic-hip anatomy and rehab.

Okay dude, calm down. How bout you pass Kinesiology first, and then we can talk.

And of course the internet is rife with Paleo experts, low-carb diet experts, kipping experts, heart rate variability experts, strength experts, body recomposition experts, experts, experts, experts.

Maybe it’s just me, but unless you’re a NASA rocket scientist, or a medical researcher, you’re not an expert, mmm kay?

Thanks to Dean Somerset for the hilarious pic!

Alas, we can talk all we want on what it actually means to be an expert – they do exist – whether it’s education, years of experience, real-world application of said education, but it’s not going to prevent people from putting the term into their bylines.

With that teeny tiny rant out of the way, I’m going to take a little time this morning and discuss fat loss.  More specifically what I feel are the main tenets, criteria, or components of effective, efficient, and long-term fat loss.

Note: I am not an expert (but I play one on the internet)

In my defense: while I don’t claim to be an expert, this isn’t my first rodeo, and I do train people – in person – on a daily basis, so I do feel that gives me some degree of credibility.

I guess the first point to tackle is to make the differentiation between fat loss and weight loss.

Weight loss is easy.

Don’t eat or drink for a day, go take a dump, cut off a limb……..SHA-zam, you just lost some weight.

Fat loss on the other hand, is a different ball game and takes a little more attention to detail.

Granted I’m playing with words, but it’s technically true.  I won’t belabor the point here, but if you’re interested I wrote on the topic of Weight Loss vs. Fat Loss HERE.

Some people do need to lose weight.  If we’re referring to a morbidly obese person, then I’m not going to be overly concerned with the ratio of muscle loss to fat loss. This discussion changes for someone who’s 50 lbs overweight – who runs the risk of developing a plethora of markers which can affect their health and well-being – as compared to someone who’s 8% body fat and four weeks away from a photo shoot or from stepping on stage.

For the sake of this blog post, lets assume we’re not referring to the morbidly obese person.

If that’s the case……

Make no mistake, regardless of the end game (photo shoot, content, or you’re just looking to bring sexy back), MAINTAINING AS MUCH MUSCLE MASS AS POSSIBLE – especially when dieting  – IS THE KEY TO FAT LOSS.

You do not want to sacrifice muscle mass.  Or, at the very least, you want to minimize its loss as much as possible.  More on that in the link I provided above.

Stealing a funny anecdote from my buddy, Mark Young, coach at Lean Body Consulting, the keys to physique improvement (in order of importance):

Makes a ton of sense to me, and I doubt there are many reputable fitness professionals who would disagree.  Although, admittedly, we LOVE to argue about the minutia.

Take nutrition for example.  Everyone knows – or, they should know – that in order to promote fat loss you need to elicit some sort of caloric deficit (calories in vs calories out).  It’s science, there’s a law to back it up (Law of Thermodynamics.  And yes, I realize there are 4, and one is called the Zeroth Law, which is snarky. For simplicity I’m referring to the 1st Law and maybe elements of the 2nd Law, and even then I understand that even those can be interpreted into a million and one different things. Why don’t you just get off your high horse, huh???), and I find it comical that people debate it as if they’re the one example unique flower in all of recorded human history to defy it.

Calories count

^^^^ I understand that the above article doesn’t make the distinction of fat loss vs. weight loss, and I also understand there are other variables that come into play, but I do feel that the first talking point comes down to how many calories someone is eating on a given day.

If someone isn’t losing weight/fat, the obvious starting point is a discussion on their nutrition and whether or not (s)he is ingesting too many calories.

If you have 20 or so minutes to spare you can check out the EPIC thread that started on my Facebook page with people arguing over the article HERE (just scroll down a bit).

As the saying goes:  you can’t out train a poor diet.

Dieting for fat loss can bite the big one at times. It sucks.  Some days you’re going to want to stab someone in the throat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B80r9rE-DXg

But it’s a moot point, I feel, to argue that a caloric deficit isn’t what’s needed or that calories somehow don’t matter so long as it fits your macros, yo!  Yes, other factors come into play once someone is already pretty lean, and looking to get leaner – meal timing, meal frequency, the interplay of hormones, even macros!

But for 90% of the people out there reading, 90% of the time, calories in vs. calories out matter.

And it should be said:  just telling someone to eat less and move more defeats the purpose and is borderline counterproductive. As fitness professionals it’s our job to educate our clients and to arm them with the skills necessary to succeed. It’s imperative that we teach them habits that will stick and help them not only get from Point A to Point B, but to stay there.

People aren’t dumb. They understand that crushing Taco Bell every night isn’t the best choice, and it certainly won’t help them attain their goal(s). It’s our job to figure out WHY they’re going to Taco Bell and to set up preventative strategies to help them avoid it.

It could be something as simple as outlining an alternate route home from work.  Or maybe it’s coaching them on better food choices. I don’t know, it could be dozens of things.  The point is: WE NEED TO DEVELOP HABITS.

And lets briefly discuss lifting heavy things.

As I noted above, the key to fat loss it to limit the amount of muscle loss.  What makes muscle, keeps muscle.

Lifting heavy things provides the stimulus the body needs to keep muscle.  One of the biggest mistakes I think many people make when following a fat loss plan is ramping up their training volume to ungodly levels.

The mentality that more is better takes over, and it’s just not true. I’m actually more of an advocate for dedicated strength training when dieting for fat loss.  Sure, other things like finishers, circuits, medleys and what not can help expedite the process….but for all intents and purposes, training should be geared towards MAINTAINING MUSCLE MASS. And low(er) rep, non-sadistic volume strength training is often the right course of action.

Not always, but kinda always.

In Closing

I’m in no way insinuating that my way is the only way, and I realize that this is a far-stemming topic that entire books, DVDs, and television infomercials have been dedicated towards.

I just wanted to hit on a handful of “big rock” talking points – namely, that calories do in fact matter and strength training is an often overlooked component – I feel are important to the discussion.

There are many, MANY other things tethered to fat loss – not to mention subcomponents that can (and should) be tweaked depending on one’s needs/goals/experience level/progress.

Have your own points to sound off on?  Share them below.

CategoriesFat Loss

The Forgotten Keys to Fat Loss

I don’t consider myself a “fat loss” guy per se.  I spend the majority of my days working with athletes ranging from high school all the way to the professional ranks helping them move better, run faster, lift more weight, throw harder, or whatever their respective sport may be, I just try to help them become a little bit more awesome compared to when they first walk through our doors at Cressey Performance.

This isn’t to say that some of the athletes that show up don’t need to get rid of that spare tire around their waist. But in the grand scheme of things, when it comes to fat loss, the only time I really place an emphasis on it – or at least go out of my way to make it a priority – is when I work with general population clients who come to the facility to get their ass kicked to get their sexy on.

It’s with that in mind that I recently wrote an article for Livestrong.com which sheds light on two forgotten components of fat loss – directed specifically to those people who are frustrated that, despite being inundated with a literal avalanche of information on the topic, are still fighting the battle of the bulge.

Two favors, if I may:

1.  Read the article HERE.

Or

HERE (<— In case you needed bigger letters).

2.  Once you read it, and if you thought it was pretty baller, please “Like” it  on Livestrong’s page. Or Tweet it.  Or better yet, do both!  I want to send a message to them that the TonyG.com empire are a loyal bunch.

If you don’t like it, that’s cool. I’ll just remember that the next time you need help moving into your new apartment.

Or the next time you need to borrow some money because you happened to “forget your wallet.”

Or the next time you need affirmation that the girl you’re currently dating isn’t some uppity skank who thinks she’s better than everyone else.

I DIDN’T WANT YOU TO READ IT ANYWAYS!!!!  YOU’RE RUINING MY LIFE!!!!!! AHHHHHHH.

*slams bedroom door*

3. In all seriousness, though, I’d appreciate any feedback or insight or opinions on the article.  Thanks everyone!