Fitness Tip - Overcoming the Weightloss plateau

Everyone reaches this stage at some point, usually within 2 to 3 months of first starting a new fitness and weight loss regime.
It can be quite demotivating when you first experience this. But it is a natural part of the process. Basically it means that your body has become accustomed to the exercise and eating patterns that you have been using for the last few months and it needs a new challenge in order to progress. You just need to deal with it and move on. Here's how to do that;


Firstly, unless you are considerably overweight, then weight itself is not a good way to measure progress. A true plateau should apply to several areas rather than just weight alone, for example, your physical appearance (Inch loss, BMI, Body Fat, etc.). Your personal best (Strength, speed, stamina, power etc.)

When you first started your original campaign, you made changes to the ways in which you have been eating and exercising. This initially shocks your body into action, by teaching it to become stronger and utilise your food energy more efficiently, hence increasing the efficiency of your metabolism. But your body is a quick learner and rapidly adapts to these changes, so they are no longer challenging.
The phase at which your body is learning to adapt to these new challenges is known by professional athletes and sports people as GAS or General Adaptation Syndrome. Once your body has adapted to the changes, you then reach the plateau phase and this is the point at which you begin to see a slow down in weight loss and fitness gains. This is the point where you have to make changes and introduce a new stimulus to further challenge your body.

So many people make the same mistake, when a starting a new fitness and weight loss regime. They continue doing the same routine week in week out without ever changing it. Then they wonder why they never reach their goals. Well now you know and here's what to do about it when you reach that point.

Continually test;
Make variations to your diet and exercise routine, by incorporating small changes and then monitor the results. Here are some examples as to how you can do that;

1. Awareness - Know your daily calorie allowance;
Being aware of how many calories you can eat in a day will allow you plan your meals effectively. This will ensure that you are eating sufficient calories to prevent the starvation response, but it will also make you aware of the point at which you could be overeating.
Once you know your daily calorie allowance, this will enable to apply other techniques such as Zig-Zagging, meal frequency and Tapering. See below.

To find out your daily calorie allowance check out the Calorie Counter Demo videos

2. Zig-Zagging
You will need to know your daily calorie allowance to do this effectively. But basically it means, restricting your calorie intake for a number of days and then increasing it again to above your calorie limit for one day. You might do this for several weeks. Generally you would zig-zag +/- 250 calories around your daily allowance for example, if your daily allowance is 2200 calories you would eat 1950 calories for 3 days, then 1 day at 2450. This method allows you to use calorie restriction, without the risk of going into starvation response, hence preserving muscle and maintaining metabolism. Body builders use this technique all the time.

3. Resistance Training - Workout with weights
Muscle is calorie hungry. The more muscle you have the more calories you will use. Many people make the mistake when starting fitness to just do CV training such as running, cycling, swimming etc. Whilst these activities will aid muscle development (tone) and preservation to a degree, they will not increase muscle size or mass. This can only effectively be done by training with weights at the correct intensity and volume. Increasing muscle size (hypertrophy) will raise your metabolism, helping you burn more fat.

4. Progression - Change or vary your CV workout
Make variations to your exercise routine by changing the distance, time, intensity, terrain etc. Even change the type of CV workout you are doing. If you are running, try, cycling or swimming. Include high intensity intervals or fartlek training to boost fat burning. Try anything that challenges your body.

5. Change the ratio of Carbs, Protein and Fats
Try experimenting with the ratio of macronutrients for each meal. This can make all the difference in getting over the weight loss plateau. Try eating less carbohydrate and more protein. Even try increasing your fat intake slightly, but remember to adjust your carbohydrate and protein intake to take in to account the increase in calories.

6. Change Meal Frequency
If you are eating three square meals a day - start adding snacks in between. Try to divide your total daily calorie allowance between 5 and 6 meals per day. This helps to keep your blood sugar levels constant and boosts your metabolic rate. For example, if your daily calorie allowance works out at 2000, divide that up as 6 meals at 333 calories each.

7. Calorie Tapering
As above you would divide your daily calories into 5 or 6 meals. But in this case, the idea is to eat more calories in the morning when you are more likely to use them and taper down the quantity gradually in the day by eating less at each meal serve. So you are eating less in the evening when you are more likely to store excess fat.

Adopting any one of the above is a good way of getting over a plateau. But the important thing to remember is test, test, test. Keep tweaking until you find what works for you, don't just stick to what you have always done. There's and old saying, 'If you always do what you've always done, then you will always have what you've got'.

Fitness Tip - How to burn body fat

Despite popular belief 'Long Slow Distance' training is not necessarily the most effective way to burn fat. This type of training is designed to keep your heart rate at around 60% of it's maximum for the duration of the training. But to burn any serious fat, you need to keep going for a substantial amount of time, usually around 45 to 60 minutes. This can often be detrimental to most peoples fat loss goals, because after a certain amount of time you are also burning muscle for energy, which is not good. As you know muscle, is calorie hungry and is necessary to help maximize fat loss.
Most people find this kind of time frame very hard to stick to, because it can be quite tedious and time consuming. By the time you have included a warm up, cool down and stretching session you are looking at well over an hour just for your CV session before you have even started with your resistance session.

A much more efficient way of burning fat and conserving time is to increase the intensity of your workout by adding interval sessions. This also helps to preserve muscle because the workout sessions are often considerably shorter and you are using a combination of different energy systems for fuel.

Interval training involves structured periods of work and recovery time and is aimed at developing cardiovascular fitness and improving your tolerance of training at higher intensities.

Fartlek training (Fartlek is the Swedish term for 'speed play') is another form of interval training, but instead of the interval being structured, the work and rest periods are random.

Fat burning, is accelerated by increasing the intensity of your workout. By intensity, I mean working harder, this will mean increasing your heart rate to around 80 - 90% of its maximum for a shorter period. This will ensure that you burn more calories in a shorter time period. The other advantage of interval training is that it relieves the boredom of just plodding along at the same old speed, which means your workout becomes more enjoyable and challenging.

You can apply interval training to almost any type of CV exercise, but it's important that you work hard on the work portions of the interval to get your heart rate up so that you are burning more calories and using fat for fuel as well as carbohydrate. You need to push yourself beyond your comfort zone. As you get fitter you can begin to decrease the rest interval and increase the work interval. This will quickly and effectively teach your body to adapt to new training conditions and catapult your fitness levels and fat burning ability into new territories.

Fitness Tip - Circuit Training

If you are looking to start fitness but you don't know what activity to do, then how about giving Circuit Training a go?

I have been doing circuit training for over 20 years and its given me great all round fitness, good posture and muscular endurance. I find that it's a great way to keep up my fitness levels now that I have retired from team sports such as rugby and football.

Circuit Training is one of the best all round group activities you can do to improve your overall fitness.

With regards to fitness most people are looking to improve, cardiovascular fitness (CV), muscular endurance and flexibility. A well planned circuit training session will cover all these key elements as well as improving power, strength and balance. Because it's interval based then it's one of the best activities for burning fat.

If you don't know what circuit training is then here's a quick overview.

Read the full article on Circuit Training