How to Break Through Fat Loss Plateaus

Learn how to break through fat loss plateaus effectively with these guidelines.

Embarking on the path to weight loss can feel like a triumphant venture initially. You’re making healthy choices, watching what you eat, perhaps incorporating some exercise into your routine, and the pounds are steadily dropping. Life is good until suddenly it isn’t. You hit a plateau, and the scale seems frozen in time.

Plateaus are like stubborn roadblocks on the highway to your fitness goals. They occur when your body adapts to the changes you’ve made, and the once-effective strategies for shedding pounds lose their potency. This can be incredibly demoralizing, but understanding why plateaus happen is the first step toward overcoming them.

When you initiate a new diet or exercise routine, your body responds by shedding weight. However, it’s a dynamic system, and over time, it learns to operate more efficiently with the new conditions. Factors like stress, lack of sleep, and genetic predispositions can also throw a wrench into the weight loss machinery. Even with regular exercise, the most significant player in this game is your nutrition.

Assuming you’ve fine-tuned your diet to perfection—striking a balance, ensuring adequate protein intake, embracing fibre, and keeping your calories below maintenance—you might find yourself stalling on the weight loss front. That’s when the plateau hits and the once seamless progress grinds to a halt.

Losing weight, in theory, is very simple. You need to burn more calories than what you consume on a daily basis. The difficulty lies in all the other variables in between this “calories in, calories out” process. Breaking through this plateau requires a strategic approach. And that is what Mike Israetel talked about in one of his videos that we present to you now.

Dr Mike Israetel, PhD in Sport Physiology and co-founder of Renaissance Periodization, is a well-respected professor in the bodybuilding community. He doesn’t only talk about workouts and fitness tips, he often dives deep into health and nutrition.

Remember, plateaus are a natural part of the weight loss journey. It’s not a sign of failure but rather an opportunity to reassess and recalibrate your approach. Armed with the right knowledge and a bit of resilience, you can navigate through these plateaus and continue your quest for a healthier, fitter you.

Related: Why You Cannot Outrun a Bad Diet

How to Break Through Fat Loss Plateaus

Israetel presents a troubleshooting guide on how to break through fat loss plateaus. It is divided into 8 points.

1. Are You in a Calorie Deficit?

Calorie deficit is the main driver behind fat loss. So, ask yourself, are you in a calorie deficit? You might say yes, but how do you know? To know if you are, or not, you must be losing weight every week consistently, or every two weeks.

If you are not losing weight after two weeks has passed, you are not in a calorie deficit. And to mitigate that, the best answer is for you to simply eat less. But it doesn’t have to be much less, perhaps 250 calories could do the trick already.

Cut 250 calories from your daily diet and see if you lose weight after a week. If that doesn’t work, cut another 250 calories and see if it works. Sooner or later, you will lose weight and that is when you know you are in a calorie deficit.

2. Have You Been Dieting Too Long?

How long is too long? According to Israetel, anything between 12 and 16 weeks has predictable effects. Your NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis) gets too low, your hormones can get your metabolism to slow down, your hunger might go crazy, and the psychological side of your can also get wild.

If that is happening to you, you want to get into a maintenance phase, which is when you eat as many calories as possible that won’t get you to lose weight, but also will not make you gain weight. “Slowly raise calories every week or two,” and after a few weeks you will feel much better because you ate a ton of food but maintained the same amount of body fat.

Do a maintenance phase until you feel psychologic rested, full of energy and no crazy cravings.

This maintenance phase can last between 2/3 of the time you did your diet or for as long as you have been dieting. For example, if you’ve been dieting for 12 weeks, you should do a maintenance phase for a minimum of 8 weeks, but probably closer to 12 weeks.

10 Underrated Habits to Get You Lean Now

3. Lift Weights While Dieting

Lifting weights is perhaps the second best thing to lose weight and overcome diet plateaus, after only your nutrition.

Weightlifting is great for muscle retention, especially since you are cutting on calories, and it will help your body in its ability to burn fat and shape you to a leaner look and, probably, more muscular too.

Related: How to Burn Fat With Weight Training

4. Daily Physical Activity

If you are actively doing physical activity, the chances of your calorie expenditure going through the roof are quite big. That is why walking is one of the best exercises you can do to lose weight.

What Happens to Your Body When You Walk 10,00 Steps Every Day for 30 Days?

You can walk for hours, every single day, and do it consistently for weeks without feeling fatigued. It is a low-impact cardio with great benefits that will not get in the way of your lifting weights routine if you have the time.

You can buy a step counter and push yourself to hit a minimum of 8,000 steps every day and try to increase that number by 1,000 steps after one week until you reach 10,000 steps. Of course, the more you walk, the more fat loss you are likely going to experience.

Source: Maksim Goncharenok on Pexels

5. Body Water Madness

You could be losing weight, but your body water could be on the rise. Sounds crazy, but it is possible.

This could happen if you are in a high stress lifestyle, if you are not getting enough sleep, if your fluid intake is high and salt intake as well.

The more you are in deficit calorie, the more your body will crave salt. If you eat a lot of salty ingredients, you can become hypernatremic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypernatremia, that is not inherently bad, but you will have a thirst response. And then you drink more, but perhaps you drink more diet soda because there are zero calories in it, but while you’re not gaining weight, you might be retaining water and that could get out of control.

6. Hunger Problems

You will cheat on your diet. There is no way around it. Some of us cheat less often and there is a chance that when you do cheat, you might overeat by accident.

There are many strategies for you to manage your hunger while dieting such as drinking more water, eating more high-volume foods, food high in fibre, or foods that aren’t that tasty.

Check out the link below for an in-depth article about how you can manage your hunger while you are in a caloric deficit state.

Related: How to Reduce Hunger While Dieting

7. Trying to Lose Fat Too Quickly or Too Slowly

The best is to aim to lose 0.5% to 1.0% of your body weight every week. Less than 0.5% will not be noticeable on the mirror and water fluctuations can mask the results for weeks – this is highly demotivating and can get you out of your diet.

More than 1.0% per week, it grinds you to the ground. You will get fatigued easily, which also might lead you to simply give up on your body transformation attempt.    

Fat loss takes time and it takes many phases. If you want to lose 30 pounds, divide it into 3 cut phases to lose 10 pounds each time and then go back to maintenance. If you try to lose 30 pounds in one go, the chances of you failing and giving up are gigantic.

8. Consistency Problems

Consistency problems interfere with diet. A LOT.

If you eat a similar menu every day, there is a bigger chance you will stick to it. And it is better if that food is already prepped before, so that you don’t feel tired and not feel like cooking (which gives you an opportunity to order takeout and that is a cheat meal). If your meal is already prepped, you will likely eat that.

Make sure the food also doesn’t taste amazingly. If the food is great in palatability, you will want more than you actually need. This can be counterproductive if you want to stay in a calorie deficit.

“Consistency is a matter of sustainability. You can’t be consistent with an unsustainable diet.”

Don’t do crazy stuff for 6-12 weeks. That’s it. Diet for 6-12 weeks and stick to it. You are responsible for your diet for only those weeks. You can do this!

Commit, attain, relax, maintain, recover, and repeat until you get happy with your body fat percentage.

Watch the video below for more information from Mike Israetel himself explaining how to break through fat loss plateaus.

For a more detailed explanation and more practical things you can do to break through diet plateaus, check out the link below.

How to Break Through Diet Plateaus for Weight Loss: the Ultimate Guide