Here are 5 key reasons why your fat loss may have a flat line and some tips on how to get back on track and keep burning .
You are watching what you eat, eating healthy, going to the gym 5 days a week and participating in endless amounts of cardiovascular exercise. You check your scale, your tape measures, and your body fat percentage and it seems like you can’t lose body fat no matter how healthy you eat and how much you train. What’s going on? Here in this article, we are going to go over some scenarios that may be contributing to your stagnation.
It all makes sense!
The First and foremost reason you are not burning fat is because you are eating too many calories . Plain and simple, the only way to lose body fat is to have a calorie deficit . You need to expend more calories than you consume. A lot of this has to do with calories that are not noticed. These are usually the foods you eat around your meals that you didn’t prepare yourself. For example, the liquid calories from freshly squeezed organic orange juice, or those few low carb pretzels you’ve had at work or beer or glass of ‘light’ wine to help ease the stress of the day.
However, these will add up over time. You may not notice it or you do and think that this will not throw me off today, but you have to be realistic with yourself and take note of all the “off-the-wall” indulgences you have throughout the day. Let’s say you spend 150 calories one day on pretzels, almond milk for coffee, and half a glass of orange juice, but when that becomes a week, your weekly calories increase by 1,050 calories.
Slower Cardio
There’s such a thing as “too much of a good thing”, and cardio is one of those when it comes to losing fat. Cardio is a stress that is put on the body. While doing cardio, your body responds by adapting to that stress or conditioning more . Your body is very energy efficient, so when it adapts to that stress, it is finding the best way to do that amount of work without expending as much energy. The only way to mitigate this to keep burning fat is to do more cardio. The problem is that the longer and more frequently you do cardiovascular exercise, the less muscle tissue will be built or maintained due to inadequate calories to support muscle tissue mass .
Do just enough cardio
Build Stamina
This brings us to the following reason: resistance training (https://steroidsbuyonline.com/store/peptide/stamina-medication/).
Resistance training helps build muscle tissue. Muscle tissue itself is considered an energy glutton because it requires a lot of energy to maintain. That’s why you see professional bodybuilders who weigh 120 kilos or more and who need to eat very often, in very high amounts (the last thing they want is for their body to burn muscle tissue for energy ). So if you think you’re training hard, and your diet is under control, and you still don’t lose body fat, then you may be taking it too easy at the gym. Maybe you’re not tracking your progression either, so you don’t know where to go in terms of weight to use for your next workout. Either way, some form of resistance training should be included, and you need to keep detailed notes of the set, reps, and weight used to know where to go in the next workout to continue building tissue.
Beware of weekends
Weekend fast foods that get out of your control can also be a factor in your stagnation. If you are on a diet and your goal is to lose body fat, you need to control junk foods on the weekends.
If you want more freedom on the weekends, you can cut a few meals out of your day , so the meals you make should contain more calories than normal. For example, if you normally eat 5 meals a day and add 2,500 calories in a day, each meal can contain 500 calories. Now when the weekend rolls around, you choose to sleep late and just eat lunch and dinner. Those two meals need to contain 1250 calories each to reach 2,500 calories for the day.
Be careful with your calories
Last The reason I want to focus on relates to the first reason, and it deals with the “eating healthy” thought process. Just because foods are considered or labeled as healthy doesn’t mean you can eat infinite amounts of them. Foods (which are made up of nutrients) still have CALORIES , no matter how “good” they are. Making more conscious decisions by choosing more nutrient-dense foods should be a priority, and you can definitely start the fat loss process. The problem is that these healthy foods do not mean low calorie foods. It is a common misconception that just because food is good for you, you can eat all you want of it.
Here are some examples of what I like to call cheat foods: hummus, nuts, butters of organic nuts, pecans and seeds, granola, liquor drinks, and avocados, to name a few . Half an avocado contains 140 calories, a tablespoon of coconut oil contains 120 calories, and with granola, there are so many different foods included in that bag that each tablespoon will have a different caloric value depending on what was taken. The media labels these foods as healthy and that makes us think that we should choose them over something else, which is fine. This is fine, only if we factor in portion sizes to keep up with our caloric deficit.
When focusing on fat loss, focus on the following to help ensure that you are burning fat:
Energy balance – Record and count all calories! Yes, all you consume to see where you stand. If you want to lose body fat, take fewer calories than you are consuming now. If you want to gain tissue, take more.
Be as active as possible – When you have a caloric deficit, your body will naturally (in response) want to expend less energy. It will be important that you keep moving, things like being restless, walking around, trying to perform simple tasks, all of this will begin to decrease and decrease in frequency. You may want to get a step counter to make sure you move enough.
Resistance training – Go to the gym or hire a trainer, or use some type of training You incorporate resistance against a movement to demand that your body increase muscle tissue. A great example without weights is sprinting uphill or with a parachute as there is resistance while doing the movement.