Podcast Transcription: What Is The Best Way To Break A Weight Loss Plateau? Troubleshooting & Plateaus Part 2

Ted Ryce: Welcome to Troubleshooting and Plateaus Part 2, I hope you enjoyed Part 1, we’re going to dive into some more strategies. Part 1 was really more of an overview and big picture type of presentation. Today, we’re going to dive into things that you can actually use. So, let’s go into it.

So, we talked about the psychological and behavioral causes of plateaus in Part 1, we’re going to cover the three types of solutions in Part 2. And the truth is that when you finally understand why fat-loss plateaus happen, the solution seems really clear, you just need to establish a calorie deficit.

So, you can do that by eating less or burning more. And I’m going to show you the different types of strategies that you can use. So, depending on how long you’ve been dieting and training and how severely, you can also use strategies designed to kind of give you a break, because as you start to push, your body can start to push back.

And I want to be very clear here: the pushback is not some sort of magic that happens with your hormones. It is hormonally driven. But what ends up happening is it changes your behavior. And so you think you’re doing things and you’re not doing things, right.

Like, for example, while I’m walking all the time, or maybe you go to the gym and you do the workouts but you’re not working as hard. Or even if you are working as hard, the times that you’re not working in the gym, that you would have been more active, all of a sudden, you’re more sedentary, you don’t even realize it.

And then that’s a 300, 400, 500 drop in the amounts of calories you burn per day, and there goes your calorie deficit, and you’re struggling. And so does that make sense? There’s no magic hormone sort of thing that happens. It’s driven through changes in hormones, but specifically, the hormones, the brain chemicals, they influence your behavior.

So it comes down to your behavior, all right, it’s not like: “I’m doing everything right with my behaviors, but something magically inside of me is stopping me from making progress.” That is not what happens, it’s something that you’re doing, it’s always something that you’re doing. Even when you think you’re doing everything right, it’s always something that you’re doing.

Please make this mindset shift, because once you do this, once you make this mindset shift, it becomes so much easier. It’s when we think we’re doing everything right and it’s not working, that’s when the real negative talk starts. So you’re always doing something wrong. I don’t like to think about it that way, but it’s always something that you’re doing and you need to change your behaviors to break through the plateau.

So let’s get into it. So, depending on your situation, should you diet harder, or train harder? You’ve got to consider where you are. Sometimes you need to push harder, and sometimes you need to rest. When your body is rundown and depleted, it doesn’t respond the same way. Your metabolic, hormonal and mental state are not the same.

I’ll give you an example, you know, I’m in my fat loss journey as well. And I had a solid week where I—well, actually I should start by saying this, I was starting to have constipation. And constipation really messes with my sleep, I just feel bad, I feel uncomfortable. And I’m not talking about a little bit of constipation, it was chronic.

And it was caused from the choices in foods that I was eating, but also the fact that I wasn’t eating that much because I was restricting my calories. Just like you, I was hitting a calorie target, hitting a macronutrient target. So I was feeling bad. And I took a break for a week and I just said, “Ah, whatever.” And I didn’t say “whatever” and just gave up and started eating whatever I wanted; I still ate well, but I just didn’t worry about it.

And I did that for about a week. And I didn’t make progress fat-loss-wise in that week—at least it wasn’t visible. Now I’m not strictly, I’m tracking my body fat percentage. I want to tell you this: sometimes the strategies that work best in the early stages, don’t work well in the late stages. And some of the things in late stages of fat loss are often counterintuitive.

So many people do the opposite of what they should be doing. I want you to listen to what I just said. Because you’re going to say, “Well, I’m not... I’m really smart.” And yeah, we’re all really smart, but the problem is, we don’t think straight when it comes to this stuff. It starts to mess with us mentally.

So we have to be aware of our weaknesses and our fallibility of being human. Of course, it’s us, right? It’s always us. So we all make these mistakes. Now, let’s talk about early-stage plateau. So if you are in the first or second month and you hit a plateau, it usually means that you’re not doing as well as you think you’re doing.

In other words, you’re not being as meticulous with your measuring, with your tracking, with the food choices you’re making. You’re overestimating how much exercise you’re doing, not just exercise in the gym, but also how much movement, how many steps.

So you’ve got to put in harder work at the beginning. If you’re just a month or two in, then you’ve got to put in harder work, you’ve got to be more on top of things. Now, of course, I’m here and I have a ton of strategies that I can—just reach out to me if you’re stuck. But this is for people, just so you understand, and when you’re on your own doing this again, that you understand what’s going on.

So, here’s what we can do. You’ve got to remember the four areas. Number one is the mental training. When you’re stuck, you’re most likely to slip up here. You need to refocus your energies, you’ve got to say, “Hey, okay, why am I doing this? Why is this important?”

You’ve got to keep a positive attitude. You’ve got to tighten the diet belt, you’ve got to train hard, you’ve got to be meticulous weigh and measure food, count your calories more diligently. Get stricter about everything. If we’re just a month or two in, get stricter about everything, because you’re not going to hit a plateau in the first month or two because of metabolic slowing down.

I want to be really clear here, let’s say you were dieting really hard for two months or three months, and then you joined my program and then you made progress but then you hit a plateau. That’s different, isn’t it? But for those of you who, let’s say you weren’t losing weight at all, you weren’t really trying to diet, you were just trying to—not diet, you weren’t dieting how I’m teaching you how to.

And I’m not talking about in the conventional sense, where you’re like, “Well, eating clean, and I’m doing intermittent fasting, the 16-8 Method, you know?” I’m not talking about that. That’s bullshit stuff. That’s just popular fad stuff. That’s not what we’re talking about. I’m talking about really tracking your macros.

So again, if you weren’t really doing that before and you were gaining weight or not losing weight even though you were eating clean and working out hard, then you hit a plateau, a month or two in my program, it’s time to be meticulous, tighten the diet belt, train harder. All right, we’ll get into that more. The way you measure your food, count your calories, track your macros, get stricter about everything.

Now, mid-stage plateau. Let’s say you lost some weight before you came into my program and you started doing my program and you made results, but then you hit another plateau. So, if you’ve been in a calorie deficit for two to three months and your fat loss seems slower, you will continue applying the progression in your training and tightening the belt anywhere where you recognize that you’ve kind of slipped up.

But you might need to apply a new and different strategy; your body is starting to adapt to the low calories and become more efficient at doing the workouts. Sometimes the best thing you can do is to temporarily raise your calories to give yourself a mental and physical break. Like for me, when I was constipated—sorry to keep bringing up that story, but I needed a break. I was just like, “Man, I’m not feeling good. I need a break from this. It’s really...’

Again, I didn't pig out or go off and just said, “You know, screw it,” and just started eating whatever I wanted. Or I should say I did start eating whatever I wanted, actually, but I was making good choices. I was eating Indian food and Thai food; I just wasn’t really being so strict.

Actually, I was still tracking, but I was going over a few 100 calories, 500 calories. And it was fine. It was no big deal. Now I didn’t make fat loss progress, but I felt better and kind of solved the issue. And so it just gave me a break. And sometimes we need a break, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

The worst thing you can do when you’ve been deep in—again, two to three months deep in training hard, tracking hard and you’ve really been pushing yourself in that way, - the best thing you can do is to give yourself a little bit of a break. Now of course, it doesn’t mean you’re like, “Well, break out the beer, the ice cream, the pizza, the hotdogs, the potato chips, or french fries.”

No, that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re just talking about, “Hey, just don’t…” you know, still track if you want or don’t track if you want, but just take a break, try to eat intuitively, based on the new knowledge that you have from portion sizes, from tracking, from weighing, take a break from everything, it’s fine.

And it gives everything a break and we talk about the metabolism and the hormones, but the truth is, it comes down to psychology. As you’re probably starting to notice, a lot of this is just psychology, it’s just, we feel bad and we don’t do things, right? Or when we are feeling good, we do things. When we feel bad, we don’t do things; it usually comes down to that.

Not like, well, this hormone is off and my metabolism is doing this or that, those things happen, but really the way it manifests itself is through our behavior again. So for one to two days a week, raise your calories, especially the carbs up to maintenance levels, instead of staying low every day. This is kind of just cycling your calories. This is another way of applying calorie cycling.

And just don’t overthink it, just for a day or two, give yourself a break. For me, I needed a full week, I needed to just... Now I was still tracking, I just went up on my food. If I gained any weight, it was very little, I didn’t even weigh myself. Because there was no need to, I was like, “Oh, I don’t even care, I need a break from this,” and my issue resolved itself. And I got back on track and then started going again.

And just keep in mind, if you do weigh yourself, really important here, and I want you to listen very, very closely to me right now, because to be honest, I don’t want to hear about it from you. If you’re like, “Well, I took a break but my weight just bounced up a couple pounds.”

It’s because when you start eating carbs, carbs get stored in your muscles. It’s not fat, it’s stored in your muscles. And along with every gram, I believe, of glycogen, which is the form of stored carbohydrate that your muscle uses, you store about three grams of water, if I remember that little factoid correctly.

The point is that you store carbs and along with the carbs, comes water. Now really important, this is inside your muscles so you’re not going to feel bloated from it. It’s not like you’re going to look bloated. In fact, you’re going to see that your muscles are more pumped up. And it actually feels quite good to be full of glycogen, especially when you’re quite low on glycogen.

So, this is a good practice, by the way, too, because you practice on just kind of letting loose, you practice on balance, you practice on relaxing, but not giving into craziness, not going off the deep end. So yes, I know it’s counterintuitive, but do it anyway, challenge yourself.

If you’re scared of doing this too, definitely do it. If you’re in a plateau, two to three months in, definitely... And of course, if you’re in the program doing this, then let’s communicate and coordinate together so that I can guide you through the process. But again, your weight’s going to spike up a little bit. It’s not a big deal once you start eating more carbs, because it’s mostly water anyway.

So let’s talk about late stage plateau. Training more and dieting harder are not always the best strategies. Sometimes when you’ve been at it for months, three or four months or even more, it can be, you’re just worn down because of all the tracking, all the training. And your body adapts similar to high volume training in a similar way it does to calorie restriction, it becomes more efficient and you start training hard in the gym, but then you find yourself laying around for the rest of the day.

And if you suspect that this is causing your stagnation, sometimes the best thing to do, at least temporarily is to cut back on your volume, or go to a minimalist routine. If you’re seriously overtrained, you may need a short time off to let your body fully recover. So don’t be afraid of giving your body rest, especially a week.

Now I’ve talked earlier in the course about how you should really never take more than two weeks off. Because you start to de-train, you can start to lose muscle and strength very quickly. But taking a week off is okay. And then slowly coming back into it. That’s okay. In fact, you may see that you get better results after a little bit of a break.

And then coming back, especially again, if you’re three or four months into this, say, this is outside of this program and you’re like, “Whoa, I’ve really been pushing, I’m not really seeing their results.” Time to take a break; just a complete break, maybe. This is more of kind of what I did when I hit that constipation point, during my recent fat loss journey.

Because before that, I was, I wouldn’t say dieting down hard, but I was paying attention to things and I was making an effort to lose fat. But when I started going hard, I got to that point, and I just really needed a break. So always consider taking a diet break if you’re three to four months in and you’re not seeing results.

It’s the most counterintuitive thing because you feel like, “Well, I’ll go back on all my progress.” But the truth is, you’re not! There’s a big window of like, “Okay, what’s going to make me lose fat, what’s going to make me stay the same amount of fat and what’s going to put on fat?” There’s a huge difference, your body adapts, so don’t worry about it. If you gain a couple pounds, don’t worry about it. All you’ve got to do is get to the point where you feel better, focus on sleep, focus on recovery.

By the way, if you’re worn down doing—cardio is a great way, light cardio, low intensity cardio, like, for example, I did a 45-minute walk today. Now I’m going to train with weights later on, probably right after I do this presentation, but a 45-minute walk on the treadmill, getting your heart pumping, getting your sweat on, and doing it more frequently for five days a week, that’s a great way to keep exercising and allowing your body to recover because the benefit you get from the improved circulation, that’s all great stuff.

So, we’re just talking about the really hard training. So, the resistance training, the high intensity interval training. You could even go down to one set per exercise on your resistance training and probably be okay with that and just giving yourself a break from tracking everything.

All right, that’s what you would do when you’re at the late stages, three to four to even more months in. And when you return after a break, your body’s going to respond again, just like when you first started. So don’t worry about losing ground for taking time for recovery. When you need a rest, take it, okay? You may gain a couple pounds, but again, it’s going to be glycogen and water, not fat.

And when you get back to work with a fully recovered body, full of glycogen, full of water, not depleted, not dehydrated, you’re going to be amazed at how easily your blast through your new plateau. That’s how this works. So, let’s talk about this: your body adapts to everything that you throw at it, and your body wants to stay the same. That’s called homeostasis.

For example, it regulates your blood pressure, your heart rate, your breathing rate, your acid base, your alkalinity. In other words, in your blood, so many things get regulated by your body and it wants to keep this regulation, it also wants to keep your body weight. So you’ve got to kind of do things that really force your body to change.

And then you got to keep it for a while so that you adapt to this and you have a new set point. Like for me, I was really having trouble dropping below 190 for a long time. And now I’m at 181 today. So I’ve been around the 180s. And, yeah, so now I’m at a new setpoint for my weight, I’m back to the setpoint where I was in my 20s. I feel like it would even be hard to go back to 200 pounds.

So again, if you’re making progress, we talked about how, you know, you just stick with it. As your body starts to adapt, you have to start to make changes. Again, most of the adaptations happen like psychologically and influenced you psychologically. So at the beginning stages, you’ve got to kind of focus on that, on pushing harder, on being more meticulous.

And so understanding where you are is the first part. And then understanding, “Okay, well what approach should I take?” Now, we’re going to talk about some things that you can adjust each week to break plateaus. So the first thing is you can improve your food quality. So you don’t have to eat less food if you hit a plateau but eating better food.

For example, I’ve been eating too much sugar, I’ve been eating, you know, the past few days, part of it is just, I order coffees in the morning, and sometimes the people I order from don’t speak English very well, and my Thai isn’t very good so they end up putting a lot of sugar in it, because people here in Southeast Asia love to put sweetened condensed milk in their coffee, in their tea.

So I ended up with more of it in there sometimes than I really want, and so that would be an example of like, well, what could I do there? I could ask for no sugar at all, instead of just a little bit. That would be a way of improving food quality. Or if I was kind of under eating vegetables and eating more bread or more pasta, focusing on eating more vegetables is going to improve your food quality.

Or if you’ve been eating too many treats but still hitting your macros and calorie targets, exchanging those treats, at least a portion of them for better quality food is going to help. Another thing is you can change your macronutrient distribution, your macronutrient ratio, especially increasing your protein. Now if we keep the same amount of calories but increase the protein, that means something has to come from somewhere else.

Now, whether you change that from carbohydrates or whether you take that from carbs or fat, I don’t want to go too deep into, but it depends on how much fat you’re eating. You don’t want to go too low with fat, you don’t want to go like below...You don’t want to go too low with fat.

You can go lower with carbs. But again, actually, both have pros and cons. And I would even just experiment. If you’re already very low in fat, then why go lower? So, lowering carbs is a good way and increasing your protein and taking away from the carbs is a good way of starting that, that’s what I would probably recommend starting there.

And it’s not so much again that the carbs are bad or anything like that, it’s just that protein is special. It’s not that carbs are bad, or fat’s bad, protein just happens to be special. So keep that in mind. And definitely getting protein from a whole food source is going to be better than getting it from a protein shake. But if more towards having the protein shakes is going to be better than not doing this strategy. So just a few things to keep in mind.

Sometimes you just have to lower the calories. Now, there’s no way around it; you’ve got to reduce your food intake, especially, we’re going to talk about adding more exercise, because that’s what I always liked to do. But sometimes there’s no way around it; reducing food is the ideal choice in certain situations.

So, if your calories are already low, or you’ve already cut them back then cutting calories more can backfire. So, again, why does it slow down your metabolism? Well, it does, but it does so through behavior. You think you’re moving around, but if you had an accurate steps counter, you would see that most likely that you’re just not moving as much.

So cut calories when you have breathing room to do so, but always remember, you can eat less, you can burn more or you can use a combination. If you choose to eat less, because let’s say well, I can’t get to the gym, I don’t have time to get to the gym. So you’re going to have to take it from eating less.

And if you’ve already tried eating better quality food, or maybe you’re already eating a very high-quality diet and you’re eating as much protein as you can handle, then the next thing you do is you reduce your calories. Now, I would say this to you; reduce your calories, 100 calories at a time.

What do I mean by that? You reduce your calories 100 calories, you reduce your total calorie target by 100 calories, and you try that for a week or two. And you see how it works. If it works in a week, then you know you’re back in a calorie deficit. If it doesn’t work after two weeks, then I would lower 100 calories again and keep going with that. And just something to keep in mind.

So many of us we think well, you know, this calorie thing, but I don’t want to go too low with the calories. Listen, the tracking the calories and all the calories, it’s not an exact science, what we’re tracking things for, is to get results. So if you’re not getting results, that’s all you need to focus on, you’ve got to trust in the principle.

The principle here is that if you’re not losing fat, you are not in a calorie deficit, you’re eating more calories, than you should if you want to lose weight, lose fat, and you must do something to get results, to get different results. So just keep in mind, it’s about that principle. Don’t focus on the numbers too much, the numbers are just guides. The principle and the results that you’re getting are the things that you should pay the most attention to.

Now you can increase the duration of your workouts. And in the beginning, I said only add cardio – if you’re in the program, only have to add cardio if you said you have the time to do it. But if you’re not getting results with the amount of time you’re currently doing, you might need to increase the amount of time you spend working out, and you can do it just 5 to 10 minutes at a time.

And again, measure the results of each increase on a weekly basis until you find the level where you start to break the plateau and start dropping fat at the rate that you want. For most people, 30 to 45 minutes per session gives excellent results. You can go long longer, but after 45 to 60 minutes, you usually get a diminished rate of return, compared to using other plateau-breaking strategies, and you can walk outside as well.

But again, if you’re, let’s say, if you’re walking outside 45 to 60 minutes, you’re like, “Oh, I don’t know, I can’t walk 90 minutes, I don’t have the time to do that, and even 60 minutes is pushing it,” then we’re going to talk about a different strategy, we can increase the frequency of cardio. All right, so if you’re doing long workouts, continuing to increase your duration can become impractical, you just don’t have time to do it.

So another thing you can do, we start to break up the cardio into more frequent workouts. A realistic starting point is a minimum of two to three days per week of cardio training. To break a plateau or increase the rate of fat loss, incrementally add one day per week until you reach six or seven days per week.

I know that’s a lot but this is the way the body works, and there’s no way to get around it. So you have to either be happy with the results that you have. Or if you want better results, you have to do something different. I don’t make the rules, I just know the rules and teach you the rules. So don’t try to keep up daily cardio for months on end, or use it as a crutch for poor nutrition either.

But used as a way to break a fat loss plateau and reach peak condition, daily cardio can do wonders to get you lean superfast. It’s not a coincidence that so many bodybuilders and fitness models do cardio every day before they step on stage or in front of the camera.

So this is kind of a strategy that people use to really take things up a notch, is that they double up on the cardio. So again, it’s an extreme strategy that’s neither mandatory nor practical for most people who don’t get paid to be fitness cover models or action movie actors. But I just wanted to share it with you because it works.

And again, we’re not talking about really hard cardio, we’re talking about 45-minute walk, 30-minute walk, 45-minute walk twice a day. That can be walking outside, if you’re doing that already and it’s not giving you results, then getting into the gym and taking up the intensity, which is what we’ll talk about in a second. This is something you can do and that you can experiment with.

And keep in mind that high-volume cardio done for prolonged periods while in an aggressive, aggressive calorie deficit can kind of mess you up and can kind of backfire by eating up muscle. So if you ever advanced to doing double cardio, don’t overdo the duration or intensity at every workout.

So this is the peaking or plateau-breaking strategy, not something you adopt year round. And the next thing you can do is simply go harder, increase the intensity of your cardio. The most time-efficient way to break a plateau is increased the intensity of the cardio you’re already doing.

So let’s say you are walking outside for 30 to 45 minutes, well, you walk faster. Let’s say that you’re biking for 30 or 45 minutes or using the elliptical for 30 or 45 minutes or walking on the treadmill for 30 to 45 minutes, well you would increase the resistance on the treadmill you’d increase the incline.

I always recommend increasing the resistance or incline first before you increase the speed. But if the incline or resistance isn’t enough to challenge you, then you start adding in speed. So most people who have been doing lower or moderate intensity workouts have plenty of room to boost the intensity level.

Now we’ll talk about HIIT in a second. I probably have many of you already on an HIIT workout. But that’s a way you can really get some great results in a shorter amount of time. And two of my favorite and science-backed workouts HIIT workouts are the 10 by 1 and a 4 by 4. The 10 by 1 is a one-minute interval followed by one minute of rest repeated 10 times. Just make sure you warm up for 5 or 10 minutes and then cooldown for another 5 or 10 minutes.

And a more advanced in harder to do strategy is the four by four. So you do a four minute interval, so that one minute on woman and off; now you’re doing that one minute, but you’re prolonging it by four minutes, doing four minutes. This is like, think of a boxer doing a three-minute round or MMA fighter doing a five-minute round. This is a four-minute round of high intensity interval training, and it’s a killer.

And so much so that you need to take three minutes of rest in between your four-minute intervals. And if you’re like, “Oh, I don’t need that much rest.” Listen, you’re not in that great a shape, I guarantee you. What that means is you need to push harder during that four-minute interval if you feel like three minutes of rest is too long. You should be like, “Whoa, I do not want to do another integral, I’m not looking forward to it.” That’s how you know you’re pushing yourself.

So those are two of my favorite and easy to implement HIIT strategies. And you can do them on the bike, elliptical running, or rowing machine. To do my interval training, I do a kickboxing class or a Brazilian Jiu-jitsu class, like I just kind of alluded to the rounds are about three minutes long or two minutes long or five minutes long, depending on the sport. And so that’s how I get in my interval training.

But you can also just increase the intensity of the low to moderate intensity cardio, too. So those are two ways you can increase the intensity; you can just go a bit harder with the cardio that you’re already doing. Or if you’d like to, if we built a solid foundation for you already, we can transition you to interval training, which is more time efficient and also is going to get you in better shape. Just, there’s a cost to it, it’s very hard to do, and it can be hard on your joints.

So again, if you feel like high-intensity interval training, is giving you trouble sleeping at night, because you push yourself so hard. Or if you have joint aches and pains from doing high-intensity interval training, you’re going to have to be more careful about how you add it in, I would stick with the lower to moderate intensity and increasing the intensity for that low to moderate intensity cardio that you’ve been doing previously for the 30 to 45 minutes.

And again, the interval training, it not for beginners, but after several weeks of building up a fitness base, it’s a great thing to add in. And as many of you know, I’ve already added this into your program most likely, or at least talk to you about adding it in. And if you hit a plateau, it’s a perfect time to implement it. If you’ve been working hard and developing that solid fitness base, time to take it up a notch.

Now, another thing you can do is change the type of cardio that you’re doing. And if you’re already doing something you really enjoy, then by all means, stay with it, and never change something when you’re getting good results just for the sake of changing. If something’s working for you, do it.

However, when your progress starts to fall flat, you can change... A change alone can re stimulate your progress and your motivation. For example, if you’ve been walking outside, changing to stairclimber elliptical or stationary bicycle might be the thing that can really change the game for you.

And if you’ve been using one of the machines, maybe doing a Muay Thai kickboxing class or sports like boxing, soccer, racquetball, handball, biking, kickboxing, kite surfing, Jiu-jitsu, take it up a notch from the interval training, due to the unpredictable and chaotic nature of the type of training because it’s just way harder. It’s more mentally engaging, too. It can put more stress on your joints. Just keep that in mind.

But it can add a dimension of fundamental training to your exercise routine. I love doing martial arts. And it’s really what I train for. When it comes to my weight training, when it comes to everything that I do, it all revolves around martial arts training, because it’s just the thing that I go back to. I just love it, and I can do it in a way that doesn’t hurt me, and I know how to structure my workouts accordingly.

So, if this resonates with you, go ahead and try adding in something like that to push yourself a little bit. Change your workouts is also a great way to prevent boredom and recharge your enthusiasm while avoiding repetitive overuse injuries. So while doing a sport can put you at risk of hurting yourself because of the chaotic nature of sports, it also can prevent injuries by avoiding repetitive overuse.

For example, if you’re running all the time, then you’re putting the same type of stress in the same way for your feet, your ankles, your knees, your hips, etc. So, by changing things up, it changes the stress on your joints. By the way, I would say this biking and low impact exercise is probably the, you know, like biking, for example is the thing you can probably do for the rest of your life and be okay with it.

It might affect some people’s hips because of the motion at the hip, it might affect some people’s knees as well, but it’s so low impact, it’s something that I wouldn’t worry about. But if you’re doing the elliptical, if you’re doing stair climbing, if you’re running, develop these injuries if you’re not careful about changing up the types of workouts you do.

So, just keep in mind that most of this information has been directed at breaking a fat loss plateau. But as you learn in previous lessons, your body not only adapts to diets, but all types of training as well. In a matter of weeks or months, your muscles will adapt to every resistance training program you follow. Once your body has adapted, continuing with the same program doesn’t produce the same results.

There’s a popular saying among trainers and coaches that every workout works, but no workout works forever. it doesn’t matter how good it is at the time, and how fast you got results from it. It’s something that I roll my eyes all the time with people and they tell me “Oh, but I got such great results when I started doing this internet workout routine.’

It’s like, “Cool, going from the couch to doing something, of course is going to get your results. Talk to me in three months or six months, that’s when I want to know how good it’s working for you.” So, if you currently include gaining muscle or if they change to gaining muscle in the future, progress plateaus are going to happen during that as well.

So in some ways continuing to gain lean muscle for months on end after the beginner gains have ended can be more challenging than keeping the fat loss coming. Look, fat loss is a much easier thing to figure out, muscle growth can be very...I mean, there’s never going to be a time where fat loss is going to come at a slower rate, and there just won’t be; you can lose fat at a fast rate always.

But gaining muscle becomes a real challenge. Eventually, it becomes really difficult to do. And it goes beyond the scope of this program, at least right now. But you already got the basic tools you need. All you’ve got to do is follow the resistance training success principles, especially progressive overload, you’ll continue making great progress in strengthen lean muscle.

Keep in mind, especially that beginners can make progress in the same routine for longer. But the more advanced you become, the more quickly your body adapts, and the more often you should change. And progress plateaus aren’t caused by any genetic issue or hormonal problem. And what happens is if your fat loss is stopped, your body is adapted and you’re no longer in calorie deficit.

So, the questions to ask are what happened to your calorie deficit? And what is the best strategy to use in your situation to get progress rolling again? To stay motivated, it’s important to keep reminding yourself that it’s not a bad thing when you hit a plateau. It’s a normal thing. It’s simply your body’s signal that it is adapted to what you’ve been doing, and you need to change something to create further change in your body. It’s as simple as that, it’s no big deal.

And now you have an entire arsenal of techniques you can use to push through the to the next level of progress. Combine the information in this presentation with what you learned about tracking progress, and you have a foolproof success system to break any plateau.

Measure everything you want to improve. Make sure you’re tracking your workouts. Make sure you’re tracking your high intensity interval routines. Hold yourself accountable for results. Weigh your food, measure your food, make sure you’re taking your time and inputting the correct values and My Fitness Pal.

Start learning what a half a cup of rice looks like on your plate and six ounces of chicken breast on your plate. Make sure you get clear on that.

And if you get stuck, choose a strategy to re-establish your calorie deficit to restimulate your metabolism and restart your progress, and then go back to work for another seven days and measure results again. If it worked, you keep it up. If it didn’t, you repeat this process until you get success. It’s as simple as that.