Why Losing weight stops and how to solve it
She was stuck around the same weight for almost 3 weeks and I could tell she was getting impatient.
One evening during a measurement follow up, that impatience turned into frustration to a point of tears. She expressed how she was sticking her diet but wasn’t seeing results anymore.
As a coach, this can be frustrating, but I always find myself reverting back to the basics and emphasizing re-education.
This email is about what I re-educated her on.
Know how many calories you burn a day
aka Maintenance Calories
Every human being has a minimum requirement of calorie expenditure to maintain their weight. If you eat less than this amount you will lose weight, if you eat more, you’ll gain weight.
It’s that simple.
Losing fat is a very slow. It takes 3,500 calories to burn a pound of fat.
If you consistently eat less than you burn you will lose body fat.
If you’re not losing weight, you’re eating enough to maintain your body weight. It was hard for Sara to accept, but she was lying about how much she eating. Either unconsciously or consciously.
The truth about nutrition tracking is that everyone is lying to varying degrees. Just understand that the more often you eat food you don’t prepare, the higher the percentage you’ll be inaccurate.
At Sarah’s current body weight of 160lbs (down from 180lbs), her calorie expenditure was anywhere between 1900 – 2500 calories per day.
There’s a chance that the calculation is wrong, but even if they are, no matter what the calculation is, she’s still eating enough to maintain her weight.
So the only solution to continue her fat loss journey towards her target goal of 125lbs, she has to eat less calories.
It’s actually possible for Sarah to eat more, but only more of the good kinds of foods that are lower in calories.
What do you think she can eat more of?
Yup you guessed it.
Green vegetables. Eat your veggies like your mom told you. Calorie dense foods will often lead to over eating and even if Sarah is already eating healthy and cutting out junk – calories still have to be managed lower.
The other possibility is to keep food where it is, but add additional cardio.
The obvious is to do a little bit of both.
How to figure out your calorie burn
Here’s a quick way to figure it out
Multiply your body weight by 14
BW X 14 = Daily Calorie burn
This will give a you a general idea of how many calories you require to maintain your body weight. So if you eat less than this, you will lose weight.
Of course everyone is different and this is only meant as a starting point. On my next email I’ll be talking about how calculate a realistic time frame for weight loss per week.
Thanks for reading,
PS. This is the first part of a fat loss nutrition guide I’m putting together. Here’s a list of what’s to come. Feel free to hit reply and let me know which of these you want me to write about next.
Upcoming Blog Posts on Fat loss
-Minimum Protein Requirement
-Understand how each macro affects each other
-Quality of food talk
-Importance of meal timing
-Fasting
-Skinny fat people’s needs
-Starvation mode and Fat retention
-Tracking Food
-PN Diet Plan
-Create Awarness
-Weight loss rate (weight vs fat)
