10 exercise and nutrition ways to keep your fat loss going!

 The most important thing to remember if you have a no-progress week is that
continuing to do the same thing for another week is probably not going to work! If what
you’re doing is not working, you need to try other things!

The changes can be in nutrition or exercising or both. The more options you keep at your
disposal, the better your chances of success. The only way to learn your options is to study 
and follow all the nutrition and work out information in this blog. Here’s your checklist of
the training and nutrition variables you can adjust each week depending on your weekly results.


1) Eating less


Calorie cutting works when you’re already at a medium to high calorie level or if
you’re eating too much because you underestimated the amount of calories you
need. If your calories are already at pretty low level, then further cutting of calories
will have a negative effect on your metabolism. Ultimately, the “eat less” approach always
backfires if taken to too extreme levels. In any event, cutting calories beyond maintenance
metabolic level ALWAYS decreases metabolism.

The degree of metabolic slowdown occurs in direct proportion to the size of the drop relative
to basal metabolic rate. Some people may disagree, but I believe the first adjustment should
almost always be to increase activity before decreasing calories. The conventional (lazy) approach
to dieting says that if you’re not losing body fat, then you simply need to decrease your calories.

But, it’s much better to burn the fat than to starve the fat. Think about it: Decreasing calories
causes a reduction in metabolism. Cardio always causes an increase in metabolic rate + at the
same time it burns calories. Eating more also causes an increase in metabolic rate.

So why not eat more AND do more cardio for a two-fold increase in metabolic rate?
I suppose it's because people have the misunderstanding that the two will cancel each other out
- they don't – eating more clean and nutritional food and doing more cardio enhance each other.


2) Manipulate the macronutrients of your diet


Although the conventional high carbohydrate approach (50-55% carbohydrates, 30% protein
and 15-20% fat) is effective often times for most people, a drop in carbs with a corresponding
increase in protein (and/or fats) can also help break a plateau. Decreasing carbs and increasing
protein gives you metabolic and hormonal advantages over a high carbohydrate diet.
I will discuss all of these macronutrients in my later, still to come posts.


3) Improve your food choices.


It’s usually not a good idea to “force yourself” to eat anything you don't like, but
sometimes you have to make some compromises to reach your goals. Food is one of
life's greatest pleasures and total deprivation of what you enjoy is not smart. However,
when it comes to shifting body composition, you have to make most of your decisions based
not on taste and pleasure, but on the results you want to achieve.

Luckily, there is a middle ground between taste and results. Unfortunately, if the middle
ground food isn’t getting you the results you want, then you have to upgrade your choices to
better foods.

Nutritional quality traverses a spectrum - it runs in classes. Food choices aren’t
plain black or white. There are shades of gray in between. When you want to
improve your results or break a plateau, one thing you can do is to make better
food choices. The way you do this is to eat fewer foods that are processed, and
eat more foods that are in their raw and natural state.

Let's take an example: an apple is obviously "A" list. An apple gets the highest grade
possible because it’s in its raw, natural state. Next down the rung you have
unsweetened applesauce. It consists of nothing but raw apples and water, but it’s
been pureed, so it’s not in its most natural state anymore and is therefore relegated
to a "B" (still a good "grade," mind you). Turn it into apple juice and you're down
to a "C" (still a passing grade). Then if you add sugar (sweetened applesauce or
apple drink), now you're down to a "D". Finally, if the apples eventually become
an apple pie, now you're down to an "F".

Your task is simple: look for places in your diet where you can improve your
grade. Then improve it. If you have straight A’s already, then you’ll have to use
other strategies on this list.


4) Manipulate meal timing and frequency


This is one f the most important factors, when you want to get the most out of your
genetic potential! Small, frequent meals have also an amazing effect on your metabolic rate.
All else being equal, having five or six small meals will always produce better results than
two, three or four meals. If you’re currently eating only 3x a day, increase it to four.
If you’re eating four, increase it to five. Women should optimally aim for five meals,
men for six.

If you’re already eating five or six meals per day, it is unlikely that adding more meals
will help substantially, but you could experiment with as many as seven. Going beyond six
or seven is not recommended because you’ll probably only be awake 16-18 hours per day.

Because it takes about two to three hours to digest a meal, compacting your
schedule to eat more than six to seven times a day doesn’t make sense because
you’ll be piling more food on top of the last meal’s undigested contents.
In the future, I will dedicate entire posts considering this matter, so be sure not 
to miss them!

5) Increase duration of your aerobic training


Increasing the duration of your cardio workouts is always one of the first
strategies you will employ. In the minimum you should be doing 30 minutes of
aerobic exercise per session when your goal is fat loss (unless you’re a total
beginner, then you may need to slowly build up to 30 minutes).

If this amount doesn’t start producing results, you can increase it incrementally by five
to ten minutes at a time until you reach a maximum of 60 minutes per session. Beyond 60
minutes will easily produce decreased rate of return for the time spent. At this point, you
should increase the intensity or frequency of your training.

Remember to measure the results of each increase on a weekly basis until you find the level
where you start to drop body fat at the best rate. For most people, 40-45 minutes per
session gives optimal results. Only the most genetically gifted individuals can lose fat
effectively even with doing only 20 minute cardio workouts.


6) Increase frequency of your aerobic training


If you’re already doing good long aerobic workouts, continuing to increase your
duration beyond 45-60 minutes may be counterproductive and quite exhausting
physically. At this point, one thing to try is to increase your training frequency. It's
good to always start with a minimum of three days per week of aerobic exercise.
To break a plateau or increase the rate of losing fat, add one day per week until
you reach six or seven days per week.

Some believe that aerobics seven days per week is too overkill. When maintained
for months on end, this is probably very true. But as a method of breaking through a plateau,
a short period ranging from one to twelve weeks of daily cardio can work wonders for getting
you fit. Most bodybuilders and fitness competitors do cardio seven days a week for 3 months
before to competition. After the competition they return to the normal level of 3-4 times a week


7) Increase your intensity of aerobic training


Let's assume you’re already doing cardio six to seven days a week for 45 to 60
minutes, then what? At this point, you still have options. You can now simply push
yourself even harder to burn more calories in the same amount of time. You can only
increase intensity up to a certain point, of course. For most people, when you get up
around 85% of your estimated maximal heart rate (about 150-170 beats per minute,
depending on age and other factors), you approach the anaerobic threshold.

At this point, if you pushed any harder, you would start to lose your breath and
you would have to slow down your speed or stop in order to recover the oxygen debt
you created. If you’re working out at around 70% of your estimated maximal heart rate,
then you have plenty of room to increase. If you’re already at 85%, then you still have
yet another strategy at your disposal.


8) Vary the type of aerobic training you're doing


If there’s one mode of exercise that you know is working for you, then by all means
stay with it and change other variables to break out of your dead end, but if you have no
preference, then try to change your exercise. Your body has an incredible ability to adapt
to anything you make it do. That’s why constant variation is an effective way to break
a plateau.

For example, if you’ve been walking, change the type of exercise to cycling, skating, or
stationary bicycle. This one change alone is often the catalyst to reaching a new
low in body fat percentage! Remember though, if you’re getting good results with a certain
type of exercise, you don't have to change it for the sake of variation. Don’t fix it if it’s
not broken.


9) Incorporate HIIT into your cardio program.


Okay, so you’re doing daily cardio for 45 –60 minutes at the top of your target
heart zone. NOW WHAT? First, go back and look at the "goal setting" posts 
I have made (again, this one is the most important factor in achieving your new 
healthy lifestyle and staying fit!!) Then, you could take a look at your diet again.
When you’re doing daily cardio for a long duration and not getting results, 99% of the
time it’s a nutrition problem. However, if your nutrition is firmly in place, don’t
worry, there are STILL MORE exercise options available!

One of them is high intensity interval training (HIIT). Interval training is the practice
of doing short bursts, then resting for a short period. The length of the intervals is usually
one minute and can range from thirty seconds and two minutes. Interval
training lets you to push past your normal heart zone (into the 85-100% zone)
for a short period, thereby burning an enormous amount of calories, relatively
speaking.

Then you reduce your intensity just long enough to catch your breath, and repeat for the
duration of the workout. Using this kind of high-low method, you can get a very high calorie
burn in a fairly short period of time. Even 20 minutes of intervals can burn a very high number
of calories. Another benefit of interval training is that it increases your metabolic rate dramatically
so you continue to burn even more calories during the whole day after the workout!. The higher
the intensity, the greater the post-exercise “afterburn” effect.


10) Double cardio.


Cardio twice a day? I have to admit, twice a day cardio is an extreme way that the average
person might simply not have the time for. Doing cardio twice a day is in no way a necessity.
It’s simply another tool you can use for short periods of time to break a plateau or to get extra lean.
Many fitness competitors use double cardio for six to eight weeks before competitions.
So it's a proven approach for those struggling to get that extra kick and get rid of that last pound of
extra body fat

One of the benefits of double cardio is an incredible boost to your metabolic system and an
enormous amounts of calories burned. If interval training is employed, your metabolism starts
racing far beyond its normal rate. Reserve this strategy as a last resort or for peaking if you are
at the competitive level. Never stay on double cardio for a prolonged period because aerobic
adaptation occurs easily this way. This is a peaking or plateau breaking strategy.


And those are the 10 ways to help you break the fat loss plateau or to help you get rid of the last ounce of extra fat you have. If you're not getting good results, remember to try these all, I'm 100% positive they will certainly work! Keep at it!