Getting Over Dieting Plateaus

Hello again,

After week one I was pretty happy about averaging around 157lbs without very much effort at all, but became busier with work, leaving less room for the gym. I still want to get a bit leaner for the summer and for our memorial weekend trip to NYC, so I buckled down and dropped quite a bit of carbs and fats during the week and hit a couple of new lows back to back. This allowed me to indulge a bit on the weekend and not worry about it all too much.

Cheat meal #1: Ribs, sweet potato, and a skinny margarita

A question that comes up a lot with my clients is how to live a normal life, enjoy going out on the weekend, and still reach weight loss or strength goals. Many of us want to be able to do both, without sacrificing one or the other. 

I'll be really honest. If I am getting ready for a competition, I do not drink. I usually don't even go out, mostly because I'd rather spend that time training without exhausting myself with activities. I don't go out to eat if I can help it, and I do not miss a single training session. In order to be competitive, there are certain things that I feel are necessary to do, and to give up. But that's only three months of your life, and in return you get the joy of getting on the platform, giving it your all, and knowing that you couldn't have done anything differently that would have positively affected your performance. The worst thing to happen on meet day is to wonder "what if" you could have done better. 

On the other hand, I think that having a well-balanced social life is incredibly important for mental health and well being. This includes social drinking, eating, and spending time with loved ones. And that's what your off-season is for. Unless you are really overweight, there is no reason not to have periods throughout the year where you are more relaxed in these aspects. I leave out those who are overweight because I believe that physical health is much greater priority than a social life, and a healthy body weight will improve your social life much more than drinking or eating with your friends every weekend. But I digress!

Morning after my cheat meal

after a low of 155.4 lbs the day before

There are quite a few "tricks" I would say that I use in order to allow consistent progress while maintaining balance. They're nothing necessarily new or exciting, just habits I've practiced in order to get really good at not completely falling off the wagon or freaking out when I'm invited to social events. 

1. Learn to fast without starving yourself. 

Leading up to a cheat meal, I'm usually so excited that I don't even want to eat my normal meals, mostly because I'm tired of chicken and vegetables and weighing all my meals by this point. I usually skip breakfast or have tiny protein filled snacks throughout the day. My favorites lately have been protein shakes, yogurt with berries, and nuts. I heard somewhere that your body doesn't absorb all the calories from nuts so I'm going to just pretend that's true and eat them every day haha.

What this does for me is ensure that I get protein throughout the day, but that my calories stay low enough that an uncounted, fatty or carb heavy meal doesn't completely blow my diet out of the water. Snacking rather than completely fasting also helps to not go on a complete binge when it's time to have your cheat meal. 

2. Order sensibly. 

Exercise caution during your cheat meal. After all, if your goal is progress, you have to realize that all of your cheat meals do count against you. The better choices you make now, the closer you will be to your goals later, and the less catching up you will have to do throughout the week to battle an uncounted meal or two. Make this meal about catching up with friends and having a good, relaxing time, rather than about stuffing your face with as much food as possible. 

Cheat meal #2: Burger with a side salad (swapped out the fries!)

For example, the meal pictured above came with fries on the side, but I swapped it out for a salad. You can also share a meal with a friend, or eat half and take the other half to-go. Just be mindful of your choices. 

3. Cut the crap.

During the weekdays, I have zero unnecessary calories. This really helps drop the total calories consumed throughout the week, which helps to drop more body fat. By centering my meals around getting in adequate protein, fruits, and vegetables, I make sure I stay regular, get in some nutrients, and keep my hard earned muscle. Some people don't like this approach, and would prefer daily "cheats" or "treats" and that's okay too, but at some point, if you're not making progress, you need to either cut those out, or increase your calorie expenditure by adding in more exercise. If you're one of those who claims you don't have time to exercise, you are obligated to go the "cut the crap" route.

I hope this helps some of you who may be struggling!

And for those of you interested in getting help with your nutrition or programming, click here.

Until next time,

Mel 

Diet Break Review

Hi everyone (ok, probably like one person),

After the close of the transformation challenge, I took a scheduled diet break. Before I get into the details, I just want to briefly go over what exactly it is I'm talking about.

A diet break, simply put, means purposely applying the breaks on eating at a deficit, bumping your calories back up to maintenance, and allowing your body and mind to get back to neutral.

I don't want to get into too much detail, but Lyle Mcdonald does a great job at summing it up in a way that's easily digestible here.

In the first two weeks, ate roughly 2000-2400 calories a day, but I also bumped up my exercise intensity to make up for a lot of it. I use a Microsoft Band to track calories burned, and according to its readings, I burned about twice as many calories as a training session in a deficit. I also kept up my cardio, but dropped it to only 150 calories a day, rather than the 250 I had been doing.

Naturally, with an increase of food volume, you are carrying more food weight in your gut, AND you are burning more calories through TEF. Not sure how these balance out without doing some ridiculous and unnecessary math, but basically, unless you are binging or not counting your calories at all, the fat weight you can gain in a few weeks' time is negligible.

My two week break became a three week break, as I had to visit family in LA for some personal reasons. If you know me, you already know what these are and I'd rather not get into it here. During that week, I did not do any training, and didn't count a single calorie. I spent that time with family, and in fairness was pretty distracted and to be frank, could not give a flying fart about my diet/training.

Now that I've been back for a week, I've been battling jet-lag, not training at all, but my weight between post-vaca until now has dropped 3 lbs, only 1 lb away from my all-time low during my 12 week cut. No training, no cardio. I'm willing to bet that again, most of this is reduced food volume/water weight, but it's still a good place to be when starting my dieting phase again.

I've been consistently weighing in around 157 point something, which allows me about 4-5 weeks of dieting before the Memorial Day celebrations start rolling around. My lower back is almost 100% better thanks to Dr. Kang's wizardry, so hopefully I'll be able to get under a barbell soon enough. For now, I'm going to continue following my current macros, and try to get my butt back into the gym.

Thank you for reading!

Until next time,
Mel