Back when you first started on your fat-loss journey, it was smoothsailing. You started to make better food choices, you started liftingweights and doing some cardio and week in and week out, the fat wascoming off. But then, all of a sudden, your rate of fat loss seems tohave slowed and then from there it seems to have stopped entirely. Thatdoesn’t make sense does it? You’re still eating well, you’re stillgetting your training in, so what’s the problem? So what did you do?You lowered your calories and that seemed to yield a little moreresults, but then again, you hit that brick wall, and nothing. So youlowered them again, but this time, you didn’t lose any more fat. Youtried more cardio and even that didn’t work. Talk about frustrating.What happened?



You’ve tried high carb, low carb, lots of cardio, little cardio, fatburners—the list goes on—but nothing seems to work anymore. That flabisn’t going anywhere.

Frustrating, isn’t it? It’s like riding a bike, and yet not gettinganywhere. In essence, you’re just spinning your wheels and gettingnowhere for all your efforts?

Your problem may be a damaged metabolism—a very realphenomenon—caused by prolonged dieting. I know that may sound scary,but it’s not as bad as some people make it out to be. With all theextremely low-calorie eating and hours of cardio that some people doday in and day out, it’s actually very commonplace. Rest assured,you’re not alone.

And I’ve got some good news for you. There’s a pretty simple way torepair your sluggish metabolism. Contrary to popular—albeitill-informed—opinion, metabolic “damage" is not permanent andmetabolism does not shut off. Yes, it slows down, but this is actuallya normal and expected response when you’re eating sub-maintenancecalories.

There is a physiologically-based adaptive response that the bodyundergoes when eating in a caloric deficit. The hormones that governmetabolic rate and fat loss respond in a way that serves to preservebodyfat. And the effect is magnified the leaner you get (which is oftenassociated with the longer you’re trying to lose fat). End result?Slower, if not altogether stalled, fat loss. No matter how good yournutritional program, if you’re eating in a caloric deficit, yourmetabolism will attempt to adjust accordingly.

Ok, enough of the whys. How do we get that metabolism humming again?First off, you need to lose the short term thinking and adopt a longerterm mindset. This is critical.

Even though this might go against ‘common wisdom’, you’re going tohave to eat more, at least for a little while. Yes, you read that right– eat more, not less. You might find it hard to wrap your head aroundthis concept, but trust me, it’s necessary. However, just ramping rightup to an appropriate caloric intake isn’t necessarily the rightapproach for everyone. There is more than one way to approach therepair but I’d suggest you do it in steps - systematic and regularincreases. This has the benefit of one, allowing you to gradually getused to eating more food, two, potentially preventing some fat regain,and three, maybe even causing some fat loss. So one approach is todetermine how much you’re eating on an average day and then take yourpresent intake and just add 10-20% to it every few days until you hitmaintenance calories.

Now that you’ve decided to take control of your metabolism and haveadjusted your calories to maintenance levels, you want to maintain thislevel of calories for at least two weeks. Then once things are hummingalong again, you can return to a caloric deficit. Might you gain someweight at maintenance? Maybe, but some will surely be water, muscleglycogen, etc. Basically nothing to worry about – easy come, easy go.Again, long term versus short term thinking. You need to correct theproblem before you can move past it. Two weeks at maintenance will makefurther fat loss much more likely when you return to your caloricdeficit. Chances are you’ll start feeling a lot better though, andyou’ll have some great workouts.

There are many great, yet underused fat-loss strategies out there.Planned periods at maintenance eating can be found near the top of thatlist.  Remember, the purpose of the two weeks at maintenance caloriesisn’t to maintain; it’s to make the subsequent calorie deficit moreeffective at fat loss. Think of it as a ‘resetting of the system’. Thenyou hit your deficit again and presto, more fat loss.

With a slow metabolism you can generally assume somewhere in theneighbourhood of 14x bodyweight is going to approximate maintenancecalories. It might even be a bit lower depending on how severe yourcaloric deficit has been and for how long, but keep in mind thatmetabolism is only going to slow so much. It doesn’t shut off. Thesemaintenance numbers are an approximation, but so are the morecomplicated equations that can be used to determine caloricrequirements.

After the two weeks at maintenance are up, you return to yourcaloric deficit. However, this time take a moderate approach and shootfor approximately 12x bodyweight in calories. If you’re female and abit lighter in bodyweight to begin with, you might need to start lowerin order to create a sufficient fat-burning caloric deficit. Stay therefor a couple weeks, assess your progress, and make adjustments asneeded. If you’re getting leaner and your measurements have decreased,stay there. If you’re not, try decreasing calories by another 10% andreassess again two weeks later.

Remember, these caloric recommendations are just approximations;they’re starting points. Everyone is a bit different, so the key tolong term success is being able to trouble shoot your program. A quickclosing note on that very topic. You need to stay on top of yourprogram. If what you’re doing is not generating the desired fat-lossresults, working harder at that same ineffective plan isn’t magicallygoing to start working. If it’s broken, fix it. If your program is notnetting you any fat loss, you need to make some adjustments to yourprogram. Don’t keep spinning your wheels doing something that is nolonger working for you. Getting the results you’re after? Stay thecourse. Not getting the results you’re after? Make changes.

There is no reason to continually suffer the effects poor priorfat-loss efforts have had on your metabolism. There is no reason youshould have to suffer a permanent sentence of stalled fat loss. Plannedperiods at maintenance calories are the key. However, there’s more tothis strategy than simply repairing a slow metabolism. They can andshould be used periodically throughout your fat-loss phase to promotecontinue fat loss. A periodic resetting of the system will go a longway to maintaining healthy metabolism and and continued fat loss.