You are eating too much.
Everyone likes whipped cream straight from the can !
Maybe besides all your scientific wizardry with macronutrient ratios, magic fat burning cardio heart-rate zones, low-carb, high-carb, cheat days, fasting days...Somehow the scale is not trending downward, you know you don't have some rare metabolic condition and are still carrying unhealthy excess weight.
You're eating too much.
The total on average of what you're taking in less your expenditure is not putting you in a deficit. Whether you care to express this in "calories-in and calories-out" or not is another entire argument, but regardless... If the scale isn't budging or going the wrong way...
You. Are. Eating. Too. Much.
Simply admitting this is the first step to finding a system that works for you personally. That's the key really, finding a diet and exercise plan that YOU can stick with that works for YOUR body.
And another secret: You don't have to stay on exactly the same plan, but can cycle through a few configurations of diet/exercise if you feel your body is asking for a change. BUT ... Behind the scenes the weight must continue to come down slowly. Or guess what ?
YOU are EATING TOO MUCH.
Now for the strategy to crack the code.
1. Weigh yourself every day. BUT...
"Experts" say don't weigh yourself every day, or don't weigh yourself at all? That's kind of crazy if your goal is to lose weight. "But body fat percentages and water weight and blah and this and blah that..." STOP!
Obviously... If you are dehydrating yourself, depleting your carbs or starving off muscle with a poor diet and no workouts the scale doesn't give an accurate picture of healthy fat loss. However, in most conditions, if you're doing what you know to be a healthy plan your weight is a pretty accurate picture of how the battle is going. It's actually really hard to simultaneously "trade in" 5lb of fat for 5lb of muscle and say "Hey I'm not losing any weight but I think I'm getting leaner...? That could be true in minute amounts but likely you're just EATING TOO MUCH and breaking even in the body fat balance war, although maybe getting in better condition, which of course isn't a bad thing, but being "fitter" yet still fat at the same time isn't what most of us want, is it ?
The strategy:
Weigh yourself every day first thing in the morning, birthday suit only with a digital scale. Round all values to one decimal place. BUT, only look at how you are doing week over week, ( i.e. I weigh X lbs today on Monday, what did I weigh last Monday) ? And then, go a step further. Collect these week over week values and take a 3-day rolling average of your week over week deltas. So what this does is normalize or filter out all the noise of day-to-day fluctuations due to water loss or retention and gives you a real good snapshot of if you're trending down or up or breaking even over the past 7-10 days.
See the screenshot I made as an example of this method:
Now, taking this information each morning, considering what your current "3-Day Rolling Average of Your Week/Week Weight" is, diet as "Hard" as you feel appropriate to make sure you're trending downward. At all. Slow is good. If it's -0.5 to -1.5 lb/wk that's great. If it's negative AT ALL that's great too. If it's positive (trending weight gain) you need continued effort to scale back your consumption and/or up the exercise (usually the former). If it's greater than -2.0 , you can maybe refill a bit over the next 24 hrs (i.e. You're ahead of schedule, so you've earned a cheat day)!
Trying to react this way to day-today weight fluctuations is a lot sketchier and is why it's not recommended, but with this method, if you're willing to do a little record-keeping and math, you can dial in a nice slow decline in weight without overly restricting and break the yo-yo cycle. So you record the data daily, but stay calm about it. Any reaction you have on a daily basis actually comes from the final 3 Day Average Week over Week column. As shown, it takes 10 days to get the initial data set to get you rolling.
Using this method I've come down about 40lb in the past three years fairly effortlessly.
The actual diet and exercise methods to use (pick one or cycle through them) will be explained in detail in future posts and include:
IF (Intermittent fasting) - This is a whole chapter in itself, eat a huge variety of food including absolute junk and still lose weight and feel great. This is my default mode and what I did instinctively for decades with great results before it was a thing.
Low Carb (or "Keto" / "Paleo" / "Bulletproof") whatever you want to call it, to me all the same. Optimizes metal focus and steadies blood sugar and energy.
LFHC (Low fat high carb) or "80-10-10" which is usually all plant based foods. Optimizes athletic ability, fitness and provides SUPER (albeit inconsistent) energy. You can think FAST but not as DEEP as on a ketogenic diet (more on that later).
Most importantly when it comes to weight loss...Slow and steady wins the race. Bend, but don't break and never, ever give up.
Fierce-Logic.com
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