You’re eating “healthy”, you include weight lifting as well as cardio in your workouts, you track both your diet and workouts.  You seem to be doing everything right.  Yet, you aren’t getting any results or you were but they’ve stopped.

Nothing you try (hi carbs, low carbs, low fat, low calories, fat burners, exhaustive workouts) seems to work anymore. The weight just isn’t coming off, or worst yet maybe you’re gaining weight. You see a doctor and everything checks out fine. There’s no reason you shouldn’t be losing weight.

To say it’s frustrating is an understatement. You’re left in an endless cycle and getting nowhere for all of your hard work.

What if I told you, the problem may be that you’ve damaged your metabolism? This is a very real problem caused by prolonged dieting. It’s actually a very common thing to happen with so many people trying to lose weight with extremely low-calorie diets and hours of cardio.

It may sound bad, but it really isn’t as bad as you may think. It’s not permanent and actually it’s fairly simple to repair your slow metabolism. Your metabolism slows down which is normal in response to eating less calories than your body requires.

The body actually physically adapts in response to eating low calories in such a way that the hormones which control your metabolic rate responds in an effort to preserve body fat. This can cause you to think you need to eat fewer calories which only causes your metabolism to slow even more.

So how do you fix this? First it is very critical that you stop thinking short term and start thinking long term.

It may be difficult to accept as it goes against all you have come to believe, but you need to eat more for a little while. I know! But speaking from personal experience, this is necessary. This is also where a little faith and patience come in. Instead of just jumping right in and upping your caloric intake, I suggest taking it a little at a time in well thought out and regular increases. By doing it this way, you allow your body to adjust or get used to eating more food, so you hopefully don’t regain some fat and maybe even lose some fat. One way of doing this is gradually increase your calories by 10 or 20% every few days until you reach your maintenance caloric level.

What is your maintenance level? It is approximately somewhere around 14x bodyweight. It may be a bit lower depending on how severe your caloric deficit has been and how long you have been dieting.

Once you’ve adjusted your caloric intake to maintenance levels, you will need to stay at this level for at least two weeks to give your body a chance to adjust. You will need to be very consistent with no cheating. Then once leveled out, you can return to a caloric deficit. You may gain some weight during this maintenance period but don’t worry about it! You’re body is adjusting and it’s most likely water, muscle glycogen, etc. Nothing to worry about. This is when you have to remind yourself to think in the long term rather than the short term. You need to fix the problem before you can move beyond it.

The purpose of the two weeks of maintenance calories isn’t to maintain; to reset your system so your subsequent caloric deficit is more effective at fat loss. Basically, this is supercharging your metabolism.

When you return to a caloric deficit, once again don’t just drop your calories. Use the same method as you did when raising your calories to maintenance level. This time make your goal caloric intake approximately 12x bodyweight. Maintain this level for a couple of weeks, assess your progress and make adjustments as needed. If you’re getting leaner, stay there. If you’re not, try decreasing your calories by another 10% and maintain for two weeks and reassess your progress.

Please remember, these are just an approximation to give you a starting point. Everyone is different so your progress will be different. Again, being able to reassess your program and make adjustments is the key to long term success.

It is very important you keep track of what you eat and how you’re progress is going. If what you’re doing isn’t getting you results, you need to be flexible and make adjustments. Planning period maintenance phases are key to maintaining a healthy metabolism and continued fat loss.