When we all venture on a diet, the ultimate goal for most is to get rid of that stubborn belly fat. Before getting into these tips I would like to preface this by saying fat doesn’t eliminate on your body evenly. What I mean by this is that we all have individual areas our body pulls body fat from quicker than others.
For example, for me, my face will look very sucked in when I diet before my stomach gets completely flat. I am talking to the point where it almost makes me look older. My arms will show way more leanness first as well. The point of me saying this is that when you feel like your body is being stubborn about losing fat in the stomach, it’s completely normal. We all tend to hold the most fat there to begin with. Your body will prioritize wanting to pull fat from everywhere first before it’ll get to that last bit. So the ultimate goal then, you need to diet long enough where your body will finally start pulling the fat from the stomach.
This may take more than one diet cycle. But that’s okay. It didn’t take you one year of eating to get you where you are, so we can’t expect it to all go away in one diet cycle. Having said that, you can still get to a point your abs are showing better than they ever have before. The multiple cycles are more for those trying to get sub 10% body fat for guys, and sub 17% for women.
Eat More Protein
We need to maintain what muscle we currently have. In order to do so, we need to be sending the right signal in the gym to maintain that muscle, but we also need to be eating enough protein to fuel that muscle growth. The exact research says .82g/lb of bodyweight. I generally tell clients to just eat their ideal weight in grams of protein expecting them to most likely end up falling closer to that range regardless. On the flipside I have seen a lot of people dieting down eating LOW protein, who were not happy with their results because while on a restriction of calories, the body pulled away muscle more than it did fat. Muscle takes a lot of energy to hold onto, so we need to give it a damn good reason to stay.
Avoid Processed Food
We can talk about counting calories, adhering to specific diets, or intermittent fasting. They are all tools, and they all have their merits towards helping individuals lose weight. We can actually simplify this even more. When people struggle to lose weight, the most common cause ends up being because they are eating too many processed foods. Research studies have been done showing people underestimate how much they’re eating by 500 calories. When I start clients on a diet, we usually take 500 calories away each day to get us on track to lose 1-2lbs per week. Given all this information that means, at best people have unintentionally removed themselves from being in a proper deficit causing them no change in weight loss.
This is huge news because it would explain why we don’t see the scale move. The other issue is processed food is calorically dense, not filling, and easy to overeat. This all equates to a disaster waiting to happen. A full family size bag of chips contains about 4-5 whole potatoes in there. If I told you to eat that whole bag you could probably do it easily. If I told you to eat 4-5 whole potatoes you’d be full after the second one. This is what I mean by easy to overeat. Here we have the same exact foods, but the processed one is easily making you eat over TWICE as much. If we can focus on mostly whole foods, it will provide a higher volume of food, and be more satiating. It’ll create a natural limit to how much food we want to eat each day whereas processed food will just make you eat more. When I have most clients stick to this one rule, they find their weight loss skyrockets.
Create Barriers Between You and Trigger Foods
Similar to the second point, but to hopefully help us a little more would be to create barriers. I know for example that I LOVE potato chips (seeing as this is now my second reference to eating chips in one article). If it is around, I WILL eat it. There is just no debating that. So when I diet, what I will do is either make sure to never buy it during my diet period, or make the rule that I have to get up and go drive to the store the day that I want it. What this does is create a barrier. It makes it more difficult for me to succumb to the temptation. If you have kids, or a family that already has snacks around, the next best thing you can do is switch to those individual bag servings. While this doesn’t completely eliminate processed goods, it will shine a big light on your serving. You are no longer picking at a big bag mindlessly, and now given a direct portion that once you are done, you are done. This method is also good for those who feel like they shouldn’t have to completely eliminate a food, and can handle moderation.
Change Your Training Stimulus
If you’ve been doing the same workout program for months on end, it might be time to just change things up. The novelty and challenge of mastering a new exercise may have worn off. You may be only making very small increments in weight and/or reps. If that is the case, try changing up your routine. This may look as simple as changing the rep range from 5-10 to 10-15. Maybe you switch from a bodybuilding routine to a more performance based routine. Or maybe you decide to try powerlifting. Either way, you are looking to shake things up because you have found yourself stalling. Don’t just constantly change the workout for the sake of “confusing the muscle” as this does not exist. Again, we are finding tools to elicit small changes to continue forward motion.
Drink a Gallon of Water a Day
You hear this all the time, and it seems too simple to be effective, but it works. We are mostly drinking this to stay well hydrated. A lot of times what we think is hunger is really just dehydration and needing more water. By having the simple goal of hitting a gallon, you are just creating an easy goal to hit. The other added bonus is by focusing on drinking water, we are removing the sugary beverages, and filling up our stomach with liquid instead of excess food or sugar. I don’t want this to be the mainstay point, but just as an aside note. Our cells need water to thrive, and if we aren’t drinking enough water we aren’t keeping our body at 100%.
