Have you ever felt like you can't lose weight on a low calorie diet no matter how much exercise you do in the gym? If so, you are certainly not alone in that situation. In fact, around 80 percent of gym members have hit this point at some stage in the past and don't know how to get around it.
The immediate course of action is to look at what you are doing right now and eliminate the things which are not working.
There is a major issue with all individuals who reach this sticking point. They share two things in common:
1. They don't eat enough calories.
2. They spend their time doing endless hours of cardiovascular activity.
If you see yourself in either of those two situations, there is a very clear reason why you can not achieve the results you are trying to achieve on the gym floor. The combination of overly performing cardiovascular exercise and eating too few calories per day is an absolute show stopper when it comes to curbing your weight loss efforts.
If you have ever tried restricting calories and cutting out your most enjoyable foods for a week you will already know the problems this approach yields - yet it remains a commonly made dieting mistake. By restricting your favorite snacks your diet becomes the enemy, which is never good for long-term progress, and by restricting calories you run the very real danger of pushing your body straight into starvation mode, which is renowned for elevated fat storage.
If you do manage to push your body into starvation mode, your metabolism will take a battering. It can slow down considerably in an attempt to stop you from burning the nutrients it needs to survive, the same nutrients you are restricting in your diet. That's why you'll often hear people wondering why they cannot lose any more fat despite eating only a little amount of food and working out a lot.
On top of this issue, it's usually commonly associated with long steady state aerobic activity - which has been well documented for lean muscle breakdown. This puts you in a lose/lose situation, hanging on to excess body fat while losing lean muscle tissue!
If you have done this in the past, or are doing it right now, you need to change your approach if you are to see any upturn in the results you hope to achieve. Start by dismissing the notion of starving yourself and try to consume a calorie intake of roughly 12 times your goal body weight in pounds. If that is a massive jump from where you are at right now, then simply go up in stages week by week instead of a big sudden jump.
Likewise, your cardio routine needs a nudge in the right direction and that can be attained with the use of high intensity interval training, which will provide you with shorter and more enjoyable sessions as well as a more difficult workout overall. HIIT and weights are proven to be more effective for both burning body fat and building lean muscle tissue.
Before you jump to the conclusion that you can't lose weight on a low calorie diet and workout program, look at why you aren't seeing any results. By incorporating the latest science, as we have done today, you can see that the solution to your problem is not very complex at all.
The immediate course of action is to look at what you are doing right now and eliminate the things which are not working.
There is a major issue with all individuals who reach this sticking point. They share two things in common:
1. They don't eat enough calories.
2. They spend their time doing endless hours of cardiovascular activity.
If you see yourself in either of those two situations, there is a very clear reason why you can not achieve the results you are trying to achieve on the gym floor. The combination of overly performing cardiovascular exercise and eating too few calories per day is an absolute show stopper when it comes to curbing your weight loss efforts.
If you have ever tried restricting calories and cutting out your most enjoyable foods for a week you will already know the problems this approach yields - yet it remains a commonly made dieting mistake. By restricting your favorite snacks your diet becomes the enemy, which is never good for long-term progress, and by restricting calories you run the very real danger of pushing your body straight into starvation mode, which is renowned for elevated fat storage.
If you do manage to push your body into starvation mode, your metabolism will take a battering. It can slow down considerably in an attempt to stop you from burning the nutrients it needs to survive, the same nutrients you are restricting in your diet. That's why you'll often hear people wondering why they cannot lose any more fat despite eating only a little amount of food and working out a lot.
On top of this issue, it's usually commonly associated with long steady state aerobic activity - which has been well documented for lean muscle breakdown. This puts you in a lose/lose situation, hanging on to excess body fat while losing lean muscle tissue!
If you have done this in the past, or are doing it right now, you need to change your approach if you are to see any upturn in the results you hope to achieve. Start by dismissing the notion of starving yourself and try to consume a calorie intake of roughly 12 times your goal body weight in pounds. If that is a massive jump from where you are at right now, then simply go up in stages week by week instead of a big sudden jump.
Likewise, your cardio routine needs a nudge in the right direction and that can be attained with the use of high intensity interval training, which will provide you with shorter and more enjoyable sessions as well as a more difficult workout overall. HIIT and weights are proven to be more effective for both burning body fat and building lean muscle tissue.
Before you jump to the conclusion that you can't lose weight on a low calorie diet and workout program, look at why you aren't seeing any results. By incorporating the latest science, as we have done today, you can see that the solution to your problem is not very complex at all.
About the Author:
About your writer: Established south shields personal trainer Russ Howe PTI teaches proven weight loss facts on his blog for free. If you feel like you can't lose weight on a low calorie diet he will teach you the facts.
