Why You’re in a Weight Loss Plateau and How to Fix It- ERF 1,058

If your weight loss has plateaued and you're not seeing any more change in your body, it's not because your metabolism is broken, and you certainly don't need to eat 1,200 calories to fix it. I've coached over 25,000 clients with their fat loss transformations, and in this video, I'm going to tell you exactly why your weight loss has plateaued, why what you think you need to do to fix it is wrong and the exact step-by-step plan you're going to follow to break your plateau today. And trust me, I get it. This is probably the 3rd week in a row you've stepped on the scale on Monday morning and you make sure to take a deep breath, you move the scale around to make sure when you step on it, that number goes down. And it's not. And you're doing everything right. You're eating clean and healthy. You're still getting your workouts in. You're making extra time to go get your steps during the day. Hell, you might even be taking extra time to make sure you cook a healthy dinner versus going out to eat. And you're starting to get frustrated. You're starting to think, is there something wrong with me? Is my metabolism broken? Maybe it's my hormones. Why am I even working this hard to not even see any progress? And if there's one thing I've learned after coaching so many clients is there's nothing more frustrating and disappointing and disheartening than feeling like you're putting in all this effort, but you're not getting the results that you think you should be getting. So I understand it is very exhausting at times. And I also understand that this isn't just about how you look. This isn't just about a number on the scale. This is like costing you your mood for the entire day. You snap at your kids more. You're not as focused or productive in your work. You're short with your partner a bit more. You also tend to do things like skip out on workouts or go into the all-or-nothing mentality where you think to yourself, well, if this isn't working anyway, Why would I go get this extra workout? Why would I make time to weigh out my food? Why would I stay on track on the weekends when screw it, it's not going to work anyway. I might as well enjoy myself. But then, as we all know, Monday morning rolls around again and your jeans still don't fit. The scale is now going up. And so you tell yourself, I got to get back on track now. And this cycle just keeps repeating itself. And I think the worst part is probably you think that it's you that is the problem. You think there's something wrong with your body or you're broken, which is even more demoralizing because now it's like, well, no matter what I do, I'm not going to see progress. And trust me, I get it, because actually I am here right now myself. I have been Trying to be in a calorie deficit for the last couple weeks, and I was successful at first. I had dropped about 10 to 15 pounds. I'm down to about 245, 250, and I'm wanting to get down to about 240-ish. But the last couple of weeks, scale has just stayed the exact same, and it's frustrating because I want to lose those last 10 pounds. But nothing's happening. And I'm still tracking my calories. I'm still doing extra cardio because right now I'm on a kind of a hybrid training style approach where I'm doing 4 days a week of lifting and I'm doing 5 days a week of cardio right now in between running and HYROX training. And so for me, I'm like, why is this number on the scale not going down? But We're going to talk about why that happens. And I'm also going to talk about why 9 out of 10 times when we are working with clients and trying to unpack why they're not seeing the progress they want to see, it's not what they think. And I can promise you this, you're not lazy, you're not broken, your metabolism isn't ruined, and you might not even be in A plateau. And there's more to come on that in the later parts, latter parts of the video. But first, I want to talk about what not to do, because while I know this is a very frustrating time, if you do the wrong things, you're only going to make it worse. So I don't want you to do that. And the first panic move that most people make is They drop their calories down to 1,200 calories per day or some obnoxiously low amount of calories. And I get that this feels like the right thing to do because you're thinking less food equals I will lose weight faster, I will weigh less, I just have to push myself through and use more discipline. But why? It fails is because you're cutting your calories so low to, number one, fix a problem that you don't even know is happening. Again, I'll talk about that in a quick second. But then number two, what happens from you cutting your calories so low is more hunger, worse workouts, more cravings, less strength in the gym, Slower metabolism. Usually, this leads to overeating and binge eating on the weekends, especially because, this is where the cycle gets really nasty, if you're really restricting yourself all week and then the weekend comes around and you're not seeing progress, what's gonna happen? You're gonna get to the weekend and you're like, screw this. I am not staying on track with this and I'm so pissed off now that I'm doing all this work and not making progress. I'm gonna binge. I'm just gonna go enjoy myself. And that's when the overeating happens. And so now you're even less consistent than you were before because now you're taking your calories even lower, but now the calorie discrepancy between when you're quote unquote on track versus off track is even bigger. Meaning even if you do eat 1,200 calories a couple of days out of the week, On the weekends, if you're eating 3,000, 3,500 calories, which by the way, between going out to eat, having some dessert, having a drink or two, easily you can eat 3,500 calories. If you're doing that, now you actually end up being less consistent. And you can almost think of this like if your car was stuck in the snow, the first inclination is almost just like to floor the gas to get out of that stuck position. But then the wheels would just spin. You almost kind of just dig yourself deeper in the snow and you go nowhere. And that's like what dropping your calories to 1,200 calories is, is you're flooring the gas when like you don't need to floor the gas. You need to strategically get out, assess the situation, look at what you need to do, Get some guidance, get the correct plan to get yourself out of the stuck in the snow. And so eating less calories in the way that you think is not going to fix the plateau that you are in, but you may have to drop your calories. But how do you do that in a healthy and sustainable way to not have it backfire? Well, that's what we'll talk about a bit later. But panic move number 2 is Doubling the cardio, and again, I'm going to raise my hand here. I am not doubling my cardio to lose weight. I am doing more cardio because I am training hybrid. I am doing cardio and strength training, specifically training for a high rocks race. But in the back of my head, even though I know better, I'm like, well, I'm doing so much more cardio. I'm running eight. I'm looking at my watch, eighteen miles this week already, which is. More than I've ran in my entire life, let alone in the week. And I'm like, how is my scale not dropping down? And the same thing goes for you. Like, you think if you combine these 2 things, especially double your cardio and drop your calories down to 1,200, clearly you're gonna end up losing weight there. But why this also fails for most people, hunger goes up a ton. And so you eat back the calories you burn. And you may hear that and say, well, Eric, if you burn the calories, you can eat them back. Not really. They've done a lot of studies on this. And if you wear a watch to track how many calories you burn during your workout, it can be inaccurate, up to 90% inaccurate. So really, if let's say Your workout burned 500 calories or 1,000 calories. You maybe burned half of that if you're lucky. But if you end up eating 1,000 more calories, you're just taking yourself out of the calorie deficit. Not to mention, when you do so much extra activity and exercise on top of trying to be in a calorie deficit, your energy levels plummet. And so you're more sedentary the rest of the day, even if you don't intentionally try to do this. And some people, they will. Some people, they're like, well, I just ran 7 miles, I don't have to go walk my steps the rest of the day. No, you still got to go get your steps the rest of the day. But even from a subconscious standpoint, your body Downregulates something called its NEAT, non-exercise activity thermogenesis. This just means how many calories your body burns throughout the day doing just extraneous movements, moving my hands, those sort of things. So your body actually downregulates that when your energy levels are so low because you're so exhausted from doing more workouts. And so again, you think you're burning more calories, But in the long run, you're not burning more calories because you end up eating more and you end up moving less. So the old saying, you can't out-train a bad diet, that is mainly true. Now, some people, they just work out for like 5 hours a day and maybe they can. If you don't have 5 hours a day to work out, then I would not recommend you try to take that strategy. So That's panic move number 2. And then panic move number 3 is just consistently switching what diet you're following. And for those people who are going to listen on audio, I'm using diet in quotation marks here because you're doing keto, you're doing fasting, you're doing whatever your coworker is doing, you're doing what some Instagram influencer told you to do online. And again, why this feels like it may work for you Number one, you feel like you're gonna get some sort of secret, some sort of quick fix, which whether you wanna admit it or not, that's what most people are drawn to. Let's be honest. If you think I can make this switch and I'm automatically gonna see some faster progress, more times than not, you will want to do that. But then number two, even when you do make these changes, especially with something like Cutting out carbs, for example, you will drop water weight rapidly because carbs store water in your muscles. So if you cut those out, you're going to drop a lot of weight in a week or two. But then when you get into your workouts, when you get a week or two into this diet and you're having 40 grams of carbs per day, You feel like shit, your workouts suck, you have no energy, you feel over-restricted. This is all going to lead to just backfiring once again with you overeating. So you're not actually going to stay consistent enough to get yourself out of the weight loss plateau that you may think you are in. And then even if you do do that, you just stalled. You're, you're in the same stall that you were before. It's just different. But then you think, oh well, I need to switch it up again because when I switched to keto, I dropped some weight. When I switched to fasting, I dropped some weight. But then you just get stuck in this same cycle. So it's like it's a new diet, but it's the same you. You're still having all the same problems that you were having before that we have not addressed yet to fix, which leads me to panic move number 4, which is— This is the one I get. I get completely because As I mentioned earlier, panic move number 4 is the screw it. Why would I work so hard and not even see any progress? I'll just quit. I'll just actually enjoy myself. What's the point of this? And I get it because, like I said, when people sign up for coaching with us in my 8-week fat loss challenge, I would say the 2 things people tell me are, Number one, Eric, I've been trying on my own. It's not working. I just need some help. And then number two, they're like, Eric, if I just keep doing the same things I've been doing, I'm just gonna keep getting the same result I've been getting. Like, I have to do something different to get a different result. And me, on my end, I'm like, yes, you are preaching to the choir here. Um, but the reason I say that is because a lot of people will come to us just like, Exhausted. They're just like, why would I keep doing this if I'm not seeing any progress? And it's almost unfortunate but fortunate because a lot of people who come to us and ultimately want us to help them with their journey, they're kind of like sick and tired of being sick and tired. They've tried everything on their own. They can't stay consistent. They're not making the progress. They make progress for a week or two, but then life happens. They fall off track again. It's not happening as fast as they want to, so they quit. They quit for a week or two and they realize, well, I'm still fat. I don't like how I look. I don't like how I feel. I know I need to do this. So they restart again, and that process just goes on and on, and it's exhausting. It's exhausting. I get it. But remember, number one, you'd rather make slow progress than no progress. But number 2, if you quit, you're just gonna go back to the whole reason you started in the first place. Like, think about— put yourself back in the position. And this is a little coaching tactic you can steal for yourself. We do this with all of our online coaching clients quite a bit, because when somebody signs up with us, they're in a point where they're like, you know, I need some help. I'm not making progress. They're frustrated, they're exhausted. And so we often try to bottle that feeling up and then use that feeling as fuel and motivation to help them when they do get to these moments and times where they may want to quit. Like, think about where you, where you were when you first started. Think about how you felt. Think about your energy levels. Think about what happened. Did you walk past a full-length mirror and like hate what you saw? Did you take a family photo and you were like, is that actually me? Like, this is, this is terrible. There's no way I look like that. Are you— are your energy levels just completely trash? You can barely get through the day. Like, think about where you were. If you quit, you're just gonna go back there. Like, is that what you want? I know it's not what you want because you wouldn't keep trying over and over again. And this is also where having somebody coach you through this can be really beneficial because sometimes, most times, we need to be reminded more than we need to be taught. It's like you need to be reminded, hey, if you quit, you're just gonna go back there. Hey, I know this is really difficult, but you don't wanna go back there, do you? Hey, I know it's not going as fast as you want to, but like it's better than where you were. So. All of this to be said, if all of this sounds like I'm describing you, this is because this is— you're exactly who we help in my 8-week fat loss challenge. And so right before I get into kind of how to fix the plateau, if you're like, hey, I just need some help. This is all great information, but I don't want to just keep consuming information. I want to actually get personalized help. Click the link in the description of the video below. Or just Google Eric Roberts Fitness 8-week challenge. You can apply for the 8-week challenge, see if you qualify. You'll book a call with me personally, and we'll see if we can help you out. But this is exactly what we do for our clients. And after the last panic move, number 4, I think, you know, some of the big beliefs under all of these panic moves is just something to the effect of like, Maybe my metabolism is broken. Maybe I'm me as a per— like me, my, my human body, it's, it's not allowing me to make any more progress. I'm just broken. And like I said, if you're actually in a plateau, I've coached thousands of people through this. 9.9 times out of 10, you're gonna make some progress. Now, can you do things to Optimize your hormones, for example. Absolutely. And I partner with a telehealth company that does a full blood work panel. They optimize all of your hormones, whether it be testosterone, progesterone, estrogen, all full thyroid, T3, T4, TSH, blood lipids, cholesterol, you know, sleep, cortisol, inflammation, everything you could possibly imagine my telehealth partner helps you with. So I'll link some information down below in the description as well if you'd like to check them out. It's an investment, but I think it's well worth it, especially if you're like, hey, I want to rule out that it's not my hormones. Cool, rule it out. Go do the blood work. Go get some help. But beyond that part of it, if you're in a plateau, you can break it. You just got to take the right approach to it. And the wrong approach to it, I can assure you of this, is letting the scale tell you if you're in a fat loss plateau or not, because the scale is the worst way to tell progress for fat loss. The scale weighs everything: fat, muscle, bone, water, food in your stomach, the salt from last night's sushi, the poop you haven't had yet. The water weight from your period. Your weight can swing a few pounds in a single day for so many reasons without a single ounce of fat changing. I made an Instagram post yesterday. Somebody commented and they were like, well, I started to eat more carbs and I gained a pound of fat. And I was like, no, you didn't. Carbs store extra water in your muscles. It's not like you're— You're not going to store extra bloat water weight. Carbs store water in your muscles, which is a good thing. It makes them look more defined. It makes it have more energy, perform better. So all these things are good, but this individual was not educated about the scale and the carbs and the water. And so she thought she gained a pound of fat, but this is why you can't just let the scale tell you if you're in a fat loss plateau or not. So The analogy I wrote down here was, if you think of your body like a sponge, if you weigh it dry in the morning and then you weigh it after you do the dishes, it's going to be heavier. Is it a— technically, is it a bigger sponge? No, it's the same exact sponge you weighed in the morning. It's just holding extra water weight. And that's you after a high-carb dinner. That's you after a hard leg day because there's more inflammation in your muscles, which stores water weight. That's you a week before your period. It's the same sponge, there's just more water. And so the scale tells you how much you weigh. It doesn't tell you how much fat you lost. And so piggybacking on top of that, we're going to get into now the checklist of if you're actually in a plateau. Because if the scale isn't the best way to tell if you're in a plateau, What is? Well, good for you. I'm going to tell you right now. You're only in a fat loss plateau if you check all 4 of these boxes. Box number 1, it's been at least 21 days, not 5 days, not 10 days, 21 days. Why 21? I will tell you. Number 1, daily water weight swings, whether it's salt, Carbs, sleep, stress, digestion, period. Your body's going to fluctuate over a couple of days for so many reasons. Number 2, carbs hold water. So, for every gram of carb you eat, your body usually stores about 3 grams of water in your muscles. So, if again, maybe you have had a little bit of a higher carb meal the past couple days, That can affect the scale. Nothing to do with your fat, it can just affect the scale. Or for another example, if you have new workouts or you've been working out very hard, new workouts and hard workouts can lead to more inflammation in your muscles and more sore muscles. Sore muscles and more inflammation lead to more water weight. This is not a bad thing because it needs the extra nutrients. To be able to recover and build stronger, more defined muscles, but that can hold some water weight. Maybe it's stress and bad sleep. Higher stress, higher cortisol is tied to holding on to extra water weight. And then on top of that, if you have bad sleep, number one, you're not giving your body as much time to digest the food in your stomach. So there's literally just more food in your stomach, which is making your human being weigh More. And then number 2, less sleep equals higher stress. So all that plays a role. Again, women, if your cycle is coming, you'll be storing some extra water weight because of that. So all these— I mean, I could keep going, but all of these reasons are why the scale is not going to tell, even over a span of like 3, 4, 5, 6 days. Because think about the course of a week. If early in the week, You had a really hard leg day and you started a new workout program, you're going to store more water weight. If midweek you really have bad sleep and you're a bit higher stressed, you're going to be storing water weight. If later in the week you go out and you have maybe a higher carb meal, even if you stay within your calories, you're storing some extra water weight. And then maybe heading into the next week, if you're a woman who's starting her cycle, You're going to be storing water weight. So over the course of a week, you could hit your calories perfectly, but you would still be storing extra water weight, which would make the scale stay up higher for no other reason than it's just water weight. So you can't go by 4 days or 5 days or 7 days. Has to be at least 21 days. And a side note to this, just to remember, If you're in the middle of summer, you're in the middle of August, and there's one cold day, it's 30 degrees outside, would you then say, oh, well, it's winter now? No, it's the middle of August. It's not winter yet. So, one spike up on the scale or one week of your weight being up doesn't mean you're not making progress. There's a way to look at it over a span of 21 days. So that's box number 1. Now box number 2, you were at least 90% consistent with your plan over those past 21 days. So 90% consistency is about 19 days. So that means hitting your calories at least 19 days over the past 21 days, truthfully, like weighing out your food, Not guessing, not being like, oh, well, you know, I kind of went out with my friends and I kind of overate a little bit. Nope. 90% consistency. Because if you didn't, you're not in a plateau. You're just not consistent enough yet to know if the plan is working. And the good news is that is fixable. It's like if you skip out on a third of the ingredients In a recipe to bake a cake and then you make the cake and it sucks, are you like, oh, this is a bad recipe? No, you didn't even use the recipe, so you don't know if it's a bad recipe. You never really made the recipe. It's the same thing with your plan. If you only followed your plan with 60% consistency, you have no idea if the plan works. You only know that 60% of the plan doesn't work. And, you can't blame the outcome of a recipe you didn't follow. Now, why are you not hitting 90% consistency? I don't know. This is where, if you were our client, we would comb through everything. We would look at your food logs, we would look at your workouts, we would talk to you like an actual human being. And be like, hey, what's the problem? Like, what's going on? What is the difficult part of this? And side note, the way that we approach coaching is a very collaborative process. And what I mean by that is we're the experts. We're gonna be here to take out the guesswork and guide you. But if you tell us, hey, Eric, I'll be honest with you, this workout program that we have, I was loving it, but like my schedule changed. I'm pretty stressed right now. I can't get 4 days a week for an hour. Cool, we'll swap it for 3 days a week for 30 minutes. Or if you're like, hey, I know I'm supposed to be like pre-tracking my food for dinner, but like things are just super crazy busy at dinner, I don't have time, my kids started up some new sports, we're not gonna be like, ah, just fucking try harder. Like, that's so fucking worthless. We're gonna adjust the plan for you. So like, I don't know why you're not being 90% consistent, but You have to figure that out and then attack that problem. I can give you the most common ones right here, and you can take these for yourself. But again, if you want personalized help to fix these problems and actually stay consistent long-term, click the link in the show notes of the video below to learn more and apply for my 8-week fat loss challenge. Awesome. So leak number one is the weekends. Most people are going off track on the weekends. And again, if you're on plan all week, but then you're going off track every Friday, Saturday, Sunday, you're only on track 4 out of the 7 days. That is not enough for you to make progress. That's like if you— if your kid had a 30-question test, and they only got 15 of them right, you're not going to be surprised when they fail. You're going to say, you didn't get enough right. So, the weekends, you have to plan for them. You have to make sure you attack them. And I use the word attack because you're not going to passively just hit your goals on the weekends. It's not going to happen. You got to make a plan even if it's out of routine. Even if you don't know exactly what you're going to do. There's so many ways with our clients that we help them hit their goals on the weekends. And it depends on the person, and I could give you a million strategies, but the overall concept is you have to fix the weekends, number one. Number 2, you are too restrictive during the day, and then it all comes loose at night. If you're only eating 700 calories by the time you get home for dinner, and you're wondering Why you're starving, you have cravings, you always end up overeating? Oh, I don't know. Maybe because you've had no fucking food all day. And the problem here is most people think not eating all day is a good thing. It's not because you're— it's always going to backfire at night. So we really try to encourage our clients to eat more food and more calories during the day, which I know feels counterintuitive because you're like, well, I'm hungriest at night and I'm going to run out of food. You're not, because you're not even gonna be as hungry. The reason you're so hungry and you're trying to save calories and you end up overeating at night is 'cause you don't eat during the day. And number 3, just fixing that all-or-nothing mentality, fixing the mentality we talked earlier about, oh well, eff it, I've already gone off track, I might as well restart on Monday. It could be a Wednesday, somebody slightly goes over their calories or they miss a workout. They just say, screw it, I'll restart on Monday. So now that's Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, restart Monday. You were on track 2 days, you're off track 5 days. That's not enough consistency to get you results. Now, even if you did go off track on Wednesday, if you're right back on track the other days of the week, you're on track 6 days and not off track 1 day. Better than being off track 5 days. Now, box number 3, you need to check. Your waist measurement has not gone down in 21 days. And first and foremost, if you're not taking your waist measurement, you're doing yourself an incredible disservice because this is one of the best ways to know if you're losing body fat, especially in your stomach area. You should be measuring your belly button With a tape measure, same time in the morning. Our clients do it every 2 weeks. And if your waist is going down but you're not losing weight on the scale, you're losing fat and building muscle at the same time, because there's no other way your waist measurement would go down other than if you're losing fat. I don't care what the number on the scale says. And I can't tell you how many times we've coached clients where their scale only went down a pound or 2, but their waist measurement went down an inch and a half. I don't care what the scale's doing. I clearly can see your waist measurement's going down, your clothes are fitting looser, your jeans fit better, you're making progress. And oh, what do you think happens when you see your waist measurement go down a half inch? You get motivated because you're like, oh, this is working. If you only have one way to notice progress, and that's the number on the scale, which is the worst way to track, it's no shock that you're not motivated to keep going. You need to set yourself up for better motivation, for better success, which is why— You should join our 8-week fat loss challenge because we have all of our clients do this. Link in description below. Now, box number 4, if your progress pictures haven't changed. So we also take progress pictures. You should be taking front, both sides, and back. Take it at the same time each morning, right after you weigh yourself. Take it in the same room. Take it with the same backdrop. Try to wear the same clothes if possible. Every 2 to 4 weeks. Typically we do 4 weeks for our clients. Sometimes we'll do 2 weeks if we feel like it's necessary. But you take the pictures, you put them side by side. You never just go from your memory because you're going to look at your new pictures and think those don't look any different. But then when you put them side by side from 4 weeks ago until now, as if you guys follow me on Instagram or if you saw earlier watching this video, I put some of our progress pictures. From our clients side by side here, you can tell the difference. But if you just look at them as a one-off, it's not going to fucking matter. You're not going to see any difference. Also, you're going to be an asshole to yourself, and we are the biggest assholes to ourselves sometimes. And so you're not going to think you're making progress, but you are. And one last little box here. If your strength is going up in your workouts and you're lifting heavier, you're getting stronger, That is also a sign that you are doing good. So if you check all of those boxes, you're in a plateau. If you didn't check all those boxes, which 98% of you watching this did not check all those boxes— I know this because I've done this for a very long time— you're not in a plateau. You either have to be more patient, have to be more consistent, Have to take your waist measurements, have to take your progress pictures and track progress differently. This is why when I said earlier, you might not even be in a weight loss plateau. But if you are, if you're one of the very few people who have checked all 4 of those boxes and/or— I will give you the honest answer here. Even if we are working with a client And they haven't checked all of those boxes, we will still make some adjustments because we're trying to get out in front of them getting super discouraged. Because I get it, if you're not making progress, you're not going to want to keep going. So whether you've hit all those boxes or not, here's why your body plateaus, and here's exactly how to fix it. So cause number 1, your body did adapt a little bit. So when you are losing weight and your person, your human being weighs less, you're automatically going to burn less calories because it just takes less calories to now maintain your lower weight. It takes less calories to move around. It takes less calories to digest less food. All these things play a role. And also, like I mentioned earlier, your body will subconsciously turn down your calorie burn per day via less NEAT, less movement, less blinking, less— just like stuff you don't even realize. And also, when you're eating less calories, your body is very smart and very adaptive, and it will downregulate. It will slow down your daily calorie burn, your daily metabolism, To adjust to that. Now, a couple of things here. Number one, the more weight you've lost, the more this is apparent. So, like, if you've only lost 5 or 10 pounds, not that I'm discrediting that because that's an incredible accomplishment, but this doesn't really happen when you've only lost 5 or 10 pounds. It's when you've lost typically about 40 pounds, 50 pounds, 60 pounds. The bigger share of your body weight, the Bigger and more apparent your metabolism slowdown would end up being. And then number 2, everybody is a little bit different. So we've had clients where maybe they've lost 15 to 20 pounds and we've had to adjust their calories, but we've also had clients who have lost 70 or 80 pounds and we haven't adjusted their calories once. So this really just depends on that individual's metabolism, which if you're working with a coach on our team, that coach is fully dedicated to you. They're looking at all of your progress, all of your daily food logs, your steps, your workouts, your progress pictures, your measurements. They're looking over everything and we'll handle all that guesswork for you. All you'll have to do is just listen to your coach, execute on the plan, and you'll know you're doing the right things. So That's why it happens, but it's less than you think. And I'll talk about that a little bit more when I get to the exact fixes. But cause number 2, cause B, is also when you take a step back and look at your life. Life changed your plan without you really agreeing. So, This is the one not a lot of people talk about because not a lot of people have coached as many clients as we have coached. But for example, maybe you had a kid, which is an incredible— this is congratulations, this is awesome. But like, now your sleep is worse. Now you're not able to carve out as much time for exercise or cooking. That your plan has changed. So, now you're not walking as much, you're not getting as much workouts, you're not eating as healthy, you're having more quick food, easy food, snacking more. That is why you might be in a plateau. Maybe work got really busy. You got a promotion, you got a new role. Congratulations. But now maybe there's more meetings, there's more desk time. Maybe you do have to work on the weekends a little bit. Maybe you have to work later at night a little bit. So, now your schedule is a little bit different. Now, maybe your 60-minute workout becomes a 20 or 30-minute workout. Okay? Like, or maybe 4 times a week becomes 2 times a week. But that all plays into your plan and your overall progress. Or maybe it's busy season for you at work and you're traveling and you're having dinners out with clients. You're having dinners out with vendors. You're having airport food. It's harder to track. Maybe there's a bit more alcohol. We're going into the holidays. Maybe there's the Halloween candy and all the Thanksgiving leftovers, and we're going into the holidays with the Christmas cookies. And so all, all of these things play a role. Maybe even like in the beginning of your journey, you were super consistent and on point with weighing out your food, weighing out your calories, making sure you were in a calorie deficit. And now month 3, you're kind of just eyeballing it. So month 1, you were for sure eating 1,800 calories, and now month 3, maybe you're eating 1,800 calories, but maybe not because we're not really tracking as accurately. And so this could also be a reason why you shouldn't be upset with yourself or mad at yourself, but there's a reason why the plateau is happening. It's not just like you're broken. And so I would say a quick self-audit, you know, Asking yourself things like, are your daily steps the same as when you started? Are you still weighing out your food or are you eyeballing it? Are you eating out more than what you were doing before? Are you sleeping the same than what you were doing before? Are you doing the same amount of workouts? Like, all these things, your plan usually doesn't stop working. Your plan stopped being your plan because life changed it for you. And again, This is really what we excel and help our clients with in my 8-week fat loss challenge, because when life changes, we will adjust the plan with you. That same plan isn't going to work anymore. So if you keep trying to follow it, you're going to either plateau or gain weight back. So your plan has to adjust. Your calories have to adjust. Your workouts have to adjust. You may have to adjust how you utilize weekends, for example. This is just one thing that came to my mind, but— A lot of the clients we work with, they're busy. They have kids, they are professionals, they have a lot of— a high-demand job, high-stress job. And so maybe the weekends they might have been sleeping in a bit to catch up on sleep, but we might have to say, hey, maybe wake up 30 minutes earlier and go for an extra 20-minute walk. Maybe get a workout in on Saturday, Sunday so that during the week maybe either get no workout or only need to get one workout. So your plan may have to just simply adjust, and that's okay. But if you don't know what to adjust, then you're not going to make the correct adjustments, which is what we do in our 8-week fat loss challenge. Every single week you'll have a weekly check-in with your coach, and your coach will adjust your plan so you know no matter what, you are doing the right things. So click the link in the show notes of the podcast to apply for the 8-week challenge. Now, how to actually fix this? What is the step-by-step plan? Well, the first rule here is you should pull one lever. What I mean by that is a lot of people will try to— they'll cut carbs and they'll increase steps and they'll do more cardio and they'll change their workouts. Don't do that. Just pick one thing to adjust. And there's a couple of things you can do here. Number one is adjusting your calorie intake. But like I said earlier, it's less than you think. Typically, what I have seen coaching over 25,000 clients, 100 to 200 calories per day. That's all you need to decrease, to see that scale go down again, to see the measurements go down again, to break the plateau. You don't need to decrease by 500 calories per day. If you were eating 1,800, 1,650, 1,700. It may not seem like much, but it's really all you need to recreate the calorie deficit that you need to be in. And again, you're not gonna take your calories so low that you're fricking starving, which is important. So that's lever number 1 you could pull. Now, lever number 2, some people— this is where individuality and coaching comes into play. Some people will say, uh-uh, I'm not decreasing my calories anymore. Screw this. It's like, okay, well, we have to find a way to recreate the calorie deficit. So, if we're not gonna decrease calories, what can we do? We could increase our daily steps. So, if let's say we have a client who they're only walking 6,000 steps per day, we might say, okay, you don't wanna cut your calories? Fine. We gotta find a way to get 2,000 more steps per day. Maybe it's an extra walk after dinner, maybe it's an extra walk at lunch. Don't care how you do it, we got to get an extra 2,000 steps per day because, again, we have to recreate the calorie deficit. Now, number 3, somebody might say, oh, somebody might say, I don't want to cut my calories, or we have people who are already walking 10,000 steps per day, 12,000 steps per day. We're not going to say, oh, go do 15,000, because there is a point of diminishing returns. So for this individual, we might say something like, okay, you're going to add in 2 to 3 times a week of zone 2 cardio, 20, 30, 40 minutes at a time. Maybe it's a light jog, maybe it's a bike, maybe it's a rower after a workout. You get the extra calorie burn from the zone 2 cardio, but you don't increase your appetite or your hunger or your cravings. Because the intensity isn't enough to increase all of those things. Because if you just tack on a bunch of high-intensity cardio, trust me when I say, because I did this 2 weeks ago, it's gonna backfire. I added in another day of like interval runs and I felt like shit. I was starving all the time. I was super exhausted. I did not want to stick to my calorie deficit. And I'm I'm the guy, I'm the coach, I'm the one who, like, my entire life is centered around fitness. If it was hard for me, I promise it's gonna be hard for you too. So that's number 3, you could add in some zone 2 cardio. Number 4, you could try out some calorie cycling. This looks like a few lower days of calories and then a few higher days of calories. A couple of caveats here. This typically works best for people who are weekend warriors, maybe they have a bit more calories on the weekends, or you just like having a couple of days during the week where you have higher calories because it makes you feel like you're not dieting as much. Now, this looks like, let's say per day you eat 200, maybe 300 less calories Monday through Thursday. And then Friday through Sunday, maybe you eat 300, 400, maybe 500 extra calories on those days. That can work. But you eating 200 less calories Monday through Thursday and then eating 1,000 extra calories Friday, Saturday, Sunday, it's never going to work. And that's where most people backfire because they think, oh well, I ate less during the week, I can eat more during the weekends. And that just puts you right back in the position of having the plateau. Plateau that we talked about earlier. So while this can work, it still requires moderation. It still requires you to hit your calorie goal. And 500 extra calories, if we're being honest, especially if you're going out to eat, if you're having a little bit of alcohol, it's not that much fucking food. It's not. And you can easily overshoot that. So you would still have to be very mindful when you're doing this. It can work, but I'll just be honest, unless you're somebody who's willing to actually do that, it's not going to work for you. It's going to backfire, but it is an option. Now, option number 5 would be something like tweaking macronutrients and then having more protein, for example, because for every 100 calories of protein you eat, your body burns up to 30 of those calories. So it can increase that, and more protein equals less snacking, less cravings, better muscle growth, better body composition. So if somebody's only eating 80 or 90 grams of protein per day, we may bump them up to 120 to 130 grams per day, and that could kind of kickstart their plateau or kickstart their progress and break their plateau. So number 6 would be sleep. And if we know somebody is really struggling with sleep, as much as we can, we're gonna try to do all that we can to help them out with that. And I get it because we coach a lot of people who We coach a lot of people who are new parents. We coach a lot of people who, they have very stressful and busy jobs, and so they just want to unwind at night. So, I get all of these things, but it makes it so much harder when you're not getting enough sleep or enough good quality sleep. So, really making routines around sleep, potential supplementation around sleep. If you're somebody who struggles with sleep, there are 2 supplements from the company I work with, Legion Athletics, that I Strongly guarantee— strongly recommend. I can't guarantee. Strongly recommend that you try. The first one is called Lunar, and the second one is magnesium glycinate gummies. So you can go to legionathletics.com, or you can click the link in the description of this video. There'll be a link for both of them. Lunar, it's a sleep aid, and then magnesium glycinate gummies, Take those 2 things 30 to 60 minutes before you go to sleep. I can't promise you, but I will highly recommend it will help you. It's the exact stack I take, and I take my sleep very seriously. I'm not always perfect with it, but I do take it very seriously. It really helps me. So, if you struggle with sleep, you can also use my code ERIC to get buy one, get one half off. So, if you buy the Lunar, you'll get the Magnesium half off. Save you some money. So again, you can go to legionathletics.com or click the link in the description below. Lunar Magnesium Glycinate Gummies. Use my code ERIC, get buy one, get one half off. Thank me later. 7th would be instead of trying to fit in 60-minute workouts, maybe we adjust to 2 to 4 times a week of 30-minute workouts. Because then over the course of the week, they're actually having more exercise and more consistency with their exercise than if they tried to do 4 days a week at 60 minutes that they're not getting in. And then last, like I talked about earlier, using weekend mornings. This is really a hack for a lot of our clients, which is just getting up a little bit earlier and using the weekend mornings to get ahead, whether that be meal prep, whether that be exercise and workouts, Whether that be walking, whether that be just like taking some time to yourself to decompress. Typically for most people, if you can wake up early, you get some time to yourself on the weekends before the craziness starts, and you can use that to your advantage to break this plateau. So there was a lot in this podcast, and again, I hope you learned a ton. If you are interested in getting some personalized help and you're like, This guy Eric kind of knows what he's talking about. Thank you. This is what we do for a living, so I kind of know a little bit about this stuff. You can click the link in the description of the video below to apply for the 8-week fat loss challenge. Like I said, you'll fill out a form, you'll see if you qualify. If you do qualify, you'll book a call with me personally. We'll chat on the phone a bit, make sure we can actually help you, and then we would get you started up. That's what the process looks like. I promise you If any of this resonated, we can help you. I do hope this was helpful for you. I hope you can now leave this and implement it into your day. And, uh, yeah, like I said, I hope you enjoy, and we will chat next time.