Plateau Breaking

Stubborn body fat or breaking the negative plateau effect can and should be approached in two distinctive positive ways.

Firstly, making a change in your eating habits, and secondly changing your exercise routine, these methods can be tried one at a time, or both together as long as you feel comfortable with the extra commitment.

Look at reducing your carbohydrate intake to 40% of your calorie consumption, with the remainder coming from proteins 40% and healthy fats 20% per calorie consumption.

Try this method for a cycle of 3 days, whereby you should also aim to eat your carbohydrates in the first 2 - 3 meals of your 5 - 6 daily meals, with your last 2 - 3 meals of the day containing no or very little carbohydrates. Your carbohydrates should come from healthy fibrous sources such as oatmeal - wholemeal bread / pasta - brown rice - jacket potato - yams, with your evening meals based on salads and vegetables.

This method will slowly deplete your glycogen stores within both your muscles and liver, however on the forth day aim to eat your normal, still healthy source of carbohydrates 50 - 55% of calorie consumption.

Your body will learn how to utilize both carbohydrates and fats as a source of fuel. Aim to work this method for a period of 8 days, 3 days low carbohydrates, 1 day normal carbohydrates, followed by 3 days low and 2 days normal for a further 10 days.

This method should be used to break a plateau, not as a continuous eating regime, as your body will require the carbohydrates in your diet to help supply energy for both exercise and everyday bodily functions.

A reduction in your calorie intake can also be an effective method of fat loss, however this process needs to be used for a maximum of 3 days of only a 15 - 20% drop in your daily calorie intake, followed by the forth day at your normal calorie levels.

The down side to this method, is that you need to be accurate with your calorie intake, as well as knowing what your daily calorie requirement would be. It would not be wise to drop more than 30% of your calorie intake on low calorie days, ideally you should look at dropping your calorie intake over a few cycles in order to avoid your body going into starvation mode, with the main aim of keeping your lean body tissue (muscle) in order to increase your metabolism.

Look at performing this method only once you know your ideal daily calorie intake, still keeping your meals 5 - 6 a day, however with obviously smaller portions.

A typical example of this method for accelerated or improving a plateau would be:

Normal Daily Calorie intake for a man (this is not everyman - just an example) 2,500 calories day.

For days 1 - 3 and 3 a 20% reduction would be used, giving only 2,000 calories a day to be consumed, relating to 5 meals with an average of 400 calories per meal. On day 4 the normal calorie intake of 2,500 would be consumed, relating to 5 meals of 500 calories or 6 meals of 420.

The second cycle of 4 days could be a repeat of the above, or actually having 2 days low and 2 days high. This method should only be used to help break a plateau, with both a good monitoring of your calorie intake and actual bodyweight, if possible body composition (body fat / lean muscle tissue) recorded, as you some people may actually find that you increase in weight.

Changing your exercise regime will prevent your body becoming adapted to your workouts, once this happens the exercise will have more of a maintenance effect rather than one of improvements.

Simply ways to change your workouts are:

Up the level, this may mean take the level on your bike from level 5 to level 6, increase the speed slightly on the treadmill, these are areas which concern to intensity - remember for fat burning to be effective you need to be working in an aerobic (with oxygen) state, if you can't hold a very brief conversation, you may be working too hard.

If the thought of increasing the level of intensity is a bit daunting, especially for beginners, you should look at simply increasing the frequency of your exercise, taking your sessions from 5 a week to 6 or even 7, any extra calorie burnt through your efforts of exercise will help contribute towards achieving your final goal.

Increasing the duration of your workouts, for example from 30 minutes to 45 minutes will already give you a 50% increase in calorie expenditure, even if you have no increase in your intensity or frequency.

Different forms of exercise - swimming - jogging / running - rowing - cycling all have different calorie expenditure depending on how hard and long you work on each piece of equipment. Look at changing the method of aerobic exercise you perform, you may even decide to reduce the duration to 10 - 15 minutes, however increase the intensity and use 3 different forms of aerobic exercise in order to get a 30 - 45 minute workout, which would use more calories than simply a lower intensity for 45 minutes on the same form of aerobic exercise.

Increase either the number of repetitions or amount of weight that you can lift for your chosen resistance program. If you're doing 3 sets of 10 - 12 repetitions, then aim to take this to 12 - 15 repetitions, or alternatively if lifting 10 kg then look at increasing to 11 - 12kg. Always make sure that when increasing your repetitions or weight, that all exercises are performed with good technique - you are better off increasing the repetitions and then increase the weight, once both good technique and strength has been developed.

First thing in the morning your glycogen stores are often low, so you may decide to exercise first thing in the morning to help trigger your fat burning reserves. With limited blood glucose, you should avoid any hard form of aerobic training or heavy resistance, as this may cause you to feel light headed. Keep aerobic level low with any form of resistance being performed with low resistance and high repetitions. If you do feel light headed or dizzy, then avoid any further exercise and aim to eat something sweet such as a banana or fruit juice.

A combination of both aerobic and resistance work within the same session should be performed at least 1 - 2 times a week, if not then look at doing 30 - 45 minutes aerobic with 15 - 30 minutes resistance training. You can even mix and match this, i.e. 15 minutes aerobic with 10 minutes resistance, repeated three times.