Continued from part 1.
Plateaus and slow progress
When I actively or strictly diet with the goal of losing weight I have not encountered this issue. If you continuously monitor your calories in and out and re-adjust your calorie deficit with proper water intake and workouts I have not seen plateaus, nor slow progress.
I did see slow down of weight loss as I described in the progressing your diet journey post, that is related to the actual calorie deficit including workouts and everything, as the calories burnt has decreased as I was doing the same routine with less and less body weight, which leads to less energy required to do it.
The only weird experience that I had was with birthdays. I was doing a ketogenic diet with low carbohydrates (CH, 30-50g/day), but in August we had a big family birthday party, so I decided to only keep my calorie goal for the day, but not the macros, so I ended up eating like 4-5 pieces of sugary cake, probably 250-300g CH, mostly sugar, the following day my weight went up by multiple kilograms and it took a weak of strict ketogenic eating to get it back to the numbers that were expected based on my weight loss trend.
As I learnt this is because the body keeps a lot more water in the muscles when you are consuming carbs in high (or some would say normal) amounts, then as I turned back to the low CH diet, it was dropping back fast, after a day it was 0.8 kg minus, then 0.6 kg and so on.
If you hit a plateau or your progress has slowed down, you probably need to re-adjust the calories in and out. If the numbers look to be in order, then your situation needs a deeper analysis.
Unrealistic expectations
This is what I tried to address with the progressing your diet journey post. Losing weight doesn't happen overnight, it's not as slow as muscle building, but still takes a considerable amount of time, 0.5-1kg/week, only with extreme measures can you lose much more than that in a short amount of time, which are surely not healthy options.
Another important part here is that you do need that and even more time to change your habits around eating and working out, as you see that didn't work out for me either, I have not changed my eating habits, I only focused on losing weight, I lost a lot, but gained back in 2-3 years, because my default lifestyle have not been changed.
Now I'm conscious of this, so I'm doing gradual changes, which I will be able to maintain after I reach my goal weight.
Social pressure and environments
As I mentioned in the tracking your progress - weight post, I have a problem with this, especially around Christmas. I think my main issue was the ketogenic diet here, because it is very different from a normal diet, it doesn't allow to consume any pastries, cookies, cakes, not even in the smallest enjoyable amount and seeing such foods for 2 weeks was just too much for my willpower.
You have to prepare yourself for these situations and have a plan how to cope with them.
Chris Bumpstead, bodybuilder, 4-time Mr. Olympia, has a video where he tells the story of him visiting a birthday party and while everyone was eating cake, he was opening up his prepared box of the holy chicken and rice combo. It was a sacrifice for his goal to not eat cake, but also he was prepared with his own food, so he wasn't just looking at the cake starving, he fed himself with the food that his body needed to reach his goals.
We are not preparing for the next bodybuilder contest here, so do plan what you will allow yourself to eat, calculate the calories for that and keep yourself strictly to it, if you planned 1 piece a day, then 1 piece a day. If you need to secure the piece of tomorrow from predators, then do it, but don't eat another one just because there will be no more left tomorrow. This is the fear of missing out. You are not missing out, just ruining your diet. 😬
Lack of support
Similar to the Lack of motivation issue, you need partners on the weight loss journey who keep you accountable, lift you up, because it's a new thing, it takes a long time, there are bad days, willpower is limited, you need support.
If you can't find anyone around you drop me a message on linkedin, email me at [email protected] or book a free appointment, I will support you daily, free of charge.
To be continued...