Figure Athlete - 10 Ways to Screw Up Your Fat Loss

10 Ways to Screw Up Your Fat Loss
by Jen Heath

You planned everything out. You've been the definition of dedicated. The ride is good.

But now you're a few weeks into your fat loss program, and things aren't going quite as smooth any more.

Believe it or not, you aren't alone. As someone who's worked with many people interested in fat loss, I've had the chance to troubleshoot some screw ups that are more common than you might think. Oftentimes people don't even realize that they're the ones slowing their progress.

It's time to stop sleeping at the wheel, take your foot off the break, and get back in the fast lane.

Until good training and diet become unconscious habits, many people operate on extremes; they either do nothing at all or way too much.

I have a friend who's made diet and exercise such a part of his life that he hasn't missed a scheduled workout or had a slice of pizza in the past ten years. While he doesn't struggle at all right now, he's told me that it wasn't always so easy.

He said that over a four-year period as a teenager he tried to take up training five different times, and each never lasted longer than a week. His problem was that every time he started, he tried to do Arnold Schwarzenegger's advanced bodybuilding routine and burned out within a week. It wasn't until he took a more sensible approach that he was able to make training a full-time habit.

You see a lot of these types in the gym around January 1st. The first couple of weeks they're a fixture at the gym, bursting with energy six days a week. But as soon as they get fatigued from their boot camp schedule and rabbit food diet, they fall off the wagon.

That's the end of them until next year.

It takes roughly 21 days to form a new habit, so make sure any changes you make are ones you can live with for that time span. Small steps are easier to incorporate, whereas you may struggle to keep up with complete lifestyle overhauls.

Instead of an overnight switch to a Spartan diet, get rid of the obvious junk first. The average person can drop over a pound of fat per week simply by eliminating soda! Likewise, instead of going from zero hours of activity a week to ten, start with an hour every other day. You can always add in another healthy component at the end of 21 days.

Adherence is another issue where some people surrender all control. Many have the mindset that the slightest slip-up in their diet or a single missed workout will prevent them from success. They eat one cookie and think that since they screwed up they might as well eat the whole bag.

Next thing they know, they're surrounded by Keebler crumbs and have missed a workout. They freak out and blow off the next two weeks.

The reality is, life happens. If you fall off the wagon, dust yourself off and get right back on.

People ask me all the time if they should "compensate" for a cookie with extra cardio, or a missed workout with extra training. Most of the time my answer is, "Pretend you never did it, and continue on the plan as scheduled." Seriously. You'll get yourself all messed up in the head if you start playing games like that.

People are impatient due to various shows like "The Biggest Loser" where the expected rate of fat loss is over a pound per day. So when it doesn't happen for them, they're ready to shell out some vigilante justice on their fat cells.

The majority of women really think that losing five pounds of fat per week and doing two hours of cardio on 800 calories is normal and productive. The body can only lose fat so fast, yet there are few people willing to accept a pound a week of consistent fat loss.

Although the idea of your metabolism shutting down is refuted among many, in one study two groups of people were put on very low calorie diets (1). Group A ate 720 calories per day with no exercise. Group B ate 720 calories per day and did an hour of cardio. Most would agree an hour of cardio per day is no small amount. However, over a four-week period, Group B failed to lose any additional weight compared to Group A.

If their metabolisms didn't shut down, what happened?

Metabolism does seem to adapt negatively to extremely large deficits. How much of a deficit is too much? Very overweight people can get away with more, but if you're closer to 150 than 300, once you've reached a 900-calorie daily deficit through diet and exercise, any more won't do anything other than slow your metabolism to a crawl and burn up muscle.

So learn to accept a pound per week of actual weight loss. Remember, one pound on the scale could equal more than a pound of fat lost and an increase in muscle mass. If that's the case, you've only increased your metabolism!

This mental hurdle is one that many of my clients have crossed, and are now being rewarded with fantastic bodies. Patience is more than a virtue; it's a tool.

Fellow Figure Athlete contributor Leigh Peele has an awesome new book called Fat Loss Troubleshoot, which I highly recommend.

In the book, she points out that food manufacturers can be deceiving because anything with less than five calories per serving can be considered "calorie free." A packet of Splenda is listed as zero calories, but actually has four. An extra hundred calories per day of Splenda is so easy to get!

Things like butter sprays, cooking sprays, and various condiments can be diet killers by easily adding up to an extra several hundred calories per day. Make sure you know how much you're really consuming!

Calorie discrepancies also pop up when we measure rather than weigh our food. Take a look at this video where Leigh shows the difference between measuring and weighing your food.

A typical 1/2 cup of oatmeal and two tablespoons of peanut butter can be off by as much as 200 calories. Average that out over five meals and that's an extra 1,000 calories per day! And you wonder why you aren't losing fat.

Although there's quite a bit of evidence that eating six meals per day is overhyped, there's also some evidence that eating four meals per day is better than three.

One study showed that adults who were accustomed to eating four meals a day gained fat when switched to three meals a day, despite the calories remaining the same (2). That's pretty simple, and with no other real factors included to explain the fat gain, it's pretty convincing.

Hence, you really do need to eat more than three times a day if you want to optimize fat loss.

What? Well, this isn't really a mistake, but it can be a problem.

As the study above mentioned, there's some benefit to a slightly greater feeding frequency, but you don't tend to see any differences between four and six meals per day. Many are under the mistaken assumption that they need to eat six to eight meals a day. The problem is that you'll sit around ravenous all day because your appetite never gets close to being satisfied.

If your intake is 1,600 calories and you eat six times per day, that's only around 250 calories per meal. Cut down to four meals per day and that's 400 calories. I can live on that.

Some people really like eating so often, and if it's manageable, then great. But if you're wondering if it's okay to eat four meals a day, the answer is yes.

Keep in mind how much you're moving throughout the day and don't discount it. The Amish are six times less likely to suffer obesity compared to other Americans and take an average of 18,000 steps per day. The average American only takes around 5,000!

One thing that's taken the fitness world by storm this year is a device called the bodybugg. You wear the little guy all day and it feeds into a computer and calculates how many calories you burn each day. It'll also calculate how many steps you take.

Many users noted that general daily activity is just as, if not more important than exercise, as far as daily caloric burn. People who are somewhat active throughout the day anddon't exercise often burn more calories than people who are inactive and do exercise.

One of the ways your body adapts to caloric deprivation is by siphoning off your energy so you cut back (even unconsciously) on non-extraneous activity. Vacuuming the carpet, walking to the mailbox, walking the dog, etc. all burn calories. It's not uncommon to go on a diet and after a few weeks end up burning 500 or so fewer calories throughout the day simply because you get lazy.

So, get moving. Take the stairs, garden, clean your house — any movin' and shakin' counts.

My favorite of all time, and an ongoing joke between several friends, is to push mow your yard in a bikini top and short shorts. I'm pretty sure that the neighbors who ride their mowers stop and think about that one. Hopefully they're smart enough to put two and two together and realize that being lazy never made anyone lean.

Let's make the push mower this summer's "must have" accessory!

The other day, I walked on the treadmill for thirty minutes for a total of just over two miles. According to the mystical box on the treadmill, I burned 500 calories. But according to studies, the average woman only burns around 100 calories per mile jogging and 75 walking (3). Do the math.

The average machine is off by about 50%, so consider this when figuring your caloric deficit.

A general rule of thumb for calories burned during cardiovascular activity is about 100 to 200 calories for every 15 minutes of activity, depending on the intensity.

So, you set your calories at a level that by all accounts should have you losing weight. You're 100% confident in your food calculations and activity, but not much is happening.

Surprise!

Most of the various equations used for determining resting metabolic rate (RMR) are normally off by as much as 10 to 20% (4).

Resting metabolic rate is how many calories your body burns per day at complete rest. Thus, a 150 pound woman with a true RMR of 1,500 calories might think she has an RMR of 1,800. That's only a 300-calorie difference, but can easily throw your dieting efforts off the wall.

Keep it simple: Figure around ten calories per pound of bodyweight as your RMR and add additional calories based on your activity.

This is a big deal. I'm actually working on an article that dissects this problem in great detail, but for now, here's a tidbit on the matter.

The amount of glycogen in your liver is largely responsible for your thyroid output. The liver converts the inactive T4 hormone into the active T3. When liver glycogen runs low, less T3 is converted and your metabolism drops.

One natural method of keeping your metabolism humming is to periodically put some carbs back in your body.

Cheat days, cheat meals, refeeds, and carb-ups all work by this mechanism, and there's a multitude of ways to incorporate them. It can be as simple as having an extra 50 to 100 grams of carbs after your workouts a few days per week, an extra 200 grams of carbs one day per week, or an occasional all-out cheat day.

My favorite! As women, we tend to have our nutrition and cardiovascular programs in pretty good order, but it's easy to get lost in the mentality that more is always better.

Many of us fall into the trap of doing lots of full-body, high-rep circuit training because it burns more calories. There's nothing wrong with this, but don't forget that what builds muscle and strength is increased muscle tension over time. If you want to prevent "string bean syndrome" as you lean up, make sure you're at least maintaining, or ideally increasing, your strength in the gym.

This is the founding principle on which I've built my body. That's not to toot my own horn, but it certainly is convincing evidence that lifting heavy isn't going to turn a woman into the Incredible Hulk.

Disregarded, any of the discussed factors have the power to make a mockery out of your efforts. But, these same forces can fuel your fat loss beyond what you ever hoped for.

Harness the power.

Jen Heath is an ACSM certified personal trainer, professional natural bodybuilder, and mother of four children. She runs a successful online coaching business, through which she helps women alter the course of their lives, and achieve the lean, muscular physiques they desire. You can also find her at FatLossPros.net.

1. Effects of aerobic exercise on energy expenditure and nitrogen balance during very low calorie dieting Metabolism. 1988 Aug;37(8):758-65.

2. Highlighting the positive impact of increasing feeding frequency on metabolism and weight management. Nutr. 2003;56:126-8.

3. Energy expenditure of walking and running: comparison with prediction equations.

Department of Exercise Science, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244, USA.

4. Should we still use the Harris and Benedict equations? Nutr Clin Pract. 1996 Jun;11(3):99-103

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