The Most Common Fat Loss Mistakes
There are a lot of fitness myths and fads that might be overhyped and would derail your overall progress. To aid your journey, Here are the most common mistakes I see people making when it comes to fat loss.
Cutting/ losing weight too quickly – This is a surefire way lose muscle & strength rapidly.
Focus on eating as many calories as possible whilst still losing fat at a steady rate so you can maintain your hard earned muscle mass and strength.
Consuming too much protein – the body can only absorb and adequately use so much.
This is largely based on your lean body mass, but I’d say a great start point is shooting for 2 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight, or 1 gram per pound. (1 gram per pound is actually 2.2 grams per kilogram.
The leaner/ more muscular you are, the higher your protein requirements are when in a deficit.
Thinking More Reps Is The Key to Getting Ripped – The focus should still be on progressive overload (increasing total training volume over time) whether bulking or cutting.
You may find due to the reduction in calories that your strength declines so you may have to increase total training volume through additional reps and sets rather than by adding more weight.
You have to keep things in perspective. You’re not going to lose a pound every week. It really comes down to logic vs emotion.
Using The Scale As The Only Way To Measure Your Progress – Fat loss is often made more complicated by emotion. We work hard to lose fat by put in so much effort in the gym while making sure we eat all the right foods, but when things don’t go according to plan we can make silly decisions without thinking clearly.
You can be emotionally upset. But you can’t let that emotion overtake your logic. You know the scale isn’t the dictator of progress,
You know the scale isn’t definitively telling you how much weight you’re losing.
Then why let it get to you? Why be so damn hard on yourself?
Why let this dictate how you feel every day?
You’re not going to make progress every day, every week, every month.
There are going to be periods of time where you don’t make visual progress. This is why you have to trust the process and you have to be patient
The difference between those that fail and those that succeed in all aspects of life, whether you’re losing fat, gaining muscle or learning a new skill solely lies in those that have enough patience to keep on going when they feel like they’re not making any progress. When they feel like they don’t know if this is working.
Who has the patience to keep on doing the things that they know are right? That they know work. Despite not seeing the progress they expect every day.
Gary Vaynerchuk calls this: Macro patience, micro speed.
“If you’re at a point where you don’t know if you can keep doing this. If you don’t know if you can stick to this diet. Well, then the answer is that the diet isn’t sustainable for you and you need to find a more realistic approach.”
Where basically this means hustling in the micro: diligently following the diet, implementing positive daily habits, focusing on incremental improvements in the gym, and generally applying discipline in the day-to-day to get done what needs to get done. Gary refers to this as “speed”. I like to think of it as diligence.
Meanwhile, in the macro he suggests we practice extreme patience. So even though we’re working hard in the present and taking the right steps on a daily basis, we need may not see any progress in the short term and to be aware that our goals will often take several years to accomplish. We need to be patient with the process.
By using this approach, we shift our focus from the outcome (I want this result now!) to the process (All I care about is doing the right work each day, making steady progress over time.). This makes us more likely to stay dedicated to the process since we know our desired outcome will likely be months to years in the making.
So the answer on how to break through a fat loss plateau is to be patient.
If you’re at a point where you don’t know if you can keep doing this. If you don’t know if you can stick to this diet. Well, then the answer is that the diet isn’t sustainable for you and you need to find a more realistic approach. Life is too short to be starving all day and not eating the foods you truely enjoy. My approach to fat loss is to set up the diet in a way where you’re truly satisfied each and every day while adhering to the correct nutrition to fit your goals and lifestyle.
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