Jono (00:01.378)

Jono (00:01.612)

Welcome back food groupies. We're going to talk about weight loss plateaus or put even more simply, what do I do when I was losing weight and suddenly I'm not losing weight anymore? There's a whole variety of factors we could dive into there and I'll touch on a few of them. But the one that we're really going to focus on today is something called metabolic adaptation. Cause that can very much be one of the reasons why what was previously working for your fat loss or your weight loss is no longer working. So

Very first, the two things I want to knock out of the way first and foremost, actually a number of things I'm to go through. The first thing is going to be you need to have plateaued for at least two weeks, two or three days, even seven days is not a true plateau. You need to give it at least two weeks of continuing doing what you're doing. And if you've still seen no change, great. The next step is to make sure it's not a measurement issue. And I've seen this a lot of lot of like a lot of lot of

seen this plenty of times with clients, they feel like they're not, or the measurements, the metrics aren't showing any change. So they feel like it's a plateau, but in actual fact, their body is still changing. They're just not capturing that change effectively. So that could be, they're not using scales effectively. They're not jumping out at the same time every day. You know, they're doing after the gym or, you know, after food, those sorts of things. Maybe they're not doing it frequently enough to get a true trend line. So, you know, most days of the week,

or with their measurements, maybe they're not taking measurements properly. that's very like measurements aren't easy. So it could absolutely be that. So what I would do is look at some other metrics. First and foremost, if your goal is fat loss, you're trying to lose fat, you've been losing fat and you've stopped checking with how your clothes or you feel that you've stopped, checking with how your clothes are feeling and look at maybe retake some progress photos. Because if those two things are still showing change,

Forget it, you're good, keep doing what you're doing. The fact that the scales and the measurements don't reflect that, it's far more likely due to your measurement error than it is, your clothes are changing shape all the time, right? So just make sure that you've looked at other metrics to kind of confirm what your more objective or numerical measures have been showing. So let's say you've done that, you've ruled out, it's been two weeks, it's been least two weeks, you've kind of.

Jono (02:23.976)

a couple of different measurements and they're all kind of telling you the same thing. You reflect on the last few weeks and you're doing everything normally. You haven't like gone away for just like a long weekend. You didn't have one big night out. Like you have been, I don't want to say perfect as in quote unquote perfect on your diet, but your last two weeks looks exactly the same as the two weeks before that. It's the same amount of chocolate, the same amount of calories, the same amount of normal foods. So if that is the case, the last thing.

This is the last caveat before I actually dive into things. Make sure you've listened to episode 29. That might be the first time I've ever referred to one of my own podcast episodes by number in a podcast. So I'm now a real podcaster, but that episode is titled, something like help. My calorie deficit isn't working anymore. Help. I'm in a calorie deficit. I'm not losing weight. Something like that. I'll link it. It'll be the first link in the show notes. go through that. That's some really common mistakes and very, very easy mistakes that you can make, around.

inadvertently eating extra calories, displacing those, all of these things that could be contributing to the reason why your weight has stopped. And it's not due to this metabolic adaptation. But let's say you've ruled all those things out and it truly is a case of metabolic adaptation, which is very possible. It's a very, very real thing. Basically what happens is as we lose body weight, there are a number of different things that occur to

try and protect against losing that body weight, right? And this is evolutionarily to help us survive during periods of less food, right? And so there's a whole host of things that occur. I'm not gonna bore you with most of them, but it's things like, you get more efficient essentially at getting energy out of your food, like your mitochondrial activity increases, which is pretty wild. There's a number of different hormonal things that occur, right? Like your thyroid hormone, which directly, well,

directly and indirectly impacts your metabolic rate. Levels of thyroid hormone often drop. look at different differences in sex hormones are dropping like testosterone can drop is a big one. Then we see all the appetite regulating ones, know, leptin and ghrelin and all of these things kind of as that kind of cascade as well. You know, we're also looking at like your basal metabolic rate so that you're the amount of calories your body burns each day to keep the lights on can drop. And it can do that by kind of

Jono (04:44.44)

powering down some non -essential systems in your body, right? So, know, hair, skin, nails, immune function, sexual function, reproductive, like all of that sort of stuff is quote unquote non -essential. You know, if my heart stops, big problem. So cardiovascular system gets the lion's share, know, digestive system, know, liver, lungs, all of those sorts of things. Whereas if all my hair falls out, like that sucks, but.

I'm still alive, right? So your body will start to power down these non -essential systems, which means you're literally expending less energy each day. Another big one that everyone, not everyone, but lots of people miss is if you've lost five or 10 kilos, your body has to spend less energy moving you around, right? Moving you through space. Because if you don't believe me, go put a 10 kilo weight vest on and walk around for an hour. You will feel the difference, right? And so all of these things add up.

to be essentially what can be lumped under this metabolic adaptation. It's like, it's the less extreme version of quote unquote starvation mode. Starvation mode isn't a thing, but if we take a few steps back and go, my body still does adjust to a reduction in calories, yes, it does. And that's how it does it. And that's why if you calculated your calories, it spat out that you need to eat 1700 calories a day to lose weight. And you started doing that and you lost weight for a while.

and then all of a sudden 1700 calories has stopped working, you're actually no longer in a deficit. You were in a deficit, but because of all these other things that I spoke about, your energy expenditure has actually come down to match what used to be a deficit. That's when the fun begins. There are a couple of different things that you can do to attack that. The first and most obvious brutal one is eat less, right? If the calories came down to 1700,

your energy expenditure and it comes down to 1700, then you can eat 1500, right? You can lower your calorie intake by a little bit and you'll be back into a bit of a deficit. Your body may eventually catch up with that 1500 and then you can eat less. Now, as you can probably see, you reach a point where that is not feasible. your body, you you can't just keep going down to 200 calories and your body adjusts using 200 calories. That's the whole starvation mode thing. There is absolutely a point below which your body cannot function over time.

Jono (07:08.332)

However, A, don't go there. That's not a good idea either. But also just be like, it's unlikely that you'll be able to maintain such a low calorie target for very long, right? A, like I said, wouldn't recommend it for health reasons. And B, it's just not feasible with appetite, energy, environment, all of these other things that are going on. So you will reach a point where a reduction in calories is not really feasible. It's doable, but it's not feasible or advised. So then you can look at the other side of the equation.

you can increase your energy expenditure. And you can largely really only do that by moving more. I know groundbreaking eat less or move more, but hopefully I'm giving you layers underneath that to make it make sense. Because your NEAT or your non -activated thermogenesis, or is it activity thermogenesis? Anyway, your NEAT is essentially all of the calories you burn doing stuff that isn't keeping the lights on, so running those systems that I spoke about before, and

structured physical activity. And so it's walking to the car, it's walking, standing up at the bench, it's, you know, all of these little micro movements you do throughout the day. And that is one component of your metabolic rate that also gets crushed during a dieting phase, right? Your body reduces the amount of steps you do, it gets you to fidget less. You know, you may not notice it, but it will get you to take the shortcut. It will, if you've left your water bottle in the kitchen and you realize, and you've kind of

have you know, you've been losing you've got some metabolic adaptation, you might just go, I'm not that thirsty anyway, I'll go get it later. Whereas if you were kind of at maintenance, you'd probably just pop up and grab it without even a second thought, right? So because NEAT is it's still subconsciously reduced in a diet, but it is one of the few things that you can actively control. Or, you know, you have, you can manipulate like you can't

make your reproductive system use more energy or your immune function use more energy. That's unfortunately just kind of going to do what it's going to do, but you can intentionally do more steps. You can intentionally take the stairs. You can intentionally park further away. You can intentionally add a 10 minute walk at your lunch break. And so that would be the first thing I would do. I would actually try and do that before you look at dropping your food. Cause often moving more is more pleasant than eating less and moving more has a host of other benefits as well, right? You know, like

Jono (09:33.072)

mental health, lung, lung, like cardiovascular health, ankles, knees, joints, all these sorts of things, right? So that would be where I would start. If you have reached this point of a weight plateau, I would try and move, increase your step count a little bit more. I'm saying steps, I just mean move more, like do a bit more gardening on the weekend or I don't necessarily mean do more exercise. In fact, I would suggest don't do more exercise. Like don't add another gym session. Try and really increase this incidental activity, right?

Now that's going to reach a point as well where you're like, Johnny, I've got no more time in the day. I can't park further away. I've parked as far away as I can. And then you might go, okay, can I eat less? And you might be like, no. And it can just be like, I don't want to. That will make me too hungry and miserable. And I'm not prepared to do that. And I don't mean prepared because you're lazy. I mean like from a sensible grownup perspective of I know what is a good move for me right now. And putting myself through that extra level of pain is not worth it. So.

We're eating as little as is feasible. We're moving as much as is feasible. What the hell do we do now? If we've still got some weight that we would like to lose. Outside of the discussion of like, okay, maybe the weight that you're trying to lose is not a great idea for you to be trying to lose that weight. Again, topic for another time. But if that's what's happened and you've still got weight to lose, you've kind of maxed everything out, you need to have a break. You need to increase your calories to maintenance calories and you need to hang out for.

I would not say there is a set period of time for everyone, but I would say at least one to four weeks. And that will give your body a rest. We know that metabolic rate is linked with the amount of food that you're eating. Like I spoke about the whole mitochondrial efficiency or activity, know, your thermogenic effect of food, actually, I don't think I mentioned that, but just the calories you use to digest food. And then all of those non -essential systems that have sort of powered down, if we can spend one to four to eight to 12 weeks at maintenance calories,

All of that metabolic adaptation kind of gets lifted, gets rolled back because your body doesn't need it anymore. It doesn't get lifted overnight, which is why you need to spend a reasonable amount of time there. And you will probably feel when you're prepared to get back into a deficit. That's why we're being pretty arbitrary with timeframes. It's better to go off a feel of like, I've got more energy again. I feel revitalized. I'm good to go. And then you can go back into your deficit.

Jono (11:52.824)

One final caveat, well not caveat, I guess one extra thing is when I say go back to maintenance, it's really important to make sure that you have recalculated your maintenance. You haven't gone back to your maintenance that you calculated right back at the beginning. Because like I said, maybe you've lost five, 10, 15 kilos. So 15 kilo heavier Jono has a much higher maintenance calories than 15 kilo lighter Jono, right? So I would need to recalculate that. You don't need to reverse diet back up to that. Just go straight.

Well, you don't have to reverse that to it. But what I often do with clients, I don't actually even get them to go straight back to that recalculated number. I sometimes get them to go five or 10 % under that number, just to give us a little bit of a buffer in case our calculation is a little bit below average. And so if it is time for a break, one, recalculate your new maintenance calories at your new body weight. Two,

I would reduce that number by five to 10 % just to give you a little bit of a buffer. Three, jump straight back to that recalculated number with a little bit of a buffer. Do not step up, just get there straight away. You're wasting time if you're doing anything else. I can't remember what number I up to. Four, I think. If you've held steady at your body weight or maybe even it's crept down a little bit at that buffered number, step up to the calculated number and basically make sure you keep stepping your calories up at that point until you are definitely weight stable.

then you're truly at maintenance, then you can maintain therefore one, four, eight, 12, whatever weeks you need to feel rested and recuperated and dive back into your deficit and start getting some fat off again. That is how I would recommend dealing with metabolic adaptation. I hope that's helped. If it has, I would love for you to throw that up in your stories. It's always amazing to see this out in the wild or you could leave me a review. That's also pretty sweet and pretty low effort. Otherwise, I'll chat to you next time.