20 Tips to break a weight loss plateau & maximize fat burning

Hitting a weight loss plateau can be quite challenging and what was working at the beginning of your weight loss plan may not be effective anymore in burning fat.

Even if you are just starting your weight loss journey, these tips will help optimize & speed up your weight loss instantly:

Maximizing weight loss tips

Before getting into how to break a weight loss plateau, you need to make sure these points are in check to have the best results from the beginning:

1- Use a calorie calculator

The first thing you need to do as you start a weight loss phase is figuring out how many calories your body needs. This could be done easily by using a weight loss calorie calculator

It will give you a rough estimate of how many calories your body needs, which means it’s not 100% accurate.

In fact, no weight loss calorie calculator can be that accurate as your genetics and hormones play a key role that cannot be known with any calorie calculator. But, it’s a good starting point to play around with the number that you get until you find what works for you.

2- Hit your daily needed protein number

In my opinion, the only macronutrient that actually matters for weight loss is protein.

It has many benefits such as:

Reduce your appetite
Increase fat burning
Reduce caloric intake
Preserve muscle mass

Therefore, upping your protein will make your life easier and help you lose weight faster.

Aim for .8 – 1g per pound of bodyweight and separate them across 3-5 meals to keep you full all day long.

3- Eat enough fiber

Hunger and food craving is the one thing that if you get under control, you will have no trouble losing as much weight as you want. Fiber can be a lifesaver in this case!

Fibers are indigestible, so they go into your system and slow down the digestion process, this will keep you full and satisfied.

It’s recommended that we consume at least 25-30 grams of fiber per day for optimal digestion and hunger control.

4- Get enough sleep every night

Sleep is critical for almost everything!

As for weight loss, Poor sleep can throw off your hunger hormones, which can lead to increased cravings and cause you to overeat.

One 10-year study linked sleeping fewer than 6 hours per night to a higher risk of obesity among young women.

Another small study showed that getting 1 less hour of sleep per night led to less fat loss in people following a low-calorie diet, compared with a control group.

It can also hinder your post-workout recovery and hold your body back from building and maintaining muscle.

So, try to keep your average night of sleep last between 7 to 9 hours to maximize weight loss.

5- Do cardio, strength training, or BOTH!

Anyone can lose weight following a diet plan alone, but throwing a workout session into the mix can help you burn some extra calories and keep your heart healthy.

I recommend starting with 2-3 sessions of weight training per week along with 10-20 mins of cardio at the end of each session.

Weight loss plateau-breaking tips

Now let’s say you already lost a good amount of weight but you hit a weight loss plateau, here is what you need to do:

6- Lower your caloric intake

We already mention how to figure out your daily needed calories, but the common mistake that everyone falls into is thinking that number is stable.

As your body weight decrease, your daily needed calories will decrease as well. That’s why if you keep eating the same number of calories, your weight loss progress will stop eventually.

Therefore, you have to adjust your caloric intake and keep lowering it until you start seeing some results and so on.

7- Check nutrition facts more accurate

Fact, nutrition labels lay!

There is no law or regulations that prevent companies from writing what they want on the nutrition fact label. So, you might be eating more than you should without even knowing and blaming it on your hormones.

What can you do? Check the nutrition fact from a trusted source or just track your body weight every week or so. Not losing weight? Eat less even if all the numbers are perfect.

8- Have a refeed day

One of the most common strategies to break through a weight loss plateau is doing a refeed day.

It simply means that you eat around your maintenance calories for a day or two depending on how long you have been dieting.

This method will give your body a break and provide some additional calories to go back to its normal function. It will results in increased energy levels and speed up your metabolism to start a new weight loss phase.

9- Change your diet meal plan

Another method to break through a weight loss plateau is changing the whole diet plan. There is nothing wrong with playing around with some new diet methods such as low carb, keto, paleo, vegan or even intermittent fasting.

You just have to know that most of these diets are hard and not sustainable over the long term. That’s why I always recommend following a healthy balanced diet as it will help you lose fat but also keep it off.

10- Increase cardio time or intensity

As you keep working out, your body gets better at it and learns to do more effort with less energy expenditure.

Therefore, if you keep on doing the 10 min cardio every other day, don’t expect new weight loss progress.

You need to push harder as much as you could. Add more time, more distance more anything that challenges your body and forces it to burn off that last bit of fat.

11- Do strength training in circuit training style

If you already lift weights, as you should, you can take it up a notch and make your workout session more directed toward fat burning.

By applying a training style called circuit training, in which you will do all the exercises back to back without taking a rest in between.

This might sound hard at the beginning but you will get used to it pretty quickly especially if you do a full body workout or multiple muscle groups per session.

You can learn more about this style of training by CLICKING HERE

12- Switch from simple to complex carbs

At the beginning of your weight loss journey, the small details don’t matter that much as your body is excited to get off this extra weight it has been carrying around for a long time. But, as you keep losing weight, your body starts to fight back to keep this last bit of fat for emergencies.

In this case, the small details start to matter. One of these minor staff is switching from simple carbs to complex carbs.

Simple carbs such as potatoes and white rice may have almost the same calories as complex carbs such as sweet potatoes and brown rice, but they have less fiber and spike your insulin which will result in being hungry more quickly.

Therefore, eating complex carbs will help you feel more full, which will result in eating less and breaking through your weight loss plateau.

13- Supplement with probiotics

Probiotics are a good type of bacteria found in your digestive tract. And it has been related to many health benefits from enhancing your immunity system to mental health.

As for weight loss, One review of 15 studies showed that people who took probiotics experienced significantly larger reductions in body weight, fat percentage, and BMI compared with those who took a placebo.

Probiotics can be found in many fruits and vegetables, but as you already know, most crops nowadays are filled with chemical and hormones, which kills these good bacteria.

Therefore, supplementing with a probiotic supplement might be a good idea if you can find organic foods.

14- Drink metabolism-boosting beverages

There is no magical beverage that will melt fat as tv-shows might say. But, some natural beverages can boost your metabolism and help burn some extra calories when you hit a weight loss plateau.

Some of these drinks are coffee, apple cider vinegar, water lemon, green tea, and many other drinks that you can read more about by CLICKING HERE

15- Be more active during the day

Dieting and working out can get you so far, but as you hit a weight loss plateau you need to consider other options.

One available option is being more active. Instead of driving to work or the gym, walk. Or clean your house more often.

Changing your activity level from sedentary to even light activity can help you burn a significant number of extra calories without even knowing it.

16- Manage your stress

Stress can be the reason you hit a weight loss plateau despite being consistent with everything else.

Stress increases a hormone called cortisol. Even though cortisol helps in managing stress, it can also increase belly fat storage, elevates hunger signals, and makes you eat more than you should.

Therefore, producing too much cortisol can make weight loss very difficult.

If you cant lower the life stresses you are facing, try to do any activities that might help such as yoga, meditation, running, or meeting friends and family.

17- Drink cold water

Drinking more water throughout the day is recommended in general, but drinking cold water has an additional benefit as it takes some extra calories to bring the water temperature to your body’s level.

In one study, dieting participants who were instructed to drink two cups of water before each meal lost 30% more weight than their thirsty peers.

researchers recommend drinking six cups of cold water a day as it is found to burn 50 extra calories without changing anything to your diet and training.

18- Don’t cut off fats

Fat is the devil that hunts anyone who is trying to lose weight. In reality, our bodies need fat to survive and thrive.

Also, fats give you energy for activities that require less effort for a long duration. If you avoid eating all fats, you will feel tired all the time, which will make you burn fewer calories and hit a weight loss plateau.

When calculating your fat loss macronutrients, make sure you’re consuming at least 20 percent of your calories from fat (if you were eating 2,000 calories per day, that would work out to about 44 grams of fat).

19- Limit alcohol consumption

We already know that we should avoid alcohol for many health reasons. In addition, drinking too much can increase your caloric intake significantly without any actual nutritional value.

Another problem is that alcohol suppresses fat burning and may lead to belly fat accumulation, which was found in some research.

So If you hit a weight loss plateau, it may be best to limit alcohol consumption or avoid it at all if possible.

20- Use fat burners that actually work

Just to be clear, most natural fat burners have only around 5-7% added benefit in terms of burning fat and losing weight, This is what the researchers have found.

If you already lost a lot of weight and trying to push a little further, that 5% may be your solution to break through your weight loss plateau.

But, you have to do your research to find out what will work for you as there are many useless products out there.

For starter, The following are some of the most effective ones you ought to have in your arsenal:

Caffeine: increases your metabolism and mental toughness to push more and burn some extra calories in the process.

Yohimbe: it helps the body burn fat more efficiently while also suppressing appetite and increasing energy as well.

L-Carnitine: L-Carnitine aids in fatty acid transportation into your cells’ mitochondria; this leads to increased energy, improved performance, and better recovery

Some of these weight loss plateau-breaking tips you might be already doing but doing most of them can take you from not losing any weight at all to becoming a fat-burning machine in just a couple of days.