Tracking Progress & Making Adjustments

It can be difficult getting up to “takeoff speed.” Like the aircraft that uses nearly half its fuel just to get off the ground, overcoming inertia and gaining momentum are not easy.

Part of this is mental, part is physical. Mentally, if you’re off to a slow start, you just haven’t given yourself enough time to develop habits. Habits are necessary to get you into “auto pilot mode,” therefore, you could be unconsciously making poor food choices or missing workouts by old negative habit patterns. Reviewing the section on “Mindset and Motivation” and following the instructions will help you overcome old conditioning. Keep at it!

I would strongly advise that you wait until the 2 – 4 week point before making any adjustments. Why? Because we need to have a consistent trend of data from which to draw conclusions about rates of progress. Before this point the chances are too high that we will have a random fluctuation in the data that will screw up our analysis of it.

Make sure you challenge yourself. Most people underestimate how much effort it really takes to get the physique they want. Expectations get distorted from people trying to sell them rapid weight loss diets and minimalist training programs. The truth is this takes dedication, hard work and consistency. If you’re not getting the results you want, accept that you may need to work longer, harder and more often.

Try to focus in on one area likely to make the biggest improvement for your progress. Consider all areas of mental training, cardio, weight training and nutrition you can work on.

Remember the mental training. People are most likely to slip at this stage due to an existing mental block or limiting belief.

Fantastic! Your nutrition and training is working as planned and you’re on your way to reaching your goal. Don’t change anything. Keep up the good work!

Let you progress dictate your strategy. If you are eat carbs like bagels and pasta all day long and are getting ripped, that’s great – keep eating them. If you are eating 70% of your calories from carbohydrates and 20% from protein and you are getting leaner – great, keep eating all those carbohydrates. If you are eating heavy meals late at night and you are still getting leaner great – keep doing it. If you are getting leaner with just nutrition and almost no cardio at all – fine, don’t do any cardio.

The results you produce each week are the only true measure of whether you’ve made the right choices or not. If you’re progressing to your goal while breaking every rule in the book, then there’s no reason to change. The ends justify the means, provided of course, that everything you’re doing is good for your health.

Most important of all, once you discover an approach that works for you, DON’T FIX IT IF IT’S NOT BROKEN! Don’t get locked into a single unbending approach like so many diet programs prescribe. You are a unique individual and no single approach could possibly work for everyone. If you find something that works for you, I’d suggest you disregard the comments of other people who disagree with what you’re doing and that you judge your success only by your weekly progress.

By following the information on this page and throughout George Health – taking continuous action, getting constant feedback, being flexible, having an open mind and being willing to experiment, you will, through an evolutionary learning process, figure out your body type and develop your own personal formula very quickly.

Once you’ve discovered your personal formula by using feedback and progress charting, it will always be there for you for the rest of your life whenever you want to go back to it.

Let me put your mind at ease. If you ate more carbs/salt/calories than normal recently (like from a big / late evening meal), your body will hold more water giving you the impression that you’ve gained a lot of fat. This is actually just a temporary fluctuation in water balance and your weight will come down again when you resume your diet.

Sudden spikes in weight can come from:

• High carb meals the previous day.
• High calorie meals the previous day.
• Late evening meals closer to your next weigh in.
• High fibre meals the previous day.
• High sodium / salty meals the previous day.
• Drinking less or more than usual.
• Being much less active the previous day.

A sudden gain in weight is likely to be water gain, not fat gain. One pound of fat takes 3000-3500 calories to burn or store. If your maintenance calorie intake is say 2500 calories, even if we assume that any excess over regular calorie maintenance is stored perfectly as body fat (it’s not), then that’s more than 5200 calories you’d have to consume on a single day to gain a pound of body fat. Possible, yes, but not likely if you are eating sensibly, and even if you really eat a huge amount and wake up 5 lbs heavier, it’s almost certain that less than half of it will be fat.

The way to tell the difference between what is largely a water weight fluctuation due to an increased carb intake and just fat gain, is that with the former the muscles will look a lot fuller and the stomach measurements will change only a little, despite the disproportionate rise in scale weight. (This is easiest to spot if you take body measurements on other sites than just the stomach.) Plus, after a couple of days resuming your diet, your weight will whoosh downwards again as it drops the water.

If you cycle carbohydrate intake, your weight (and appearance/level of definition) will fluctuate from day to day across the week.

Furthermore, any change in salt intake can temporarily bring about a spike (or drop) in water balance. However, it’s very hard to track salt intake so I don’t recommend you even attempt it, but it’s a good idea to remember this point when possibly looking for an explanation as to why you are suddenly bloated one day.

Let me put your mind at ease. If you ate less carbs/salt/calories than normal recently (like from a small / early evening meal), your body will hold less water giving you the impression that you’ve lost a lot of fat. This is actually just a temporary fluctuation in water balance and your weight will come up a little again when you resume your diet.

Sudden drops in weight can come from:

• Low carb meals from the previous day.
• Low calorie meals the previous day.
• Early meals further from your next weigh in.
• Low fibre meals the previous day.
• Low sodium / salty meals the previous day.
• Drinking less or more than usual.
• Being much more active the previous day.

A sudden drop in weight is likely to be water drop, not fat drop. The way to tell the difference between what is largely a water weight fluctuation due to an decreased carb intake and just fat loss, is that with the former the muscles will look a lot flatter and the stomach measurements will change only a little, despite the disproportionate decrease in scale weight. (This is easiest to spot if you take body measurements on other sites than just the stomach.) Plus, after a couple of days resuming your diet, your weight will stabilise again as it balances the water.

If you cycle carbohydrate intake, your weight (and appearance/level of definition) will fluctuate from day to day across the week.

Furthermore, any change in salt intake can temporarily bring about a drop in water balance. However, it’s very hard to track salt intake so I don’t recommend you even attempt it, but it’s a good idea to remember this point when possibly looking for an explanation as to why you are suddenly flat and depleted one day.

Don’t worry too much about it. You can expect your weight to fluctuate due to daily changes in:

• Water weight
• Stress levels
• Sleep quality
• Salt / sodium intake
• Meal timing
• Digestive contents

Accept that this will occur, if you manage your stress, get enough quality sleep and stay consistent with your program, you’ll be able to ride it out and keep progressing.

Unfortunately, though fat loss is fairly linear, the way it manifests itself is not. The scale weight change is more likely to jump all over the place (the red line), which causes a lot of frustration.

Unfortunately it is very difficult to consistently and accurately track the differences between fat loss and water loss.

Lack of consistency or compliance is the biggest reason for plateaus or rebounds. You may not be following your program closely enough, and you may have not even realised it. We want to see some general steady trending progress and if you’re not seeing that each week, the first thing to check is your compliance with the plan. Have you been doing everything you need to do each day? Have you done your best or could you have given it more? Have you followed your plan consistently and on target every day? Are you blowing at the weekends or special occasions?

These questions can be applied to all the different areas required for a successful transformation:

Mental Training. Have you written your goals and been keeping them in the front of your mind, repeatedly reading them every day?

Nutrition. Have you organised your nutrition and followed it closely every day to the best of your ability?

Weight Training. Have you been following your weight training program, training hard and always aimed to improve every session?

Look the question provided and as honestly as you can.

Most of the time, it’s not the food or exercises that makes or break a program, it’s the attitudes and beliefs of the individual. If two people are both on the same program, one can fully succeed while the other fails dismally. It’s not the program that is the problem, its what ensures they consistently execute the program that makes the difference.

So what is it then that makes people take action and stick to a program? Where does the motivation come from? What triggers people to impulsively sabotage their own actions? It’s all in the mind. Every action comes from an initial thought, usually at the unconscious level. During all my time as a coach, I have seen many successful transformations take place, and all these come from men and women with very similar attitudes and beliefs. The good news for you is that these traits can be developed for yourself and if you learn to think the right way, you can guarantee a successful transformation is destined to occur.

When you successfully complete this process before and throughout your transformation, your motivation will skyrocket, the nutrition and training will come easy and a lean body will soon follow. Mental training and goal setting is what enables people to get to their goal physique and maintain it easily for the rest of your life.

Make sure you consider both the quality and the quality of the food you’re eating. Not only do we want you eating nutritious healthy foods, but you must have the quantity of food correct in order to establish the calories required to meet your goals.

Food items labelled as “health foods” are not necessarily nutrient dense or great for weight loss. Just because something doesn’t have fat doesn’t mean it’s not full of carbs; and just because something is sugar free doesn’t mean it’s low calorie. Healthy calories are still calories, and consuming too many WILL lead to weight gain! It doesn’t matter where the calories are coming from.

Is it also possible you underestimated your portions or overestimated your activity level? Almost everyone (including me sometimes) reports eating fewer calories than we really are. It’s so easy for extra calories to sneak their way into your intake without you realising, especially energy dense foods like these:

Small handful of nuts – 200 calories

Small handful of dried fruit – 200 calories

Small handful of pretzels – 110 calories

3 tbsp cooking oil with your meal – 350 calories!

Standard fruit smoothie – 400 calories!

If you’ve been guessing food portions and want to get serious, then it’s time to start tracking calories and macronutrients. Start a food journal to measure, count and track your calories as best you can. You’ll be glad you did.

First and foremost, it’s vital that you are training on a regular basis. Any training at all, regardless of time, type or duration is better than none at all. Find a type of training you can stick with that is practical to do, something you enjoy doing and that can be incorporated into your schedule on a regular consistent basis. Even if you can’t manage the ideal frequency and duration of workouts per week, any workout is better than no workout at all. Do the best you can with what you have available and build from there.

Your workouts need to be setup in a way that is practical to complete, enjoyable to do and flexible enough to adapt to changes week to week. It takes self-awareness and restraint to be able to appropriately implement these philosophies into program design. You need to be sure that the workout program you choose from the nutrition section is suitable to your individual life circumstances, considers your individual preferences, and is exible enough to account for any curve balls life throws your way.

If you need help getting motivation to go to the gym, or to push you with the exercises, then get a gym buddy. Workout buddies don’t just get you to the training session, they enhance the training itself. A good workout buddy lights that fire under your ass to make you train faster, lift heavier, run further and push harder than you would have done on your own. Then it continues beyond the workout, where you keep tabs of each others progress, and if you can help keep each other on track with nutrition, adherence and consistency with the transformation overall. You help each other out to make sure no one is left behind during the fight for success.

Look the question provided and as honestly as you can.

Mental stress, poor sleep, and sudden stalls are classic indicators of temporary water retention.

Metabolic adaptation is not a sudden switch. So, if you have honestly been consistent with your program, weight loss has been steady for a while and the scale suddenly stops moving, there’s a good chance there is some water retention going on. As your fat cells empty out, that space can be replaced with water, which can mask fat losses. If this is the case, you are still dropping fat, and you simply need to wait for the water retention to pass in it’s own time. The best thing to do in this case is to remain patient, and if sleep quality is poor, or stress high, then work on improving those areas first. You can expect to wake up one morning in the next couple of weeks, and suddenly notice you are a few pounds lighter.

Look the question provided and as honestly as you can.

Look the question provided and as honestly as you can.

Instead of thinking about doing either diet or exercise, science has proven that the optimal approach is to do both together. Your next task then is to find the ideal combination and balance between the two.

Many of the people I have worked with other the years have insisted that they can lose their weight faster by just eating less and less. They wanted to slash their calories to starvation levels and exercise little or not at all. Not recommended at all.

Now when it comes to fat-burning, we aren’t talking about doing cardio (at least for me at least). Here’s my definition:

“Cardio is any physical activity that increases your breathing and heart rate high enough and long enough to burn a significant amount of calories.”

These are exercises that use large muscle groups, namely your legs or your arms or both, to elevate your heart rate for a prolonged period of time. This also includes interval training that cycles higher and lower periods of intensity.

For optimal fat loss, exercise physiologists and fitness experts worldwide have determined a minimum amount of fat-burning required to be two to three sessions per week. It is recommended that each session be around 30 minutes and at a sufficient intensity to burn 300 calories each. A few days of fat-burning cardio each week is a habit you should maintain as a part of your lifestyle for your health if no other reason. Fat-burning cardio, combined with at least three days of strength training is an awesome way to start progressing to your fitness goals.

Look the question provided and as honestly as you can.

Increasing the duration of your fat burning workouts is always a great strategy to employ. You should be doing a minimum of 30 minutes of aerobic exercise per session when your goal is fat loss (unless you’re a total beginner, then you may need to build up to 30 minutes).

If this isn’t enough, you can burn more calories and establish a greater calorie deficit by extending your cardio durations by five to ten minutes at a time until you reach a maximum of 60 minutes per session. Beyond 60 minutes will usually yield a diminishing rate of return for the time spent and possible interference with weight lifting performance.

Carefully measure the results of each increase on a weekly basis until you find the level where you start to drop body fat at the optimal rate. For most people, 30-45 minutes per session produces optimal results. Only the most genetically gifted individuals can lose fat effectively with 20 minute cardio workouts.

Personally, my fat loss cardio sessions are around 35 – 40 minutes.

Look the question provided and as honestly as you can.

Once your fat-burning sessions are as long as practical, the next option is to increase your the number of sessions per week. You should always start with a minimum of three days per week of aerobic exercise. To break a plateau or increase the rate of fat loss, incrementally add one session per week until you reach six or seven per week.

Some people believe that aerobic cardio seven days per week is excessive. When maintained for months on end, this is probably true. But as a method of breaking through a plateau, a period ranging from one to twelve weeks of daily cardio can work wonders for getting you lean. Don’t try to keep high frequency cardio up for months on end, or as a way to compensate for poor nutrition. Simply use it as a way to break your plateau, this can get you lean super fast.

Twice a day cardio is an advanced strategy that some people might use for short periods to accelerate their progress. Most people shouldn’t need to do, unless you have a serious deadline coming up, then it’s a great way to quickly shed fat. If you do decide to do double day cardio, make sure you limit the duration and intensity to prevent long term metabolic adaptions.

A lot of athletes and fitness models do cardio seven days a week for three months prior to their deadline. When the event is over, most return to a moderate level of three to four days per week.

Look the question provided and as honestly as you can.

At this point, you still have options. This is a super time-efficient way to break a plateau by increasing the intensity of each fat-burning cardio session you’re already doing. This simply means work harder!

Push yourself to burn more calories at the same time you were already spending. However, you can only increase intensity up to a point. For most people, when you get up around 85% of your estimated maximal heart rate (about 150-170 beats per minute, depending on age), you approach the anaerobic threshold. This is the point where if you pushed any harder, you would start to lose your breath and you would have to decrease your speed or stop in order to recover the oxygen debt you created. In other words, if you push too hard, too soon, you’ll “crap out” and cut into your duration.

If you’ve been doing low or moderate intensity cardio at below 70% of your estimated maximal heart rate, then you have plenty of room to increase. If you’re already at 85% (the top of your target heart zone), then you’ll have to use another strategy.

Look the question provided and as honestly as you can.

Okay, so you’re already doing as many cardio sessions as you can, for as long as you can, at the highest intensity you can manage. NOW WHAT?

First, go back and look at your nutrition. If you’re doing frequent intense cardio for long durations and still not getting results, 99% of the time it’s a nutrition problem.

However, if your nutrition is firmly in place and you don’t feel you can tweak it any further, don’t worry, there are STILL MORE exercise options available! One of them is high intensity interval training. This gives you a very high calorie burn in a short period of time. Just 20 – 25 minutes of intervals (including warm up and cool down) can burn calories for serious fat loss.

Interval training is the practice of pushing yourself for short bursts, then resting for a short period. The length of the intervals is usually one minute and can range from thirty seconds and two minutes (although there are no hard and fast rules when interval training is being done for fat loss).

Interval training allows you to push past your normal heart zone (into the 85-100% zone) for a short period, thereby burning an enormous amount of calories, relatively speaking. Then you reduce your intensity just long enough to catch your breath, and repeat for the duration of the workout. Using this method, you can get a very high calorie burn in a fairly short period of time. Even 20-25 minutes of intervals can burn a very high number of calories.

Another benefit of interval training is that it increases your metabolic rate dramatically so you continue to burn calories after the workout is over. The higher the intensity, the greater the post-exercise “afterburn” effect.

Look the question provided and as honestly as you can.

Remember NEAT is all the calories you burn outside of formal exercise sessions, and its NEAT that explains the difference between each individuals total daily calorie expenditure.

Ever wondered why some people seem to have such fast metabolisms and never seem to gain weight even after eating a tonne of junk food? NEAT is the reason why.

“Obese people are profoundly more sedentary than lean people. They move 2.5 hours less per day than lean people, resulting in roughly 350 fewer calories per day.” – Dr James Levine, endocrinologist.

NEAT accounts for around 30% of physical activity calories per day, but this can range greatly from 15 – 50% when you compare sedentary people to active people.

Walking contributes to the vast majority of NEAT so obviously the type of work you do and how you spend your spare time will have a major influence. If you work at a desk all day long, hardly get up and then go home to spend hours on the sofa then your NEAT level is low. If you deliver mail or work in any other type of physical job and then spend the evening playing tennis then your NEAT can be very high!

Most people sit all day long, surf the internet, watch TV and play video games. We have gone from a world where 90% of the population worked physical jobs in agriculture, to a chair bound technology based society filled with cars, chairs, computers, elevators and TV.

Personally, if I know I’m going to be doing a lot of desk work on a set day, I’ll set myself a 50 minute timer. Then each time the timer goes off, I head straight out for a quick ten minute walk. I can take my phone with me to catch up on emails and social media, or I can leave it behind and simply enjoy the moment. Overall, I get ten minutes of walking every hour, and after say 5 hours of desk work, I’ve done a good 50 minutes of solid walking, and at least 6000 additional steps!

Look the question provided and as honestly as you can.

It’s time to recalibrate your calorie balance. The immediate reaction most people make during a plateau is to blame their metabolism or something else out of their control. But to break through a plateau and keep the progress coming, you need to understand one simple thing. If your fat loss has slowed to a stop, you are no longer in a calorie deficit.

If your goal is to get rid of fat, then we need to reestablish a calorie deficit for you. This can be done by either increasing calorie burn by doing more cardio, or we can decrease your calorie intake by cutting back on food portion sizes, or both.

If you want to reduce calories to break your plateau, then selectively reduce the portion sizes of the most calorie-dense carbohydrates first. Don’t reduce any portion sizes from any lean proteins or fibrous vegetables. Pay attention to the nutritional quality of your food choices. Replace processed foods with more natural foods. This is much better for your health, it fills you up more, recalibrates your self-regulation, and is more satisfying. Look for nutrient-dense foods such as vegetables, fruits, lean meats, and fish.

If your goal is to increase weight, then we need to establish a calorie surplus. For you, the reverse is required, including increasing portion sizes, particularly in carbs.

It’s time using nutritional changes to adjust your calorie balance. To break through a plateau and keep the progress coming, you need to understand one simple thing. If your fat loss has slowed to a stop, you are now in calorie balance. We need to reestablish a calorie deficit for you. We’ve already ensured maximum calorie burn by doing more cardio, so now we can decrease your calorie intake.

The best way to do this is from a progressive decrease in carb intake, particularly the most calorie dense carbohydrates first (processed / sugary / starchy carbs). Adjust your nutrition plan so that you’ve reduced your daily carb intake by 25 – 50 grams. This equates to a caloric decrease of 100 – 200 calories per day.

Each time you reduce your calories, monitor your progress for at least two weeks before making a further reduction. By gradually reducing your carbs and calories instead of cutting them dramatically, it prevents unnecessary suffering, keeps us performing well in our workouts, keeps hunger minimal and minimises the chance of binges and rebounds.

Keep your protein intake the same and make sure you continue to enjoy plenty of fibrous fruits and vegetables. Pay attention to the nutritional quality of your food choices. Replace processed foods with more natural foods. This is much better for your health, it fills you up more, helps your body self regulate better and is more satisfying.

How low can my carbs go? It’s best to keep carbs as high as possible to maintain energy, performance, satiety and sanity during the transformation. Reductions should only be made when required to progress beyond a plateau. Stay mindful of your energy, hunger and performance levels and if you feel cutting carbs further would be too restrictive, then try something else instead (see button option below).

With that in mind, I recommend you ensure a minimum carb intake of 25 -30% is maintained at all times. A typical macro spread at this stage could be 25-30% carbs, 45-50% protein and 20-25% fat. Here your diet is at the tightest, strictest level and should only be maintained for a temporary period.

It’s time using nutritional changes to adjust your calorie balance. To break through a plateau and keep the progress coming, you need to understand one simple thing. If your fat loss has slowed to a stop, you are now in calorie balance. We need to reestablish a calorie deficit for you. We’ve already ensured maximum calorie burn by doing more cardio, so now we can decrease your calorie intake.

The best way to do this is from a progressive decrease in carb intake, particularly the most calorie dense carbohydrates first (processed / sugary / starchy carbs). Adjust your calorie and macro targets so that you’ve reduced your daily carb intake by 25 – 50 grams. This equates to a caloric decrease of 100 – 200 calories per day.

Once you’ve reduced your calories, monitor your progress for at least two weeks before making a further reduction. By gradually reducing your carbs and calories instead of cutting them dramatically, it prevents unnecessary suffering, keeps you performing well in your workouts, keeps hunger minimal and minimises the chance of binges and rebounds.

Keep your protein intake the same and make sure you continue to enjoy plenty of fibrous fruits and vegetables. Pay attention to the nutritional quality of your food choices. Replace processed foods with more natural foods. This is much better for your health, it fills you up more, helps your body self regulate better and is more satisfying.

How low can my carbs go? It’s best to keep carbs as high as possible to maintain energy, performance, satiety and sanity during the transformation. Reductions should only be made when required to progress beyond a plateau. Stay mindful of your energy, hunger and performance levels and if you feel cutting carbs further would be too restrictive, then try something else instead (see button option below).

With that in mind, I recommend you ensure a minimum carb intake of 25 -30% is maintained at all times. A typical macro spread at this stage could be 25-30% carbs, 45-50% protein and 20-25% fat. Here your diet is at the tightest, strictest level and should only be maintained for a temporary period.

It’s time using nutritional changes to adjust your calorie balance. To break through a plateau and keep the progress coming, you need to understand one simple thing. If your weight gain has slowed to a stop, you are now in calorie balance.

As your goal is lean muscle gain, we need to reestablish a calorie surplus for you by increasing caloric intake.

The best way to do this is from a progressive increase in carb intake, particularly the more calorie dense carbohydrates (starchy carbs). Increase your calorie and macro targets so that you’ve increased your daily carb intake by 10 – 25 grams. This equates to a caloric increase of 50 – 100 calories per day.

If you’re struggling to eat this much food, look for foods with a higher calorie density such as nuts, smoothies and cereals.

Once you’ve increased your calories, monitor your progress for at least two weeks before making a further increase. By gradually increasing your carbs and calories instead of boosting them dramatically, it prevents caloric spill over, which can lead to excessive fat gain.

As your body is in a calorie surplus, it’s important to continue training hard to give your body a strong signal to convert surplus calories into muscle and not fat storage.

Keep your protein intake the same and make sure you continue to enjoy plenty of fibrous fruits and vegetables. Pay attention to the nutritional quality of your food choices. Ensure most foods are still natural foods. This is much better for your health and helps your body self regulate better.

You might have heard people say you don’t need carbs at all. Technically speaking, they are right. Carbs are not essential because your body is able to manufacture ketones in the body.

The goal of some very low carbohydrate diets is to produce the metabolic state known as ketosis. In the absence of carbohydrate, fats burn incompletely, causing by products called ketone bodies to accumulate in the bloodstream. Being in ketosis is a sure-fire indicator that your body has been forced to run on fat for fuel. That’s why achieving ketosis is the primary goal of so many low carbohydrate diets.

Ketosis can occur when your carbohydrates are dropped below 100 grams, although most people don’t establish ketosis until carbohydrates go below 30-70 grams a day. Ketosis can be detected with a urine test. Paper strips called “ketostix” are dipped in the urine and when they change to a certain color, this indicates you’ve achieved a ketogenic state.

Whether or not ketogenic diets are unhealthy is uncertain, but the real reason you should avoid them is because ketosis is not a requirement to burn fat. Only a calorie deficit is necessary to burn fat. Ketogenic diets are extremely strict and nutritionally unbalanced. They are what you could call “extreme measures.” It’s an irrevocable law that the more “extreme” a nutrition program is, the greater the side effects will be and the more difficult the diet will be to stay on. (Imagine trying to stay on a diet that only allows you a few cups of salad or veggies and nothing but fat and protein for the rest of the day.)

Personally I’ve tried Keto myself to see it for myself. After the two weeks it took for my body to adapt, my energy seemed ok, but not as good as operating on carbs as a primary fuel source. I also noticed that as soon as I ate any carbs (such as social events), my body overreacted to the carbs and quickly became unbalanced as it was no longer optimally suited for processing carbs. So unless you can commit to never eating carbs for the rest of your life, this approach is best avoided. I want a nutritional program I can easily maintain and enjoy for life.

Now I’m not stopping you from trying this yourself to see how you react. If you like feel free to give it a go, and then pay attention to your physical and mental reactions. See how it affects you in and outside the gym, and throughout daily life. In my opinion, for peak performance, a muscular physique, stable energy and a lifestyle you can enjoy and maintain, you need carbs.

Typical diets get people to cut their carbs and calories, and keep them constantly at a low level. After a few days on low carbohydrates, your glycogen levels are almost completely depleted. You notice your energy and training intensity begin to diminish. You also notice that your muscles start to “flatten out” and become softer. Your metabolic rate begins to slow down and your thyroid gland decreases its output of thyroid hormone. Basically, your diet becomes less and less effective the longer you stayed on low carbohydrates beyond. Your body is so “smart,” it simply makes changes in physiology and metabolism to compensate for the prolonged lack of carbohydrates (which it interprets as starvation).

At this stage, dropping carbs and calories further can trigger all kinds of unwanted responses such as slow metabolisms, high hunger, muscle loss and risk of relapses. But what if you didn’t do that? What if instead, you increased your carbs at regular intervals? If we “shake things up”, we keep your body off guard with our ace in the hole to play, the secret card up our sleeve that allows us to get all the benefits of reduced carbs, with minimal side effects. It’s called a refeed. Some people call it “carbohydrate cycling,” “zig-zag” dieting, “Hi-low” dieting, or “carbing-up.”

Each time you add a higher carb day, you boost metabolism, glycogen stores, leptin (fat burning) hormones, muscle fullness, energy levels and feelings of satisfaction. It also helps increase nutritional compliance by knowing you have a day coming up where you can eat more carbs and more food.

Warning – This isn’t a cheat day. This isn’t an excuse to eat anything and everything once a week in the hope you’ll get these benefits. People who do cheat days, normally end up binging, relapsing and erasing all their progress from the previous week.

If you’re a beginner with plenty of body fat to get rid of, a refeed isn’t necessary but it is optional if you feel you need it. Take a refeed day every 1 – 3 weeks whenever you feel you really need a break and need some physical or mental energy.

If you’re lean and starting to see abs, then feel free to refeed once a week as you feel you need. If you feel physically depleted then take a high carb day. Those going for bodybuilding contests can consider twice a week as required.

On your higher carb refeed day, you simply eat more carbs and keep the rest the same. These extra carbs can be from vegetables, salad or greens, but you have the option here to include more starchy carbs such as oats, pasta, rice, yams, fruit and grains.

The amount of carbs you adds is up to you, however I recommend you add around 150 – 200g carbs (equal to 600 – 800 calories) for men and 100 – 150g carbs (equal to 400 – 600 calories) for women. This will bring your calories to roughly around maintenance for the day. Make sure you keep protein and fat intake the same as normal.

You can use these days to include those more processed foods that you’ve been craving if you like (cakes, biscuits, cookies etc), just remember though that these won’t fill you up or reduce hunger as well as the more natural, fibrous, wholesome foods like potatoes, rice, pasta, vegetables and fruit. Make your choices wisely. Think, “what is going to fill me up here and be most satisfying?”

Make sure you plan carefully for these days. Track and plan all the food selections and quantities you will have in advance. Don’t eat anything until you first make the choices you want and make sure they all still fit within your refeed calorie and macro targets. This is still a controlled day and should be treated with respect with compliance and consistency. The day after your refeed day should be right back to normal.

Overall, when you add a refeed day to the week, it will reduce your weekly calorie deficit. If you want to maintain your overall weekly calorie deficit to maintain progress, you could add a cardio session, or simply reduce calories (from carbs) on the other days.

Personally, when I did my last 10 week fat loss period, I simply went by how I felt. If I didn’t feel too fatigued or depleted, I didn’t use a refeed day and I just continued with normal calories. In my ten week program, I didn’t use a refeed day at all. If you don’t feel you need it, then don’t use it. If you feel you need a mental and physical relief, then its there for you to utilise.

At this point, doing more and doing it harder may not be the best strategy. Sometimes when you’re “stuck in the mud,” pushing on the gas even more just digs you into a deeper rut. If you’ve been on an extremely intense program for a prolonged period of time (more than 10 weeks of consistent effort), this plateau could be due to over-training and exhaustion. It might seem counter intuitive because it means you’ll eat more for a while, but it might be the exact thing your body needs so it can reset for further progress to occur.

The best thing you can do is purposely raise calories. Increase carbs by 150g to 200g to bring your calories to maintenance, keep protein and fat the same. Keep your food quality high (don’t just eat junk), and eat more of the same good foods. Increased quality nutrition has the potential to reverse the metabolic adaptations and give hormones time to recover to normal. With this break you’ll be less hungry, have more energy, fewer cravings, and potentially you’ll be able to eat more than you otherwise would have and still progress with your diet.

In terms of training, cut back on your weight lifting volume (reduce number of sets and reps by one third, and reduce lifting intensity to 70%) and slowly work your way back up after your brief layoff. Don’t worry about losing ground – even if you do, the rest is like taking one step back to get ready for two steps forward. Once your system has recovered and replenished itself, you’ll easily be able to thrust beyond your old plateau to a new peak.

The duration of your break will depend on the degree to which you have slowed your metabolism. You might need a brief three to seven day raise in calories before dropping back down, or you might need to raise your calories for longer period (three to six months).

Expect to gain a little weight here, but don’t worry because it’s normally only a few pounds, and is mainly water weight and glycogen stores filling up. If you simply return calories to maintenance levels, you won’t incur any fat gain at all.

Once the break is over, you can return to your program feeling fresh and ready to push on to new personal records and achievements.

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