Plateaus
How you reach them and how to break thru them
First a thank you to Michael who asked me a question last week about whether he was hitting a plateau in weight loss. It gave me time to put my thoughts down on paper and in this substack post, to maybe help others as well.
Weight Loss Plateaus.
Weight loss plateaus can occur when on any diet and a lower carbohydrate diet is no different. To understand why you may hit a plateau you first need to understand how you both lose weight on a lower carbohydrate diet and gain weight on other eating regimens.
Generally, with all else being equal, you gain weight by:
1- Eating an excess of fat that gets stored easily in your body.
2- Eating an excess of carbohydrates that causes your storage hormone Insulin to store the excess carbohydrates as fat. So yes, we all store most of our excess dietary carbohydrates as fat.
To lose weight the following comes into play. We need to lower our insulin levels so that our fat cells can release the already stored fat to be used for energy. We lower our insulin levels by greatly decreasing our dietary carbohydrates, using fasting regimens and increasing exercise. Lowering insulin levels help the body be able to burn excess stored fat even if you are eating slightly more fat.
But here is a Pearl.
It’s very difficult to overeat natural fat as our body turns off our appetite when dietary fat or dietary protein start reaching a limit. The limit for excess carbohydrates though is much higher which is why carbohydrates are so addictive and we often just can’t stop eating them.
So when we eat lower carbohydrate we no longer have excess carbohydrates stimulating excess insulin. As insulin lowers, our fat cells release fat to be burned for energy. Burning more fat equals fat weight loss.
But there is always a balance and the dietary fat we eat will eventually get stored in our fat cells. This is a dynamic relationship. As long as what we are burning is higher than what we are storing, we lose weight.
But at some point what we burn as fat and what we store as fat is equal. This is often when we hit a plateau in weight loss. My belief is this plateau is telling us that the carbohydrate/insulin aspect of weight loss has been achieved. The amount of fat being burned for energy now equals the amount of fat stored for the future from dietary fats and carbohydrates. So it might be time to tweak a few other things to promote further weight loss if necessary.
But as an aside, when at plateau you are still getting healthier. I’d be rich and retired on a tropical island somewhere, hopefully with good wifi, if it is not 5G or high EMF, if I got a dollar for everyone who told me that when at their plateau their body is still changing and their fat distribution is moving and getting healthier. My belief here is that your fat cells are still emptying to be used for energy, but your dietary fat is still getting stored, and another butt, this fat gets stored in healthier less inflammatory places in your body. So you are replacing inflammatory visceral organ fat stores with less inflammatory subcutaneous fat stores. So your dress or suit size is still changing for the leaner. You trade the inflammatory beer keg belly for the much less inflammatory love handles.
When I went Keto-Carnivore about 6 years ago I only lost 12-15 lbs. On my frame that was actually a lot of weight.
My belt size shrank by close to 5 inches.
I went down a full shirt size.
My neck shrunk by 1.5 inches.
I no longer need collar or belt button expanders.
Downside was I had to get mostly all new clothes as everything was too big. But lucky for my FIL, he lost probably 60-80 lbs doing the same lifestyle, so I did a “hand me up” and gave him most of my now too big to wear clothes as they fit him well.
Sooo, even though we are still getting healthier when at a plateau, if you have more weight to lose you want to break thru the plateau.
So here are some suggestions for the breakthrough.
1- Lower added fat - if you are using a lot of butter or oil, lower these. Think twice about that Bulletproof coffee with all the added fat. Cook your food in their natural fat. This is how our ancestors cooked their food and Obesity was a rarity back then.
2- Look for slightly lower fat food options. As mentioned earlier, sometimes the amount of fat burned ends up equal to the amount of dietary fat stored. So consider lower fat options. Not low fat food but lower fat than you have been eating.
Eat chicken breast as opposed to thighs or breasts.
Eat a filet instead or ribs.
Try 85/15 ground beef instead of 80/20.
3- Try fasting regimens. Intermittent Fasting is a powerful tool that not only lowers your insulin level further, but many report that it decreases your appetite as well.
If you are doing an Intermittent Fast of 16 hours each day, try and push it to 18, then 20 or even a 24 hr fast 1-2 days/week if possible. Once you get used to this it actually becomes easy and you feel better when not eating. Longer fasts cause more fat burning and since you are eating less, you get less fat storage.
4- If able increase activity without increasing appetite. This means increase your exercise to burn more fat. Even better lift weights, do resistance exercise to get stronger and build up your muscles. The more muscle mass you have the more calories your body burns even at rest.
5- It could be your Gut health. Perhaps look to discuss aspects of your gut health, nutritional status/balance, and even your microbiome (the bacteria that reside in your gut). There has been research that indicates overweight people have a different balance of bacteria than healthier weight. I think this is a player in plateaus but I’m not yet convinced that we know specifically which bugs are best and how to change this. We don’t know if the dysbiosis caused weight gain or resulted from weight gain. The ole chicken or egg dilemma. But it’s interesting to think about and research, at least for common sense health and wellness geeks like me.
So these are my favorite Plateau breaking hacks. Everyone is unique and there is no guarantee all of these will work for you. So please work with your healthcare professional. If you are part of the IMW and have hit a plateau, get in touch with me and we will work to find the combination that gives you the best chance of success.
These are good pointers. Thanks.