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Phase 2 - Techniques page 1

Take a break:
Remember, homeostasis is your body’s way of resisting change. Sometimes your body even in the face of only slightly lowered calories will try to adapt and stop you from losing fat.

Try taking a break from reducing your calories to help reset your body’s metabolism. Eating the amount of calories your body normally needs to maintain its weight can help stop the homeostasis effect. Slowly increase your calories to your daily needs for about three days. Then try going back to your diet. If you have been severely restricting calories, try a week or two. It will also give you a mental break from dieting that can help you refocus and feel ready to hit it hard again. Just be careful to watch your calories so you don’t gain weight.

Exercise variations & intensity:
It has been shown that simply mixing up your workout type and intensity can help bust through a weight loss plateau. The reason for this is that your body adapts to the same workouts and becomes more efficient. After a while, your body adapts. Also, you may not be hitting the workout at the same pace and intensity as you once did; thus lowering your actual caloric burn.

Try to find something that is a new challenge to you whether in the amount of weight you lift, how many times you lift, how far you run, how long you can sprint. Just mix it up and see what happens. It is fun and it will be good for your body. A good rule of thumb to live by is to always have a new fitness goal to work towards.

Split workouts:
A split workout is where you do one session of exercise and then after several hours to recover you do another session. Split workouts are fantastic if you have the time. Why? There are two main reasons.
The first is that with a split workout you can have time to rest between workouts on the same day. For example, you do cardio in the morning and really wear yourself out. Then in the evening you are rested and have had time to eat.   This replenishes your body and you are set for another intense workout. Allowing the body to rest and recover between sets enables you to perform more intensely for each session than if they were grouped together.

The second is what is called EPOC (Excess post-exercise oxygen consumption). To put it simply, EPOC refers to the calories your body burns after your workout to restore itself to it normal state. The more intense your workout is on your body, the more calories it takes to restore it.   This is especially the case in weight lifting where the body needs to spend hours or even days repairing muscle tissue. So, having a split workout will trigger this response twice instead of only once on any given day. Granted, the amount of calories EPOC uses is very small, but add this up twice a day for a month and it can be a real help.

On a side note: If at all possible, separate cardio and weight training by 3 or more hours. But if you can’t due to time constraints, do your weight training first before any cardio. Doing cardio releases a hormone called cortisol. Cortisol inhibits muscle growth. So it is better to separate cardio and weight training by at least 3 hours - or better yet do each on different days. A good balance is to do 3-4 heavy weight training session per week and one or two high intensity cardio sessions of non-weight training days.

The simple 500 deficit:
The simplest method to lose a pound a week is to find the number of calories you need and reduce that amount by 500 calories per day. Why 500? To lose a pound of fat you must lose 3500 calories. So 7 days times 500 calories equals 3500 calories. This is a good method to try first before going on to other techniques.   It is simple and works for a lot of people.

It is probably the most recommended calorie counting method out there. But the down side to this is that after a while, the body’s homeostasis process may kick in and weight loss stops or slows to a crawl. If it does, simply try the techniques below.

The reason this is listed as a phase 2 technique is that with this you are counting calories for the first time to see how much you should be eating. For most people out there, this method will show you your faults-at least if you are honest with counting your calories for the day.

Next: Techniques_pg2

Quote:
It should be noted that regardless of all the hype you hear, there are no magic metabolism boosting exercise techniques. The best techniques only burn a few extra calories. Added up over a long period of time they can be somewhat meaningful-- but no silver bullet.