It happens to all of us at some point.

You have your workouts down pat, and your body is rapidly becoming leaner and more attractive. Friends and family notice and you feel fantastic.

And then it stops.

You are doing everything exactly the same as before except your body no longer responds.

You, my friend, have hit a plateau. It’s a frustrating place to be parked, so read the following 5 steps to get your body back into results mode.

Step #1: Reduce Sugar. A very effective way to restart your results is to reel in your sugar intake. Inspect all of your food for added sugars and eliminate items that contain high calorie sweeteners. This means no sugar, honey or maple syrup.

If you’ve already eliminated processed sugars from your diet, and have still hit a plateau, then it’s time to dig a little deeper by eliminating some of the natural sugars from your diet. Limit your intake of sweet fruits and eliminate dried fruits.

Step #2: Get More Sleep. We are supposed to get an average of eight hours of sleep each night. If you’re not getting adequate amounts of rest, you’re more likely to be hungry, overeat, and gain weight.

When you’re tired, you don’t feel like cooking a healthy meal, and you’re more likely to opt for fast (fattening) food. Then your lack of energy causes you to skip your workouts. And to make matter worse, sleep deprivation causes your metabolism to slow down, slowing or reversing your results. To beat your plateau, make sleep a priority.

Step #3: Drink Only Water. To restart your results you’ll need to make some changes. Sorry, but some of the changes aren’t going to be fun. If you’re one of the millions hooked on soft drink, alcohol, or other sweetened drinks, then your plateau will stay locked in place until you replace these drinks with water.

Keep in mind that your brain often confuses thirst with hunger. So at the first sign of hunger, don’t grab a snack or calorie-filled drinks. Instead, grab a glass of water.

Step #4: Eat Healthy Breakfast. But not just any breakfast. Your plateau-breaking breakfast should be low in carbs and high in protein. Try eggs, lean breakfast meats, a protein shake, or a mini-muffin made with almond flour.

Fitting breakfast into your busy morning may take some work, but research shows that the habit of eating a healthy breakfast is key to losing weight and keeping kilograms off. Set your alarm 15 minutes earlier to give yourself time to eat breakfast.

Step #5: Increase Exercise Intensity. It’s time to start taking your workouts more seriously. No more going through the motions, it’s all-out for you. If you want to get back on track with your body transformation, and to keep the fat melting away, then increase the amount and intensity of your exercise routine.

For most people, this is the most difficult lifestyle change of all, but the benefits are enormous. Try to get 30 to 60 minutes of intense exercise on most days of the week. When exercise is a normal part of your everyday routine, you’re more likely to stick with it, and your body will become slimmer and more toned.

The quickest and most permanent way to beat that plateau is through a combination of healthy eating and consistent, challenging workouts.

I’m here to help you meet your fitness and weight loss goals. You deserve that fit and attractive body—I can help you get it.

Call or email today and together we will overcome your fitness plateau.

Leptin is a hormone that is naturally produced by the fat cells in the body, also known as adipocytes. Leptin plays a major role in suppressing the appetite and regulating metabolism. When released into the bloodstream it acts on receptors in the brain, signalling that the body has had enough to eat. A feeling of fullness is experienced, which helps regulate our eating behaviour and helps control our energy balance. It is widely known that leptin helps the body utilise fat stores. Your leptin levels need to be high in order to burn fat, and when leptin levels decrease, your fat stores increase.

When people lose weight through food restriction alone, there is a subsequent reduction in metabolic rate because there is a loss of both fat and lean body tissue. Leptin levels decline and the metabolism slows down in response to receiving less food energy. However, leptin may play a role in sparing lean muscle mass when dieting, by causing weight to only be lost from fat deposits. Additionally, leptin does not decrease the metabolism, even when caloric intake is reduced.

Leptin and Obesity
Many obese people make attempts at weight loss but eventually gain the weight back. This is likely to be due to the fact that leptin production is reduced when weight is lost through dieting alone. Low leptin levels trigger fat storage rather than fat burning, as low food intake triggers the starvation mode. Leptin supplementation, when taken alongside a caloric-restricted diet, does not produce a decline in metabolism and is a more successful method in maintaining weight loss in the long-term.
Leptin Insensitivity
A leptin insensitivity is commonly considered the underlying cause of obesity in humans, predisposing affected individuals to easily gain weight. To naturally boost leptin levels, eat small meals that are evenly spread out throughout the day and consume adequate amounts of whole grains, fruits, vegetables and other nutritionally valuable foods. Maintaining proper metabolic function is the key to keeping hormones in balance and producing ideal levels of leptin for appetite regulation and weight management.

Fat Loss
When Leptin was first discovered it was considered the anti-obesity hormone. Through decreased food intake and increased energy expenditure, which results in rapid weight loss, lean muscle mass can be preserved.

Appetite
Most people have noticed that a diet usually starts out quite easy, particularly if one is obese. However, as the duration of the diet is extended, cravings start to set in and they become more and more intense. We recommend that “cheat” days be employed to prevent this, as they reset hormonal levels and glycogen levels, but also for your mental wellbeing.

Decreases in leptin are strongly associated with increased sensations of hunger. The lower your leptin levels go, the more severe the sensations of hunger are.

Energy Expenditure
Like hunger control, fat loss is remarkably easier at the beginning of a diet. However, it invariably slows, and if appropriate steps are not taken, it stops. Low leptin levels are correlated with decreases in resting energy expenditure.

In dieters, it is a common practice that when they reach a plateau (leptin levels are low) they cut their calorie intake even further, while increasing their physical activity. Unfortunately, this is just going to decrease leptin levels even more, making things that much worse.

What you should be doing is the exact opposite. We do this by employing a cheat meal into our clients’ plans. The cheat meal is a planned ‘non calorie restricted’ refeed. These refeeds should be done before signs of low leptin levels become apparent. We recommend this be every 7 days, and it is usually followed by an intermittent fasting period.

The Refeed
The primary purpose of the refeed is to boost depleted glycogen levels and therefore your metabolism. There are arguments that any refeed should only be 50% higher in calorie intake than the diet you are on. We believe that restrictions on refeeds are not necessary, unless your leptin levels are drastically low, in which case you would refeed more regularly. With a high calorie refeed, usually in the form of quality carbohydrates, proteins and good fats, you can keep your metabolism firing and leptin levels at a more sustainable level.

Assuming we have not created drastically low leptin levels, our refeed will be 20-50% ABOVE maintenance, for 12-48 hours. The higher the calories, the shorter the refeed, and there are arguments in support of this. If they are drastically low, 5-7 days of 20% above maintenance, is recommended. In general, the lower you are below your natural body fat set point, and the longer or more drastic your diet, the more frequent the refeed.

Our primary macronutrient will be carbohydrate, which enters the blood as glucose. Insulin also potentiates glucose stimulated leptin production, therefore high GI carbs are most ideal. Protein should be 1g/lb, and a bit of fat and fructose from foods that you enjoy is acceptable, but the rest is non-fructose carbohydrates.

The Fed State
Leptin is responsible for the anabolic hormonal setting that is associated with the so-called “fed state”, and the lack thereof during underfeeding. Therefore, in addition to its high importance in our fat loss efforts, it is extremely important in increasing and maintaining muscle mass.

The reason we lose muscle mass when dieting, despite resistance training and adequate protein intake, is hormonal. Hormones are also the reason we cannot gain our maximum amount of muscle without over eating, which in turn leads to some fat gains. With the exception of insulin, leptin controls these anabolic hormones and both insulin and leptin are mediated by glucose, therefore they go hand in hand.

Increased leptin levels lead to preferential refilling of liver glycogen stores, which is a prime indicator of the fed state, as well as an increase in testosterone and human growth hormone. It also blunts ACTH, which signals cortisol secretion in the adrenals and inhibits cortisol synthesis directly.

Beyond Leptin
Though leptin is the master hormone, there are numerous other signals involved in adipostatic control — and this is where it REALLY gets complicated. Some of these signals are directly modulated by leptin (anorexic peptides are increased and orexigenic are decreased), while some are not. Some are redundant (meaning if they are taken out of the equation, something else takes over), while others are not. At last count, there were about 15 of them — cortisol, ghrelin, neuropeptide-Y, orexigen a & b, melanin-concentrating hormone (MCH), cotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), and agouti-related peptide (AgRP) are a few that come to mind — and there are almost certainly many more that we are not yet aware of.

I am frustrated today after having no one turn up to my group session, due to it raining. A little bit of rain is not going to hurt anyone, yet my group was more willing to part with their money rather than turn up and work on hitting their goals.

Every day I hear people make excuses about:

• Why they cannot eat well
• Why they ate at Maccas
• Why they fell off the wagon
• How peer pressure forced them to drink
• Why they can’t train due to bad weather
• Why they cannot lift as much weight as someone else
• Why they don’t want to work certain muscle groups
• How their finances are preventing them from training (yet they can afford to eat out every day, which indicates they do not have their priorities right)

Does this sound like you? Are you the person that knows all about fitness and yet you are 20kg overweight? We are all experts, yet many of us do nothing about it.

To be honest, it all gets a bit boring. Excuses, excuses and more excuses. Let me tell you something: I am the expert. I know how to train you to lose weight, since I have done it myself and helped many before you, and will continue to help people achieve their goals. I live and breathe this industry, and like many of my peers, I strive to make a difference.

Look, lets get serious now. If you want to change, you need to make changes. Thinking healthy and being healthy is all it takes. Do not make excuses for your actions. You ate chocolate because you did not have the willpower to say “No”; you ate at Maccas because you were too lazy to prepare a meal in advance, or simply go home and cook (it probably would have taken 20 minutes anyway).

People ask me, each and everyday, endless amounts of questions regarding fitness, and I will continue to answer them until I am blue in the face.

I get questions such as:

• When do I train?
• What times do I eat?
• What do I eat?
• How many carbs should I be eating?
• What is the best way to count calories?
• Why am I not losing weight when I trained 3 times this week?
• How do I keep fit and maintain my ideal weight?
• What’s your secret?

The list goes on…

I love the last one, “What’s your secret?” It’s simple really:

• I make good decisions
• I make good food and drink choices
• I exercise everyday, even if only 20 minutes
• I make good decisions that affect my lifestyle
• I plan my week
• I am consistent
• I do not starve myself
• I do not calorie count
• I know what works for me

Lets put it simply… Life is about decisions.

Everyday you wake up and you start making decisions, we make hundreds everyday. Yet when it comes to our lifestyles, we seem to make excuses, and lots of them.

Now I am not some sort of fitness freak that never eats anything bad. I am happy to admit there are times I step outside my normal plan, but I make a positive decision, stand by it and move forward. As I teach my clients: you can have a cheat meal every week, just not everyday.

Now, you may have a personal trainer who says, “Count your protein, carbs and fats, and do everything to moderation.”

Whilst I agree with this, to a degree, it is not sustainable. You cannot count calories, proteins, carbs and fats (PCF) all the time. You need to live your life. You cannot look at every meal and wonder if it exceeds your PCF’s. Instead, look at it very simply: does the meal contain the right portions of protein, carbs and good fats?

Why not focus on being healthy instead. Eat clean food and don’t be fooled by a packet  with“Healthy”written on it. If it’s in a packet, it’s not healthy, in my opinion.

I hear people say all the time, “I went out for lunch/dinner with friends/family/colleagues, and I just ate what everyone else was eating, and I drank alcohol too.”

You know what, it’s a BS excuse. You know it, and I know it.

Why do you need to eat a rubbish meal when you go out for dinner?

• You could replace chips with veggies
• Get sauces/dressings on the side
• Cook a meal for your friends instead
• Replace wine with soda water & lime

Stop making excuses, it’s as simple as that. Yes, tomorrow is another day, but why not make today a good day.

People ask me, “How do you do it?” It’s simple: I plan. I plan my food; I plan when I will have a cheat meal; I plan what I will buy at the shops.  It’s all in the planning.

If you have a good PT, he or she should be able to help you with this, if not, you can do it on your own:

• Grab a piece of paper and draw a table for 7 days, with 6 meals a day
• Write down when you will exercise
• Write down all your events, dinners etc.
• Add your meals and snacks, making sure you are eating good food
• Don’t forget to drink 3 liters of water per day

You have now, very simply, planned your week out. Best of all, it probably took less than 30 minutes to do.

Now you can create a shopping list. You can make food in advance and freeze it if you want.

Heed my best advice: “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”

Well that’s it guys, I am pretty passionate about this stuff and I know you can do it. If you do need help look me up, since helping people is what I do for a living.