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Tips to Reduce Body Fat After Hitting the Plateau

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Tips to Reduce Body Fat After Hitting the Plateau
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11 Oct 2024 4:32 PM IST

When you want a finely sculpted body, your ideal body fat percentage should be around 10%-12%. For shredded abs and highly defined muscles, you will need to cut it further down to 10%. But that's easier said than done. Fat cutting takes a lot of dedication and shows little progress after a certain point.

Let's say you have reached 15% from 20%-30% body fat. You start cutting more but hit a plateau of around 12% — what do you do then? Learn how your body reacts to extreme fat loss and what you can do to maintain a low-fat percentage. Also, explore some fat-reducing foods such as protein bars, tofu, chia seeds, etc. Scroll down.

Your Body's Response to Fat-Cutting

Many observational studies have shown that everybody has a body fat set point, which is the amount of fat your body tries to maintain based on your biological processes. When you try to gain or lose more than that, you may see some progress initially, but after a point, your body will try to shift back to your ideal body fat set point range. So, if you have already lost a significant amount of fat and are trying to cut it further down, your body may show these symptoms:

● Your body may slow down your metabolism to prevent weight loss.

● You may feel hungry and crave fatty and sweet foods.

● You may have low energy levels, making you feel lethargic and sleepy.

These responses from the body may hinder your fat loss journey. Move to the next section to learn how to continue to lose fat.

Tips to Cross the Fat-Loss Plateau

The first step to avoid this is to avoid going to an extreme when things slow down. Avoid reacting to the fluctuations, as your weight may go up and down during this stage.

Do the following things to keep reducing body fat:

● Do cardio that burns a lot of calories. You need to continue with 10,000 steps a day at minimum. You can do more but avoid exceeding 15,000 as it will overstrain you.

● Always cook at home to make tracking simple. You can eat meals of the same kind to prevent mistakes when counting calories daily.

● You can train your muscles two times a week to maintain muscle mass. Since you do not require a lot of muscle volume for a shredded body, this amount of training is enough.

● Listen to your body, and do not starve yourself because then you may end up eating any food that you see on the kitchen counter.

● You may instead benefit from eating high-fiber snacks such as snack bars or protein, fruits, sprouts, peanut butter, shakes, tofu, and chia seed smoothies.

The most important thing while doing all this is to stay consistent and patient.

In a Nutshell

When you are stuck in a fat-loss journey, don't try to force yourself to the extreme. Avoid over-restriction of diet or too much training because it may do more harm than good. Eat nutrient-dense meals that keep you full, cut on calories, and do more cardio-like walking. Check out the fruit, protein bars, and peanut butter price to stock these items so you can have them as a convenient snack.

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