Now that you've decided to take control of your metabolism and have adjusted your calories to maintenance levels, you want to maintain this level of calories for at least two weeks. Then once things are humming along again, you can return to a caloric deficit. Might you gain some weight at maintenance? Maybe, but some will surely be water, muscle glycogen, etc. Basically nothing to worry about – easy come, easy go. Again, long term versus short term thinking. You need to correct the problem before you can move past it. Two weeks at maintenance will make further fat loss much more likely when you return to your caloric deficit. Chances are you'll start feeling a lot better though, and... read more 4 comments

Do you find that no matter what diet you try or how much exercise you do, you just can't seem to lose fat anymore? Were you once pleased with your fat-loss progress, but now find yourself staring this big, ugly plateau in the face? Nothing seems to work for you anymore and you've tried it all - high carbs, low carbs, fat burners, low calories, session after session of mind-numbing cardio. That flab isn't going anywhere. Frustrating, isn't it? It's like a brick wall standing in your way. Your problem may be a damaged metabolism--a very real phenomenon - caused by prolonged dieting. I know that may sound scary, but it's not as bad as some people make it out to be. With... read more 2 comments

Putting It All Together The take home message here is not that there is no place for steady state cardio, or that you should only be doing interval training. The best course of action is to use both forms of cardio. An overemphasis on either will result in less than optimal results. If you're just starting out, I'd caution you from jumping right into an intense interval training workout. Rather, you should spend some time building up a baseline of cardiovascular fitness with steady state cardio. From that point you can start to do some lower intensity intervals. For example, you might walk on the treadmill at 3.0mph for your active recovery and power walk at 4.0mph for your sprints. With... read more 2 comments

Efficiency sure sounds good, but when we're trying to lose fat, we want to be inefficient fat burners. Look at a lot of physique competitors – they start off with 30 minutes of cardio three to four times a week and by the time they're done dieting, they're up to 60 minutes twice a day and even more in some cases. Did the 30 minutes four times per week stop producing results? Did they become more efficient? But what about the often heralded fat-burning zone? I'm afraid to say that the fat-burning zone is completely overrated. Did you know that as you sit here reading this article, you are in the fat-burning zone? Do you think you're burning lots of... read more 1 comments

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