#70 Four Tips To Help You Lose Those Last Few Pounds

Have you been training hard and eating well, but still can’t seem to lose those last few pounds!?

Here’s a few tips that may help you get rid of that stubborn fat:

1. Mix up your workouts

If you’re continually doing the same thing, your body will get used to this and you may see a plateau. You need to mix up your workout and continually challenge yourself!

If your favourite type of cardio is running, do a cycle class or incorporate some HIIT. If you have been lifting weights, continually challenge yourself by increasing your weight, try some different exercises you don’t usually do, or incorporate a bit of HIIT into your weights routine.

2. Take a break

Training stresses the body, then your body physiologically adapts after your training session so that next time, you are fitter/stronger. You don’t actually get fitter/stronger during your workout, this happens during the recovery period. This is why recovery is so important, especially if you are training at a high intensity.

Sometimes your body just needs a complete break to fully recover. So if you have been working out hard but have experienced a plateau, take a full week off! I promise that you will feel 100% recovered and ready to train better than ever the following week. Just make sure you’re eating well during your week off.

3. Re-think your diet

Fat loss is more attributed to your diet than exercise so chances are, if you’re not seeing any progress, you may need to re-evaluate your diet. Are you eating too much? Too little? Do you eat lots of processed / junk food? Are you drinking unnecessary calories?

If you’re starving yourself, you’re actually damaging your metabolism and causing your body to slow down and start storing fat. So when you do start eating normally again, you will put even more weight on. Make sure you’re eating enough!

If you’re eating too much, you will be in a calorie surplus and will therefore not see any weight/fat loss. It is a fine line that requires a bit of trial and error to work out how much you should be eating.To work out how many calories you should be eating, check out my previous blog post here. And it goes without saying that you should be trying to eat as healthy as you can. Check out my clean eating guidelines here.

You can also find my own personal daily diet here.

4. Keep yourself accountable

Sometimes we think we’re eating healthy and exercising well, but it’s hard to keep track. Keeping a diary of your workouts and meals can really help you look back and see how you are going. Write down all the workouts you completed that week and all of the meals and snacks you ate. After 1 week, go back and have a look. How did you go? Did you really get to the gym 5 times like you had planned? And did you really eat as healthy as you thought you were?

I have done this before myself and was a little shocked. I have actually kept previous diaries from a year or so ago when I thought I was eating really healthy. When I look back, I realise that I wasn’t eating as great as I thought I was…