Overcome your weight-loss plateau.
The foundation of CrossFit is nutrition. We create the strongest hedge against chronic, metabolic disease and maximize our fitness training through the food we eat. We try to keep to simple and straight forward; “Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that support exercise but not body fat.” This recommendation can completely change your life. You will increase your fitness, lose body fat, increase lean muscle mass, and significantly improve your metabolic health. Yet still, someone people may hit a plateau specifically in their weight-loss that may require more rigid advice.
If this is you, here are 5 tips to overcome your weight-loss plateau:
(Assuming you’ve already adopted our dietary pattern above)
Moderate your dietary fat intake – CrossFit aligns with a carbohydrate-controlled diet that supports insulin sensitivity to fight the root causes of metabolic diseases. People tend to think they can eat all the dietary fat in the world if they are controlling their carbohydrates. This is not true. It is advantageous to reduce carbohydrates and embrace healthy fats, but you need a reason to tap into your stored body fat for fuel.
Add more lean protein choices– Following on #1, take an audit of your protein intake. Are you eating mostly bacon, ribeye steaks, and 80/20 ground beef for protein? Consider swapping to some leaner options such as London broil, cod fish, shrimp, 93/7 ground beef. Shoot for options that are [1 gram protein to 1 gram of fat] or better.
Improve your sleep – Sleep is essential for health, yet very negotiable for many people with the convenience of caffeine everywhere. Sleep helps regulate hormones like leptin and ghrelin (appetite), cortisol, and insulin. These are crucial hormones for fuel partitioning and body fat usage throughout our day. A solid 8 hours is still the goal to strive towards.
Increase your daily steps – Most people simply don’t move enough throughout their day. 2000-5000 steps per day is not a great reflect of how humans are meant to live. The classic 10,000 steps per day is still a great rule of thumb. This allows us to increase our NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis) and create a demand for fat as a fuel due to the low-intensity. Most of us in the CrossFit world are guilty of doing intense workouts 3-5 days per week and very little activity outside of the class workout.
Strength training – Challenge your muscles under moderate to heavy load and push to acute fatigue during each bout of effort in a training session. This stimulus is necessary for muscle tissue development. This will improve your insulin sensitivity and increase your resting metabolic rate. Both advantageous for weight loss and the ultimate goal of optimal health. Start with compound movements like squats, weighted step-ups, and farmer carries.
