Hey everyone! I’m super excited to dive into this bonus topic today because it’s something we don’t talk enough about: ‘weight loss plateaus’. Chance are pretty good that you know what this is like; even though you’ve been consistent the scale seems to be stuck. Frustrating, right? Instead of giving the usual blah blah blah advice, today I’m bringing you what I think of as unconventional, science-backed solutions to help you break through that plateau. Let’s jump right in!

1. Cycling Your Calories (aka Reverse Dieting). Most people assume you need to keep cutting calories to lose weight, but if you’ve been in a deficit for too long, your metabolism can slow down. This is called ‘adaptive thermogenesis’. To get out of this rut, you can try ‘reverse dieting’ or ‘calorie cycling’. By increasing your calories slightly on some days, you can “wake up” your metabolism and prevent it from slowing down further.

What to try: Increase your calories by 200-300 just one day a week staying focused on nutrient-dense foods like lean protein, healthy fats, and vegetables. The occasional boost can rev up your metabolism.

2. If you’ve been training hard and hit a plateau, it could be that your muscles are simply too adapted to your current workout routine. Muscles can become resistant to growth or fat burning after constant training. This is where ‘strategic deconditioning’ comes in.

By taking a short break from intense exercise (about 10-14 days), your muscles “reset,” and when you return to training, they become more responsive. Your Action plan? A two-week deconditioning period where you back off from intense workouts, then reintroduce a new exercise routine with fresh energy and responsiveness. Just be very careful that you don’t stay on a reset for any longer as that defeats the whole purpose.

3. Cold Exposure and Brown Fat Activation, it’s where you’re exposing your body to cold things like ice baths or cold showers and what that does is it stimulates our brown fat, a type of fat that burns calories, to generate heat.

Activating brown fat through cold exposure can be an unexpected way to break a plateau. Here’s a challenge for you: Try incorporating cold showers or ice baths a few times a week. Even brief exposure to cold water can increase your calorie burn over time by engaging that brown fat. 

4. Mitochondrial health is another forgotten factor. Your mitochondria is responsible for burning fat and over time, poor nutrition or stress can cause that to become less efficient. Boosting mitochondrial biogenesis, the creation of new mitochondria, can be done through intermittent fasting, exercise, and even certain nutrients can rejuvenate them.

Unique tweak: Try adding mitochondria-supporting supplements such as CoQ10, alpha-lipoic acid for example and you could also practice intermittent fasting to improve cellular energy production and fat metabolism.  

5. Mouth Rinsing with Fat: The Taste It, Burn It Theory that might be a shocker: rinsing your mouth with fat…yes, fat…can trigger your brain to release fat-burning signals before you even swallow. Research shows that mouth rinsing with fats like coconut oil or olive oil activates neural pathways that boost fat metabolism, just like athletes do with carb mouth rinses.

Try this out: Rinse your mouth with a teaspoon of coconut oil or olive oil before a workout, it could send early signals to your brain to burn fat more efficiently., and remember to spit it into the garbage so as not to clog the sink. If you’re taking it a step further by doing oil pulling, another thing I highly recommend, be sure to spit it out so as not to swallow the toxins pulled.

6. Track Your Non-Exercise Movement (NEAT). This is the energy your body burns from all the small movements throughout the day, like standing, fidgeting, washing dishes, folding laundry or walking around. NEAT can play a major role in breaking through a plateau without requiring a huge workout overhaul.

Here’s a simple tweak: Set a timer to stand up and move around for at least 5 minutes every hour. You’ll boost your daily calorie burn and give your metabolism a gentle nudge.  

7. Nutrient Timing and Carbohydrate Front-Loading can be what makes it or breaks that plateau as it’s not just about what you eat, but also when you eat it. Front-loading carbohydrates earlier in the day can improve insulin sensitivity, making your body more efficient at utilizing carbs. This reduces the chances of storing them as fat later in the day.

Try this tweak: Eat more complex carbs like quinoa or sweet potatoes earlier in the day or post-workout, then focus on proteins and healthy fats later. This keeps energy stable and aids fat loss.

Breaking through a weight loss plateau isn’t about pushing harder—it’s about *tuning in* to your body’s needs and using innovative techniques like reverse dieting, refeed days, mouth rinsing with fat, and cold exposure to shake things up. Don’t be afraid to experiment and see how your body responds to these new strategies. Which of these tips will you try first? Let’s talk in the chat and get you past that plateau!

Facebook Comments