I get variations of this question a lot from my coaching clients:
“Why u no adjust my calories? I’ve been stalled for 2 weeks!”
As with many things, the most immediate answer is IT DEPENDS: on your caloric needs, age, activity, and body composition, etc.
But beyond that, there are a number of reasons why I tend to wait a bit.
Let me go through a few of them…
First, sometimes it just takes time for changes to manifest to a degree that we can see or measure. Our bodies don’t care about messing up the personal fat loss timetable we have in our heads.
Second, and this one’s related to the first reason, sometimes things don’t happen until you finally stop obsessing and get your mind on other things.
I can’t tell you how many times a client has said, “I decided to give up on my goal and quit the diet. I felt a huge relief. The next day the scale showed I lost 2 pounds.”
Give a stressed out mind the chance to take a deep breath and the body exhales.
That’s also why just repeating a “stalled plan” another week can lead to progress. The second time you do anything is typically easier, more accurate, and less stressful.
A very good combo for fat loss.
Third—and this is probably the number one reason for most—is simply you didn’t get it right it yet. Your calories were too inconsistent or inaccurate. Usually both.
I can’t make a definitive adjustment to the plan if your execution was too far off target and your data just too unreliable.
I get it, you’re still stalled but maybe due to eyeballing you were eating an average of 200 calories per day more than a 2,000 calorie target?
If I say “drop 200 calories” AND in order to do it you also start tracking much better, that’s like deducting 400 calories. A BIG adjustment.
Fourth, lastly, with fat loss you ALWAYS want to squeeze as much juice out of the orange before lowering calories.
Lowering calories is a race to the bottom and if pushed too far. It greatly affects training, recovery, and even quality of life.
So we FIRST nail habits and consistency and “iron the kinks out” while keeping the metabolism healthy, thereby ensuring you have plenty of runway if and when we do have to drop calories.
Numbers aside, a consistent daily diet process is ALWAYS more accurate, more routine, less stressful, and delivers better results.
If I can get a more sporadic, “eat when I can” person to just follow a consistent plan, they often lose fat without counting a damn thing. But that also takes time, and so we allow some time for that to happen.
And if you then add to that “a well-designed plan that they forget they’re even on, cause it’s just how they eat,” then success is basically guaranteed.
– Coach Bryan