Part 5
This program is the beginning of a beginning. The exercise component is a wake-up call for your muscles. The eating component gets you thinking about food as energy, which is essential for fat loss. After 60 days, you should be leaner, but you probably won't be as lean as you want to be. You'll need to keep going.
First,
Keep the diet.
Remember, diet drives fat loss. If you keep the diet in place, you should continue to lose fat, albeit differently. When you're a beginner, progress tends to come easy, thanks to your body’s fluctuating fluid levels and the relationship between body fat percentage and rate of loss — higher percentages make for quicker loss, and lower percentages make for slower loss. As a beginner, you’ll probably see the scale move in the right direction rather quickly and consistently. Almost weekly, you’ll weigh less than you did the preceding week.
As you get leaner, your progress will become less predictable. Weight jumps probably won’t be as large; you won’t see the scale move in the “right” direction on a weekly basis (certainly not on a daily basis). You might go two weeks without seeing a change in scale weight, only to see results manifest during week three.
Eventually, your fat loss may plateau. A plateau is ZERO fat loss over the span of ONE month. Keep in mind, “zero fat loss” isn’t synonymous with “zero weight loss.” Remember, both muscle mass and body fat factor into your scale weight. You need to piece together a picture based on EVERYTHING you’re tracking.
ZERO scale weight change.
ZERO visual changes.
ZERO everything.
DO YOU UNDERSTAND?
ZERO.
It’s a number.
Not Protoman knockoff with long blond hair.
So-called “stubborn fat” often gets the blame for fat loss plateaus, but there isn’t a special kind of body fat that can defy the laws of thermodynamics.
The immutable law of fat loss still applies. If you’re no longer losing fat it’s because you’re no longer in a calorie deficit; there isn’t a special kind of “stubborn” body fat immune to a calorie deficit.
And so, the question:
What happened?
Why are you no longer in an energy deficit?
Your average daily metabolic rate is tied to your scale weight. If you’ve lost ten or twenty pounds, your metabolic rate isn’t as high as it used to be.
Example: Your starting weight was 200 pounds. You began eating 2400 calories (BWx12). Things went well. Now you’re 180 pounds and plateaued, but you’re still eating 2400 calories, which is a number built for your old 200-pound self. You need to recalculate your ceiling with the calculator, which would be 180×12 = 2160 calories.
Chances are, your progress will resume when you drop to 2160 calories. This is biology at work. You aren’t broken. Smaller creatures require less energy.
Acknowledging this is one thing.
Putting this into practice is another thing.
At this point, you might be a few months into a calorie deficit. You might not like the idea of eating less. You might want to consider taking a vacation from the calorie deficit, especially if you’re feeling too thin.
Second,
Change the program.
After 60 consecutive days of training, you'll probably need a little break. I recommend taking a week off of training and then going one of two directions.
First, redo the program using a slightly more challenging variation of each exercise. Do push-ups with your feet elevated on a book. Do bodyweight rows with your torso closer to parallel. Do split squats holding an empty milk jug filled with sand. There are plenty of options.
Second, migrate to barbells.
You can rinse and reuse the 60-day program with slightly more challenging exercises however long you please, but this program isn't really designed to be a permanent fixture. I'd prefer you migrate to barbell training and free-weight training.
You might be better off doing the initial 60-day program a second time as you familiarize yourself with basic barbell training on the side. This way, you'll still be getting adequate stimulus with the 60-day program and you'll be able to take your time with the transition.