This guest blog post was written by fitness and nutrition author Jon Benson I have his permission to share it with you.

What makes a diet stop working? What causes a man or a woman go on a diet, full of good intentions, only to discard the diet in a few weeks or months?

Is it discipline? Frustration? A lack of effectiveness? According to nutrition and fitness author Jon Benson, it comes down to one word: “Love.”

“Love is the key to staying on a diet, a workout plan… anything that requires a change of lifestyle. It may seem obvious, but unless you actually ‘love’ the diet you are on, there is little chance of you staying on it for very long,” says Benson. “All diets require a change in how you look at food, how you consume food, and even how you think about food. The problem is most diets make too many demands of the dieter right off the bat. They tell you not to eat certain foods, sometimes making that a permanent restriction, while allowing perhaps a day per week to ‘overeat’ your favorite foods.”

“This is a disaster waiting to happen… and there is a much more balanced, healthy and effective way to diet than this,” states Benson.

Ten years ago Benson was a somewhat typical American male: Overworked, over-stressed, and overweight. Benson’s weight put him officially into the “obese” category and brought with it all the associated disease states such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high triglycerides (a type of blood fat) and of course massive amounts of “stress fat” around the belly and chest region.

When Benson decided enough was enough, he, like so many others who are truly ready to change their body and their life, went a bit overboard. “Oh sure, I ate the typical dry chicken, oatmeal with nothing on it, bland rice, and tried to never eat anything I actually enjoyed. Lucky for me I actually love chicken, but most of my diet was composed of what I call my “hate foods”, not my love foods — foods I truly enjoyed eating. But my thinking was just like that of the typical dieter: ‘If I eat (fill-in-the-blank favorite food) I’ll get fatter and never lose weight!’ How wrong I was… and after I started and stopped my diet at least ten times during a course of three years I finally got the message.”

Benson decided to use his nutritional knowledge and his background in body shaping to his advantage. “I started thinking, ‘Why not focus on progress rather than perfection?’ Again, this seems like common sense, but most dieters are focused on being perfect all the time. So I began applying some old body shaping tricks to my dietary plan. For example, I started cycling my calories. I would eat more on one day, less on another. This kept my metabolism guessing and never allowed my body to hit that dreaded ‘no more weight loss’ plateau.”

“Then I decided to push the envelope. I started experimenting with including my favorite foods — pizza, pasta, and even desserts, all in reasonable quantities — on my higher-calorie food days. At first it didn’t work out too well. But then I used what I now call my “Caveman Principle” which involves strategically eating protein at specific times with a bit less food volume (and this allowed me to stop counting calories too!) and then including my favorite foods on specific days and, most important, specific times. Timing in this case is everything.”

Benson says this timing includes both time of day as well as eating higher-calorie, higher-fat, higher-carbohydrate foods only after exercise. “Specific exercise, done for short periods of time, can set the body up to receive additional calories and carbohydrates more effectively without storing them as body fat. You just have to have to know when to do it. Do it right and it works like a charm.”

“The end result was a loss of over 70 pounds of fat, and I never gave up eating my favorite foods… not once, but at least three times a week.”

A study conducted at the University of Phoenix could shed some light on why this approach to dieting may work better than traditional “calorie-counting” and overly-restrictive foods plans. People given the option of eating more frequently versus three meals a day ended up eating smaller servings of both healthy foods and, on some days, “junk foods” yet still lost more weight than the three-meals-per-day group. The evidence pointed toward the elevation of the metabolic rate through frequent eating and the psychological ease of being less restrictive regarding foods consumed.

“I believe food should be enjoyed, and in my opinion life is way too short to worry about eating perfect all the time,” says Benson. “When I crafted this approach into what is now known as “The Every Other Day Diet”, it became an overnight smash, and for good reason… it gave people a chance to have a life while they are losing weight. Let’s face it: Anyone can diet for a day or two, and that’s basically what The Every Other Day Diet asks of its users. Of course you cannot go hog wild on your Feed Days (the higher-calories favorite food meals) but just knowing your favorite foods are always just around the corner keeps you on the weight loss track.”

“The end result is a diet that just about everyone can fall in love with. Loving your diet is the key to dietary success, as I said. And I do happen to love me some pizza! I just use that pizza now to actually help me lose weight rather than gain it, all while staying in good health.”

Today, Jon Benson’s online best-seller, The Every Other Day Diet, can be purchased along with nine additional dieters bonuses, including the first 30 days of private email diet coaching free of charge, for only $39.97, and the program is guaranteed for a full 60 days. If you are not satisfied in any way, the company, Jon Benson Fitness LLC, will refund your money without questions or hassles. Click to watch a presentation on Jon’s “Caveman Principle” of eating and why it works so well for hundreds of thousands of people for fast, sustainable, and enjoyable weight loss.

For more info on Jon’s program ** click here**

Tweet This Post

This guest blog post was written by fitness and nutrition author Tom Venuto I have his permission to share it with you.

Weight loss plateaus can be frustrating, even maddening! It happens especially when you get down to that “last 10 lbs” or when you drop a lot of weight, and you hit the “good” body fat category, but you’re an “overachiever” and you still want to get even leaner… all the way to “ripped”, or at least lean enough to see your abs. It’s a challenge, but there IS something you can do about it. I revealed the answers in a recent teleseminar called the Super Lean seminar, which I recently had transcribed and I’ve posted it below for all my website visitors. Breaking a weight loss plateau is not difficult, it simply requires out of the box thinking. You will find the solution fascinating because part of it is the most counter-intuitive move you can imagine.

QUESTION: Tom, I know you often say that to get to the point where you can see your abs, you need to reach single-digit body fat. But what if I hit a weight loss plateau at about 12% body fat? What do I need to do to break the weight loss plateau and get my fat% down to single digits? Should I do more cardio, more weight-training, or change my diet somehow?”

ANSWER: You could use any of those strategies. You could manipulate your calories, do cardio more often, do more cardio sessions weekly, or increase the cardio intensity. You could also change your weight training. You shouldn’t limit yourself to only one option.

One of the problems I see with quite a few programs is that they’re too dogmatic. If you hit a weight loss plateau, the person with the most flexibility in their approach is the person who’s going to be most likely to get through that plateau.

The first thing though is to understand what a plateau really is. This is important, because if you were losing weight, but now you’re not, there’s only one thing that that could mean; you were in a calorie deficit but you’re no longer in a calorie deficit.

You may be wondering why that happens.

There are four primary reasons you hit a weight loss plateau:

The first reason you hit a weight loss plateau is because your metabolism decreases. While this does not completely stop fat loss, it does slow down fat loss. If you’ve been cutting calories, especially if you cut them severely, your body adapts by decreasing the metabolic rate. That’s sometimes known as the “starvation response” or “Adaptive thermogenesis.”

The second reason you hit a weight loss plateau is that you need fewer calories after you lose weight. Calorie needs are directly tied into your body weight. One problem is that after people lose a lot of weight, they tend to keep eating the same way they were eating when they were heavier.

So they’re feeding a smaller person the way they were when they were a bigger person, but when you’re a smaller person, you don’t need as many calories, even at rest (your basal metabolic rate is lower).

A third reason you hit a weight loss plateau is that when you move that smaller body, you’re not burning as many calories. If you strap on a weighted vest or heavy backpack and go out and hike up a hill, you can tell, obviously, that if you’re lugging around extra weight, you’re burning more calories. So now can you see why, after you lose weight, you burn fewer calories?

The fourth reason you hit a weight loss plateau is that most people either cheat on their diets or they forget to record part of their food intake. This one requires a little bit of honesty with yourself. Even if you don’t do it intentionally and you don’t “cheat” per se, unconsciously, we’re all terrible at estimating how much food we eat.

Some studies have even showed underreporting calorie intake as much as 50%. In other words, you say, “I’m only eating 1,200 calories a day, but I’m stuck at a plateau!” but you’re really eating 1,800 calories a day which doesn’t give you much of a deficit.

All of these reasons for plateaus get amplified in the later stages of a diet, because biologically speaking, your body is doing everything it possibly can to get you to go off your diet and to get weight to stabilize.

After a long period of dieting and after a large weight loss, your body cranks up the appetite, stimulates cravings and tries to trick you into eating more.

The leaner you get, the longer you’ve been dieting and the more aggressively you cut calories, the more your body tends to defend its weight, and hold on to remaining body fat.

So it’s really common to hit that plateau when you’re dieted down and leaner. Usually it’s nowhere near as difficult for the overweight person to start losing weight as it is for the lean person to get even more lean. The last 10 lbs is usually a lot harder than the first 10.

If you think about it, it’s pretty unnatural from a biological perspective to walk around with really low single-digit body fat. It’s not beneficial from a survival-of-the-species point of view to have low body fat. So this metabolic adaptation becomes more pronounced the leaner you get.

you’re also at a higher risk of losing muscle, because extra muscle is not economical when there’s a calorie shortage. Having extra muscle is like having an engine that’s bigger than you need – It’s like a gas guzzler.

The ultimate answer to why you plateau, why that last 10 pounds is so hard to lose and why it’s hard to break into those single digits is that you were in a calorie deficit but for all of the reasons mentioned above, you’re no longer in deficit.

In part two we’ll look at ways to break the weight loss plateau.

For more info on Tom’s program **click here**

Tweet This Post