working out less and the weight is dropping off ???

Maybe your previous habits were too stressul for your organism, so it didn't want to let the fat go
that's not unusual, just biology

Yeah my body does that as well. Iv always seen it as over time of hitting your body so hard it gets worn down and such and try's to hold onto some of its fat stores. Doing lighter workouts allows it to repair and such, in which it starts to drop the weight again. Either way enjoy the down time mate. As i know for me you will have to up it again.

Are you losing inches or pounds? If the latter, you could be dropping retained water. A high stress exercise like insanity causes microtears in your muscles that your body treats as an injury. Water and glycogen are retained as part of the inflammation response to aid with healing. Water is quite dense, particularly comared to fat, so retained water can easily offset the weight loss from fat. Once you stop working out, or stop pushing up the intensity, your body will stop retaining this water, and the weight will rush off. No real change in fat, but a significant scale change. When doing heavy lifting or high intensity cardio, a tape measure is a much better tool than a scale.

There are several reasons why this could be and although these are not exhaustive, may explain in the most part why you are losing weight doing less:

- Metabolism - Increased exercise and in particular, weight/strength training, increases metabolic rate. HIIT is particularly successful at create an EPOC which increases this rate for 24-72 hours. It may be that your metabolism is now much higher than before so less exercise is required to reap the same benefits you once had to bust your *kitten* for;

- Hormones - There are many hormonal issues that can affect weight loss but one in particular is more affective than any other. You've probably heard of the 'fight or flight' saying. This is basically down to the body's way of reacting to stress and when it does do, it secretes Cortisol, a fat loser's arch-enemy. This does precisely the opposite of what you want, retaining fat stores as it thinks it is under attack and tries to retain it for the sake of the body;

- Insulin - Created by the Pancreas, the body releases it to help reduce blood sugar levels (from eating too many carbs and sugar!) Insulin’s major function is to tell the body when to store nutrients–one of which is fat. Insulin is essentially a gatekeeper, which opens up the body’s cells and directs them to store fat and/or release fat into the blood.
When the body senses that blood sugar is elevated–again, from eating carbs and sugar–it calls on insulin to open the flood gates and stuff blood sugar away into cells

- Overtraining - Too much heavy training affects the CNS and PNS (para-sympathetic nervous system) which can drain your body of energy and increase levels of Cortisol, as mentioned above. The body is adaptive, but to adapt to something can take time. Recovery times are all important too (see below);

- Rest - I can't overstate how important this is as yet so many people don't do it because they don't fully understand the body's biological operations. Rest is AS IMPORTANT as exercise in that your body doesn't lose weight at the time of your exercise in many cases, but in the hours and days after. Example:

I do the following in my training week:

Monday - 2 mile HIIT sprint, morning, Afternoon - REST
Tuesday - Weight Training - Chest, Back morning, Cardio 30 mins Afternoon
Wednesday - Weight Training - Shoulders, Cardio 30 mins Afternoon
Thursday - Weight Training - Triceps and Core, Cardio 30 mins Afternoon
Friday - Weight Training - Biceps and Legs
Saturday - REST
Sunday - REST

I train on these days because I can, maybe you cant but the principles are the same. I allow time for recovery and yet dedicate the training around days which affect each other.

- Diet - Finally the big one. Not going to bang on about what you already know but just to say that all this focus on low carb, high protein is great but has its drawbacks in that your body needs all types of energy. I take on board 45% carbs, 25% fat and 30% protein. Yet I can lose fat and continued to gain strength and size, something generally accepted as being very hard to do at the same time.

I hope this helps a bit. Please, this is just an overview so if anyone knows more than me and wants to contribute, feel free but don't criticise me.

7

This happened to me. For the entire month of March I didn't lose a single pound. I was lifting three days a week, at least 60 minute sessions, and doing Les Mills Combat four days a week for 45-60 minutes a session. Plus some yoga and ab work. Yeah, I was kinda crazy. I averaged between 1400-1500 calories a day then. At the beginning of April I decided to shift my focus to lifting and dropped my cardio down to just a 10 minute warm up before lifting. I shortened my lifting sessions to about 45 minutes too. I also upped my calories to 1600. I started losing again an average of a pound a week. I've been steadily losing at that rate. I'm now at the point where I'm trying to slow down that weight loss and working toward finding maintenance by walking my calories up every week. I'm at about 1800 calories a day now, lifting four to five days a week and still losing. It's kind of crazy.

I think I was doing too much and not fueling my body for the amount of work I was doing. I don't really have another explanation for it.