Getting harder to reach my goal

Congratulations, your body has figured out how to maintain homeostasis based on "X' amount of calories in and "Y" amount of calories out! Basically, your body got wise to what you were up to and "adjusted" your metabolism to suit your current calorie intake and expenditure. This happens when you do the same exercise and eat the same amount of calories for a long time. But lucky for you I have some tips that work like a charm to stoke the fire again and get the scale moving in the right direction again. You can do one or both at the same time!

1.)Kick up your workouts a notch- do a different type of workout or workout harder/longer. Burn more calories. Remember however that too much can raise stress hormones and cause a stall too- the trick is to have intense, challenging, and different types of workouts than you're used to, but pay attention to RECOVERY and remember- the more intense, the shorter the workout needs to be- the less intense, the longer it needs to be.

2.)This is going to sound crazy and counterintuitive but...you need to EAT MORE CALORIES for about 2 weeks. Eat clean, but eat about 500-1000 more calories per day than you are right now for about 2 weeks. CLEAN calories, not junk food. A balance of protein, complex carbs, and healthy fats. But won't I gain weight you say? You might gain a pound or two, but it will be mostly water. The reason you need to eat more for a couple weeks is to RESET YOUR METABOLISM. After two weeks, start reducing the calories again gradually, by about 250 calories the following week. This is because if you cut calories too drastically, your body senses danger and rebels. You have to convince your body that plenty of food is available. Once you get back into losing mode again, you should have "refeeds" every 7-10 days to keep your body from "figuring out" your diet and slowing your metabolism down. A re-feed day is a day where you eat significantly higher amount of calories- like 1000-2000 more- than normal. (Don't exceed 2000) So if you're eating 2500 cal per day now, you would eat 3500-4500 on the day of your re-feed. Some people (myself included) use this as a cheat meal day- I'll include one meal that is way off my diet like pizza, icecream, basically whatever helps get the calories up. I know this sounds nuts, but I've been staying the leanest ever using this program. There was also a recent weight loss study that compared 2 groups of men over a 6 month period. One group of men stayed on their diet consistently for the whole 6 months without ever cheating. The other group went on the diet for 2 weeks, then off again for 2 weeks, repeating this pattern for the whole six months. Guess which group lost the most weight? THE 2 WEEKS ON, 2 WEEKS OFF group lost an average of 9 pounds more than the stick-to-it-consistently group. I believe the reason for this is that the second group didn't stay on the diet long enough for their body to downregulate their metabolisms, but they were still able to maintain a calorie deficit over the6 month period and bypass their body's natural defense mechanism against starvation/weight loss. I think many of these men would have done even better had they done my approach of "cheat day" every 7-10 days. Remember that for this method to work, you need to be 100% on point the other days in between. Try it, it works and boy is it fun when cheat day rolls around!

I also wanted to mention something- you didn't say how tall you were. Is it possible that at 221, you are close to your body's natural weight? Everyone has a natural set-point- once you reach it, it takes extreme discipline and effort to get below that point and maintain it for any length of time. Just a thought in case you might be at a healthy weight for your stature already but just really want that six-pack. If this is you, the above will still work but you'll have to be super-duper strict with workouts and diet and precisely measure everything.

buffgrl wrote: »

2.)This is going to sound crazy and counterintuitive but...you need to EAT MORE CALORIES for about 2 weeks. Eat clean, but eat about 500-1000 more calories per day than you are right now for about 2 weeks.

This is pure nonsense. If you eat more than you burn, you will gain weight. You can't "cheat" the body in that way. What you're telling him will not get him to where he wants to be. Also, at 221, he really shouldn't be near any "ideal" weight.

It is far more likely that OP has simply not adjusted calorie intake to the new, lower weight, and he's basically now eating at maintenance.