How eating more calories can help you lose weight
Ever heard the saying that sometimes you have to slow down to go fast?
This is particularly true for all my stressed-out ladies. And the ones who have been doing all the things: exercising like a beast and cutting calories for a long ass time.
But here’s the deal, when we’re stressed and when we’ve been creating stress (aka eating less and exercising more) the body increases cortisol. And if there’s a hormone that slams on the breaks of weight loss, it’s cortisol.
As counterintuitive as it may seem, the answer to this is actually to do less!
Here are 4 areas to alter if your weight loss has stopped - or even worse, started creeping up.
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Exercise less. If you are doing tons of endurance training or tons of HIIT, it might be time to lighten the load. Consider dropping down to no more than 2 days of HIIT training. Swap hours and hours of cardio per week for walking 20-30 minutes 2-3 times a week. The body needs to have rest to continue to provide you results.
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Eat at maintenance levels. If you have been eating at a large calorie deficit for a long period of time, it’s time to give your body a break. Your body will not continue to drop weight if you keep it underfed. It will just slow down your metabolism. Go back to eating at maintenance levels.
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Get adequate water/sleep. If you aren’t sleeping, you got no business exercising and trying to lose weight! Water and sleep are critical to a healthy body...make sure those are on point or you will struggle to drop the ole lb’s.
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Focus on mindset work. Journal, meditate, deep breathing, whatever! You do you, Boo. Anything that keeps you present and stops the brain from running amok will serve you. Thinking about the million things you have to do and all the things you should do will not serve you. It will just keep you stressed out and making no progress.
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