12 Reasons You’re Not Losing Fat | How to Build Muscle, Gain Strength & Become a Better Athlete

1) You’re Eating Too Many Carbs

This should be pretty obvious to most people by now, but there are still the old die-hards out there who swear that everyone should be consuming two grams of carbs per pound of bodyweight every day while maintaining a low fat intake. Load up on whole grains and fruit while cutting down on healthy, essential sources of fat like grass fed beef they’ll tell you.

Anyone experienced in physique transformation knows this is nonsense.Most people have a terrible tolerance for carbs, shitty insulin sensitivity and simply don’t do enough physically demanding work to warrant too many carbs. If you want to get lean cutting carbs is usually one of the first and most important steps you need to take. That doesn’t mean you can’t have any but you need to make smart choices and they need to be taken in at the right times and cycled properly.

2) You’re Eating Carbs at the Wrong Time

If you’re above 20% body-fat pretty much any time is the wrong time. In that case I would only recommend vegetables and possibly some post workout potatoes or a once per week refeed. When you get down to 15% you can increase the amount of carbs in the post workout meal or the weekly refeed. Everyone else should limit carb consumption to post workout and night time, as per The Renegade Diet rules. During the day you want to be alert and focused, which is one reason why you don’t want to load up on starchy carbs during this time. Save for them for the night time when you want to optimize serotonin production and rest, relax and repair.

3) You’re Eating Too Much Fat

Some people cut carbs and assume that they’re good to go and there’s nothing else to worry about. Unfortunately, the low/no carb diet isn’t as much fun as Dr. Atkins made it out to be. You can’t just eat pounds of bacon and mayonnaise with reckless abandon and think that you’ll magically end up ripped. Fat contains calories; nine per gram to be exact. At the end of the day total calories still matter, and if you’re eating more than you burn you’re never going to get ripped. Please don’t mistake this as my advocating a low fat diet. That’s just as bad, if not worse, than eating too much fat. A bare minimum of 20% of your calories should come from healthy fats like pastured egg yolks, wild caught salmon, grass fed beef and coconut oil to ensure optimal health. Just be careful about going overboard with it and thinking that low carbs automatically leads to single digit body-fat. You still need to keep a handle on things like total calories.

4)You’re Not Eating Enough Protein

In my experience it’s usually only females who are guilty of this but guys can make this mistake on occasion as well. The average female who can’t lose body-fat usually eats a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast with an egg. One… single… egg.

Then she’ll have a sandwich for lunch with four ounces of lean turkey. For dinner it will be a salad with low fat dressing and four ounces of chicken or fish. Although, in all honesty they may skip the protein all together and just have a salad for either lunch or dinner. Let’s assume she weighs 135 pounds. Most experts would agree that she would need to consume at least 100 grams of protein per day, if not a gram per pound, which would equal 135 grams. Each ounce of protein is around 4.5 grams of protein. So in this example she had 36 grams combined with lunch and dinner plus the six grams from the egg. So that’s a total of 42 grams, which falls just a wee bit shy of where she needs to be.

Females often freak out when you tell them to eat more than six ounces of protein at a sitting but when you break down the numbers for them and reveal just how many calories they’re eating it should make more sense. If they had eight ounces of protein three times per day it would 108 grams of protein. That’s only 432 total calories. Add in the fat and it’s still not that much.

People who eat a sufficient amount of protein usually end up having an easier time getting ripped than those who don’t. Make sure you’re getting enough.

5) You’re Drinking Too Many Protein Shakes

There are two problems associated with drinking shakes when you’re trying to get ripped. First of all, whey protein can raise insulin levels, as I have been telling people since the mid 90’s. If you’re trying to get lean you don’t want insulin to be flowing like the Nile all day. You want a nice insulin surge post workout but the rest of the day you want it under control. That’s why The Renegade Diet limits the intake of whey protein to very small amounts during most of the day and only allows a larger amount post workout or at night.

The second problem with drinking too many shakes is that they are so easy to digest that you don’t really burn any calories when you eat them. When you chew down some salmon and broccoli your body works harder to digest that food and you burn more calories during the digestion process. When you drink something that is so easily digested, like a protein shake, your body does almost no work in the process.

So, when getting ripped is your main goal, limit your shake intake and chew as many calories as you can.

6) Your Liver is Over Stressed

This is usually the last thing people think of when embarking on a fat loss diet but it can sometimes be the most important. Everything that goes into or on your body has to be processed by the liver. That means all food, alcohol, suntan lotion, environmental pollutants, etc. If you are constantly exposing yourself to this kind of stuff and overstressing the liver fat loss will be much more difficult to come by. Cut out booze, stop eating grain-fed, chemical laden meat and incorporate some regular periods of intermittent fasting to give the liver a break and you will find your rate of fat loss is noticeably faster.

7) You’re Eating Nuts

I love nuts. I mean, who doesn’t? Give me a bag of pistachios or cashews and I won’t look up till the whole thing’s gone. The problem is nuts have a ton of calories. When you’re dieting for fat loss the rules are usually the opposite of those followed by skinny hardgainers trying to gain size. Those guys want the most calorically dense foods possible. Fat loss dieters do not. You’re better off filling up on nutritionally dense foods that don’t pack a lot of calories, like green vegetables. If you’re dieting you need to limit your nut consumption to about ten almonds per serving. No too many people can eat ten almonds. Most people eat ten handfuls. If you are strictly tracking and calculating everything all day and you want to load up on nuts at certain times I suppose you could but I wouldn’t recommend it. Nuts can be very problematic for a lot of people, especially those with digestive or auto immune issues. As Paleo Solution author Robb Wolf has noted, nuts should be used the same way you use condiments- sparingly.

I should also add, and this is strictly my opinion, meaning it has NOT been proven and posted on Pubmed… nut butters seem to be easier for most people to digest than actual whole nuts. Just something to consider.

8) You’re Eating Fruit

“What?! You’re telling people not to eat fruit!? Everyone knows that it’s impossible to get fat from eating too much fruit!”

Yeah, yeah I know, that’s why physique competitors eat so much fruit and why all fat loss experts who specialize in getting people shredded recommend such high quantities of it. In our hunter gatherer days fruit was nothing like what you see in the supermarket today. Berries were small, dark and bitter; not the huge sugar sacks most people consume these days. Don’t get me wrong, fruit is healthy and can be eaten by lean individuals in limited amounts but any type of excessive fructose (a sugar found in fruit) consumption will lead to fat gain. Fructose can only be processed by the liver and once liver glycogen stores are full the excess gets converted to triglycerides and stored as body-fat. If you want to get ripped cut fruit completely for a while or limit it to one to two small servings per day. Just be sure to really up the vegetable consumption so you can keep your vital nutrient uptake where it needs to be.

9) You’re Not Training Heavy

When you want to lose body-fat the first inclination is often to crank up the reps and cut the rest periods. I actually have no problem with fairly low rest periods. But not if you’re used to resting three minutes between sets and all of the sudden cut them down to thirty seconds because you decided it was time to get shredded you’ll be in trouble. That never works. All that happens is your weights start plummeting on every exercise and you get weaker and smaller. High reps have the same effect.

When dieting, the primary role of strength training is to maintain muscle mass. That is the single most important thing. Don’t use it as your primary “fat burning” activity… UNLESS you are seriously overweight. If you need to lose more than fifty pounds or so that would probably be fine (although please don’t ever do any of the bullshit you see on those fat camp TV shows). Females can actually get something out of metcon workouts in the right situation as well. The caveat, however, is that that they need to be strong and actually have some muscle mass. If you take a weak female with no muscle and give her a silly metcon circuit she won’t usually get much out of it because she’s too weak to produce enough force. Females should get strong first before they attempt that type of training.

If you’re a guy and are trying to lose 10-20 pounds of body-fat without losing all your muscle mass in the process you should use strength training as a way to maintain size and strength; nothing more, nothing less. So the same principles that helped you get big and strong apply when dieting. Keep the reps low and the resistance high.

10) You’re Overdoing Cardio

Traditional forms of cardio are largely useless for fat loss. But useless is even okay, it’s when it starts to be counterproductive that we have a real problem. Excessive amounts of cardio lead to an overproduction of cortisol which leads to more abdominal fat and numerous health problems. If you want to do cardio that won’t actually hurt you and could do you some good, go for a long walk. No self respecting man should ever be spotted on an elliptical machine.

Sled work builds muscle, burns fat and is irreplaceable

11) You’re Not Running Sprints or Doing Sled Work

Dieting is the most important thing for fat loss. After that you should be doing some form of strength training to maintain your muscle mass. When you have those to things dialed in you’ll want to add in some type of sprinting or sled work. There is nothing more effective for fat loss. See all wide receivers, defensive backs, sprinters, soccer players, etc. for proof. Two or three 20-40 minute sprint or sled sessions per week will be enough for most people.

Don’t have a sled? 

12) You’re Not Getting Enough Sleep

When you’re short on sleep your insulin sensitivity decreases and your cortisol goes up. Both things lead to less than optimal fat loss. You also miss out on the critically important Growth Hormone boost that comes each night during deep sleep. If you want to lose more fat you have to get more sleep. Most people will ignore this and some of you are probably reading this at 2am. Unfortunately this just might be the most important thing on the whole list. More sleep improves EVERYTHING. Make it a priority.

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>The Perfect Body Fat Percentage

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by Shelby Starnes – 3/14/2011

How lean should you get before starting a mass phase? Is there a point where you’re “too fat to bulk?” And while we’re on that topic, how lean can you stay and still be able to pack on muscle? Do you have to get chubby to get strong?

What is the optimal body fat percentage for muscle gains? And do the rules change depending on your genetics?

These are big questions. Shelby Starnes has big answers.

– Chris Shugart

Game Plan

Train with weights, eat well, recover, rinse and repeat. The how-to of building muscle is no great mystery. The questions arise in the nitty-gritty: How do I train? How do I eat?

When it comes to bodybuilding nutrition, the question is often this: How lean do I need to stay to optimize muscle gains?

There are a lot of factors involved. No two individuals are alike, and no two bodybuilding programs should be either. Let’s explore those factors, then come up with a game plan so you can implement your own strategy for bodybuilding success.

Factor #1: Hormones

We all have different metabolisms and hormonal profiles, and by extension, different dietary needs. When talking about bodybuilding, these differences play a major role in how fast we gain muscle and also how much fat we might gain in the process.

A genetic ectomorph (think Screech from Saved by the Bell) will obviously have very different dietary needs and responses compared to a genetic endomorph (think Fat Albert). If Fat Albert tries to stay as lean as Screech does while gaining, he’s going to be spinning his wheels for a long, long time.

Hormones like testosterone, estrogen, cortisol, thyroid, and insulin all play very important (and interdependent) roles in the process of physique manipulation. Looking at each one individually, we have the following:

Hormone	Too Much	Too Little
Testosterone	Rarely an issue	Increase in body fat, decrease in muscle mass
Estrogen	Increase in body fat	Joint issues, health issues, slower muscle gain
Cortisol	Slower metabolism, decrease in muscle mass, increase in body fat	Rarely an issue
Thyroid	Difficulty gaining weight, muscle weakness, fatigue	Slower metabolism, fatigue, increase in body fat
Insulin	Insulin resistance, increase in body fat , increase in blood pressure	Type-I diabetes

Relative to diet and body fat, we have the following (for males):

High Body Fat Levels: Typically correspond with an increase in estrogen, increase in insulin, and an increase in cortisol.

Optimal Body Fat Levels: Barring any abnormalities, this is the range where most will find their hormone levels balanced and optimized.

Very Low Body Fat Levels: For most, having very low body fat levels will result in suboptimal hormone levels (such as decreased testosterone and increased cortisol) that will impede long-term muscle gains. Obviously, competitive bodybuilders get much leaner than this for competitions, but it’s not something most will maintain year round, especially if they’re trying to get bigger.

Also remember that hormones are delicately interlinked. Change one and you change quite a few others. If something is out of whack, it can create a hormonal cascade resulting in a myriad of issues, which can make results hard to come by. It can also be hard to pinpoint the root of the problem because of the ripple-effect nature of hormones.

Factor #2: Psychology

You also have to factor in the mental (and social) aspects of weight gain. If you’re not comfortable eating 6,000 calories a day, your life may be tough. You need to keep things enjoyable if you plan on playing this game long term.

Factor #3: Health Considerations

Being overweight increases blood pressure, blood sugar, and blood lipids (cholesterol and triglycerides). These issues can lead to diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and kidney issues, among other serious concerns. They also create hormonal imbalances, which can slow muscle gain.

This is a lose/lose situation. You look out of shape, your health is suffering, and you’re impeding your bodybuilding goals!

Remember, bodybuilding is more of a marathon than a sprint. The guys with the most longevity in the sport do the best. Ronnie Coleman won his last Olympia at 41 years of age. Three of the seven weight class winners at last year’s Nationals were over 40 years old.

Disregard your health by getting too fat and your body may be too wrecked to run the hypertrophy marathon.

Factor #4: Strength and Leverages

Generally speaking, the bigger you are, the stronger you are. Increased body weight not only helps with strength from a muscular standpoint, but also a mechanical standpoint.

Your leverages for most lifts are optimized when you’re bigger, and having a bigger midsection helps with lifts like the squat (for stabilization) and also bench press (by reducing the range of motion).

One lift that usually suffers during weight gain is the deadlift. For most guys, leverages for that lift get worse. Having a smaller midsection helps get into position better on the deadlift, so more leg drive can be used and it’s easier to get “behind the bar.”

So we know that you usually get stronger as you get bigger – and getting stronger is a great way to add muscle – but at what point do the returns start to diminish?

Obviously, if you’re disrupting your hormonal axis, the extra ten pounds you’re gaining on your bench and squat aren’t going to mean a whole lot, especially once it comes time to diet off the pudge and see what’s hiding underneath.

If you’re constantly chasing bigger numbers on the bar and scale, without considering the mirror and your health, your gains will be very short-lived. Loose skin isn’t too cool either.

Putting It All Together

While excess fat can certainly interfere with optimal muscle gains, I’m not a proponent of staying in contest condition year round either. If you’re afraid to lose your six-pack and put on some extra weight, you’ll be treading water for a long time.

A balance between the two is best. Add enough weight to allow for consistent, realistic muscle and strength gains without disrupting your health and endocrine system in the process.

But remember, there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy. Much depends on your natural body type.

Endomorphs: A Guide for the Big Boys

Trying to stay too lean will sabotage your gains. Trying to put on too much weight too quickly will also backfire. Fat will accumulate at an astonishing rate.

Endomorphs need to look for a weight gain of about half to one pound a week to make sure that the majority of the weight they gain is quality. Because of water and glycogen fluctuations, this won’t always cause a linear rate of gain, but try to keep the general trend at a pound or less per week.

Larger individuals (over 250 pounds) can aim for a slightly larger rate of gain, in the neighborhood of one to one and a half pounds per week.

Warning: If your body fat is over 15% you need to get it under control before you think about gaining weight. I recommend endomorphs keep their body fat between 10 and 15% while growing.

A great method is to use a gaining period – averaging about a pound a week – until you reach the upper level of body fat for your body type, then diet down (intelligently!) for a period of time until you get to the lower end of the range. So gain up to 15%, then diet back down to 10%, then repeat.

Ectomorphs: The Skinny-Guy Guide

If you’re an ectomorph, take a more aggressive approach. Not only are more calories typically required for growth because of your faster metabolism, you also burn off fat very quickly, so putting on a little fluff every now and then isn’t a major concern.

Ectomorphs should shoot for faster gains than endomorphs – maybe one to two pounds a week or more depending on the situation. Truth is, their fast metabolisms usually make this difficult to do unless they’rereally packing in the calories.

Like endomorphs, a weekly gain of half to one pound is usually what they see. It’s rare to see ectomorphic weight trainers get much over 12% body fat, so their goal should be to use a gaining period until they reach about 12% body fat – averaging about a pound gain per week – then slowly dieting down back down to 8-10%.

Mesomorphs: We Hate You. No Guide For You!

Mesomorphs are the guys that can just look at a barbell and grow. And they stay reasonably lean regardless of their diets. If you’re reading this article, you’re probably not one of those guys.

Set Point Considerations

The human body has a lot of internal thermostat-type processes that help it maintain homeostasis. It tries to keep some semblance of “normal” in terms of bodily processes, and it can be quite difficult to change that set point.

Ever notice how after dieting your body tries to fall back to the weight you started at? That’s your set point. It’s what your body is used to, and it wants to get back to that state.

One way to help re-set your set point is to maintain the new weight for a longer period of time in an attempt to get your body to recognize the new weight as its new set point.

Resetting your set point can take months. So rather than getting your weight up to a certain point and then immediately dieting back down, hold that new weight for six months or longer. It will help you hold on to more of that new muscle when you do eventually diet down.

This doesn’t mean get fat and stay fat! It means put on muscle, keep your body fat under control, then hold that new weight for a while before slowly leaning out.

Competition Ready

For those who compete regularly in a physique sport like bodybuilding, it’s even more important to stay in shape during the off-season. It takes too much time to lose excess weight just before show time, and you also risk losing muscle in the process.

All too often I see guys go 50-plus pounds over their competition weight, thinking that they’ve made a ton of progress (hey, they look huge in a sweatshirt). Then they come back the next year and compete at the same weight they did before.

The bullshit stops when the sweatshirt comes off. If you’re competing on a regular basis – at least once a year – it’s imperative to control your body fat if you intend to improve by next year and move up the competitive ladder.

Assessing Progress

Use mirrors to determine your progress. Sure, body fat is important. But honestly, having it measured regularly can be inconvenient and expensive. So instead of going by specific numbers, I prefer checking the mirror and taking photographs to assess progress.

Your lower back and midsection usually don’t lie. They’ll tell you if you’re putting on too much fat. Once your love handles get to the point where they’re hanging over your waistband, you’ve gone too far.

Some “extra fluff” is okay back there, and a lot of what accumulates over the course of a day is water, but you should never get to the point where you can pinch more than an inch.

As for the midsection, you should always be able to see at least an outline of your abdominals (no great detail, just a general outline) and also have visible serratus.

Supplement to Optimize Hormones

Keeping yourself somewhat lean helps optimize your hormone levels, but you can gain an extra edge with the addition of a few key supplements:

Curcumin and Alpha Male optimize testosterone levels.

FA3 and Flameout are hormonal building blocks.

Rez-V works as an anti-estrogen and pro-testosterone.

Receptormax optimizes insulin sensitivity and androgen receptors.

Stress Control and Sleep

It’s easier said than done, but reducing stress in your life can help immensely in your quest for muscle. High stress increases cortisol, which limits muscle gain and promotes fat gain. So get plenty of sleep and don’t sweat the small stuff.

The Bottom Line

There’s no magic number in terms of an optimal body fat percentage for gaining muscle. But, using the guidelines outlined in this article, you can come up with your own best method for achieving optimal hypertrophy while staying sane and healthy in the process.

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