3 Ways to Get Past a Weight Loss Plateau

Every Sunday I post a question box on my instagram story. I collect health, fitness, and nutrition questions from you all and create content (podcast episodes, articles, etc.) on them. Yes, I’m going to start this article off with a shameless plug. Follow me on instagram (adam_poehlmannfit) to get answers to all of your health and fitness questions.

Ok, shameless plug is over.

The topic of this article comes from a question submitted on my instagram story. The question is:

“What do you do when you hit a weight loss plateau and can’t lose the last 10-15 pounds?”

This is a question that is difficult to answer in a brief instagram story post, but I thoroughly enjoy getting into the details in long form whether it’s on the podcast or here in an article. So, the details are what we shall dive into.

Typically, when someone is in the middle of a plateau, there are a few things that can be contributing. The three solutions that I will offer below should help you get past that sticking point, no matter what your goal is.

TIP #1: GET A BIRDS-EYE-VIEW

Note that this tip will address the issue for almost anyone in any situation.

In the beginning stages of a fitness journey, most of us start somewhere relatively simple, focusing on behavior and choices more than anything else. This is exactly where one should start, as positive changes in behavior and choices will yield quite a significant change. However, as you probably know, the more you progress, the harder it gets to see results at the same rate as you did once before. For example, it is much easier for someone to go from 35% body fat to 30% body fat than it is for someone to get from 10% body fat to 5% body fat.

As you get further and further in your progress, your method may need to become more meticulous in order to identify the thing that needs to be addressed whether it’s your activity, nutrition, sleep, etc. You see, when you have a problem, and you fully understand the problem, it is far easier to both figure out and execute the solution. Let’s put this into financial terms. Let’s say that you have no clue where your money is going, but you know that you find yourself living paycheck to paycheck. Yet, you’re just not sure how that’s possible, given that you make a comfortable salary and don’t feel you are much of a spender. In order to figure out what’s going on, you begin looking at your bank statements, and track your spending. After a couple weeks, you realize that eating out is costing you $200/week because you are not only eating out frequently, but you are choosing places that require a tip, spending an additional 15-20% each meal. Woah. That will add up.

The same thing applies to you and your fitness, especially in your nutrition.

Over the many years I have been training and coaching people towards their goals, I’ve learned many things. One of those things is that we (including myself) are horrible at accurately describing what we consume on a daily basis. We either grossly overestimate our intake, or grossly underestimate our intake. We are never accurate when describing our intake without tracking it beforehand. Even after years of tracking food, whenever I take a break from tracking and jump back into it, I am at least 500 calories off from what I originally guessed. And that’s after years of tracking!

Since calories in vs. calories out is ultimately what determines fat loss, it is extremely important to understand exactly what, and how much of it we are eating. I recommend that you track your intake for 7-14 days, eating as you normally would. I have all of my coaching clients do this, and it is one of the many reasons they have so much success. Using a tool/app like MyFitnessPal or FatSecret, eat as you normally would, and accurately track what you eat. This means that you are not eyeballing, but rather measuring with accuracy. Since you don’t have specific calorie and nutrient targets to hit at the moment, it will be fairly easy. You can still graze, grabbing a handful of nuts here and there, but after you grab the food, you need to measure/weigh it. If your diet is relatively consistent this will be a breeze. If your eating is sporadic, this will be more challenging.

There are a couple of reasons I recommend everyone tracks their normal intake. The most important thing is that it is going to tell you exactly what is going on nutritionally. For example, if you’re at a plateau and you discover you’re eating 2,600 calories, you will be able to figure out if that’s too much for you, your lifestyle, and your goals, and make an adjustment to break the plateau. Another reason I recommend that people track their food is because it can be a piece of the puzzle, or a clue so to speak. Let’s say you do make that caloric adjustment, and you discover that the fix hasn’t gotten you past your plateau. That’s not a bad thing, it’s a good thing because you now know that your nutrition is on the right track, and something else may be going on. It’s a process of elimination, slowly and accurately making your way closer and closer to identifying the underlying issue that is keeping you from the results you’re working so hard for.

When that happens, you can look at things like your activity level, sleep, stress, and more. Your activity level is another major determinant of progress as it allows you to burn calories. Not only do most individuals neglect to track their food intake, but they also have no clue how little they are moving in the day. The first thing that I recommend for people in regards to activity is simply getting a wearable that allows you to track your steps. NEAT, or non-exercise activity thermogenesis is a big contributor to calorie burn and fat loss. Studies show that moving often, spread out throughout the day, contributes to greater improvements in calorie burn. There are many forms of movement that contribute to NEAT like walking, fidgeting, folding laundry, cleaning, and more. Basically, any form of movement that is not exercise is a form of NEAT. As I type on my keyboard, I am working on my NEAT. One of the best ways to increase your NEAT is by simply increasing your steps. I remember when I first started training, I used to scoff at people that thought walking did anything impactful for their health and weight loss. Turns out I was wrong, and here I am several years later telling you how important it is to walk.

The takeaway here is getting a wearable to track your steps, and gradually increase them every so often. I recommend people add steps after the previous goal has become a habit. Let’s say you get a wearable and track your steps. You average 5,000 steps per day. Work on making 5,500 a habit, and then jump to 6,000, then 7,000 and so forth. Track your movement to identify the problem so you can find the solution.

For those of you that move plenty, are very healthy, and workout often, tracking your movement is still important, especially in the gym. A large majority of the people I know do not track their workouts. By no means am I saying that you always have to track your workouts. I believe it’s great to just go in the gym and have fun. If you’re trying to reach a goal and break past a plateau, however, it’s important that you track your workouts to see what can be improved. As muscle is one of the main contributors of automatic (at rest) calorie burn, it’s important to prioritize continual strength and muscle gains in the gym regardless of your goal. Volume is one of the ways we can measure strength and muscle improvements over time. Your training volume is made of weights x sets x reps. When your training volume increases, your strength and muscle, improves, therefore aiding your metabolism. I recommend that individuals work to increase volume each week, while progressing sets and reps every 3-4 weeks. Simply put, have a new phase with different set and rep ranges every 3-4 weeks to keep your body progressing. A simple phasing that I usually prescribe consists of a strength focus (2-5 reps) in month one, a strength and muscle growth focus (6-8 reps) in month two, and a muscle and definition focus (10-15 reps) in month three.

The takeaway here is simply logging the weights you lift given your current prescribed sets and reps. You can do this in a journal, on your phone, or in a spreadsheet.

I could keep going for days and days about getting a birds-eye-view, but I’m guessing that you’re getting the gist. Once you’ve taken a look at your food and activity, begin paying attention to your sleep, stress, and more. You can even go get some bloodwork done to learn a lot more about yourself!

TIP 2: TAKE YOUR FOOT OFF THE GAS

More is not always better, especially when it comes to breaking through a plateau. Don’t get me wrong, there are most certainly times where more work and/or dedication is required. But in my experience, more than half of the individuals I work with that are struggling with a weight plateau are working far too hard. Most of them are training at least 5 days per week, eating clean, and are moving plenty throughout the day. If they’re doing so much and eating well, how could they be stuck?

There are many mechanisms in the body that determine how our body handles, utilizes, and stores nutrients. Some of the most important things that drive a sound and healthy body are hormones. Hormones regulate so many systems in our bodies, especially how we utilize nutrients. Unfortunately, there are things that we do in our every day lives that can negatively impact the way our hormones function, like going all out with the pedal to the meal.

When we push ourselves too hard, our bodies become desensitized, so to speak. Cortisol is our stress hormone that is actually very vital to sound health. You may have heard the term “adrenal fatigue” lately, describing what happens to our body when we are called to release cortisol too much and and too often. Although “adrenal fatigue” isn’t quite scientifically accurate, the holistic docs that coined that term were on the right track. The HPA (hypothalamic pituitary adrenal) axis in our body is essentially our stress response system. Through this axis, cortisol is released in response to stress. Although cortisol is good and beneficial for our well-being, negative effects come to play when we chronically expose ourselves to stressors. When cortisol is constantly elevated and has a hard time coming back down, we expose ourselves to several negative side-effects such as weight gain, and/or difficulty managing weight. This is a very common issue for professionals, busy parents, or those exposed to a stressful life. This is also very common for those that are working out far too hard, far too often.

No matter where you’re at, the takeaway is to reduce stress, eat a well-balanced diet full of healthy fats, and to get 7-9 hours of high quality, restful sleep every single night. I’ve also found that cycling off caffeine intake will help as well. If you’re an individual that is doing high intensity exercise 5 days per week, take your training down to 3 days per week, primarily focusing on moderate-intensity strength training sessions as you take longer rest periods, slowly begin to eat more and more nutritious food, while managing/decreasing your stress, and capping it off with a deep sleep every single night.

TIP #3: CHANGE YOUR FOCUS

For some of you out there, this tip may seem a little woo woo, and that’s ok. Go into this section with an open mind and heart. And I will tell you that I have seen first hand the extreme reality of the power of the mind in relation to our external health and fitness goals.

Most of us that are stuck at a weight loss plateau are extremely focused on numbers. Whether it’s the scale weight or our body fat percentage, we are looking at numbers and numbers and numbers. Our workouts serve to improve those numbers, our food serves to improve those numbers, heck, everything we do in our day is set up to improve those numbers. Although using numbers as a tool to measure progress is something I am a big fan of, I do understand very clearly that it can lead to a very unhealthy obsession that breeds negativity and stress.

I recently posted about this the other day, but here is the short: it is far too easy to notice and dwell on the negative things in life. Unfortunately it takes a surprising amount of effort to acknowledge and soak up all of the good in our lives. Somehow they just slip by without us even noticing their existence. This is not good, especially if you are trying to reach a health and fitness goal.

All goals are reached because the individual decided they were going to make a positive behavior change. Without a doubt, all goals come from this. In fact, I am sure to give every single one of my coaching clients at least one behavior goal that they can focus on. What this does is it takes the focus off of the numbers and onto the positive behavior. No longer is Sally upset that she still weighs 200 pounds. She squatted 150 pounds today! No longer is John upset that he hasn’t gained any muscle in the past 30 days. He has deadlifted more weight than ever before. You see, focusing on something behavioral or performance-based takes all of the focus off of the potential negatives that come with obsession over weight like unnecessary stress, and shifts positive energy to be usefully utilized for the things that actually contribute to the number-based goal the person was after in the first place.

After working with a sports psychologist while going through a very difficult stint in my baseball career, I quickly realized that we are who we believe we are, and we become who we’ve taught ourselves to become. Here’s the takeaway. When you focus on the fact that you’re “stuck”, tons of negative energy is transferred to yourself that causes stress, and a lack of confidence in who you are and what you’re capable of. This energy ends up keeping you from what you want to be. Take your mind off the numbers and the negativity, and celebrate the behaviors and performance your body is capable of achieving.

THE TAKEAWAYS

There are several ways to get past a weight-loss plateau, but in my experience as a trainer and coach, I’ve found that these three tips address the most common reasons for a plateau and offer effective solutions. Begin with getting a birds-eye-view on everything that is going on from your food to your stress. Track it, track it, and track it some more. That should help you tremendously. Then, spread it all out in front of you to identify potential problems. If you realize that you’re going 24/7 and your life is full of stress, take things a step or two backwards. Train less, focusing on your strength, eat more nutritious food to fuel your body and your brain, and eliminate all stressors. While doing all of the above, consistently keep track of wins that are occurring outside of your weight-based goal.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adam is a fitness professional, baseball fan, and cookie fanatic based in Fort Collins, Colorado. After hanging up the cleats, he found a strong interest in the human body and how it performs. Since then, Adam has been transforming lives through fitness in a fun and encouraging atmosphere. As an ACE CPT and Fitness Nutrition Specialist, he is constantly moved to help people improve in all walks of life. If you’re interested in hiring Adam as your coach, fill out an application here.

Eating Clean Made Me Fat

Eating clean made me fat, while eating cookies and Chipotle made me lean...

wink wink ;)

Ok fine, you got me. Eating cookies and Chipotle didn't make me lean. Cookies and Chipotle aren't anything special. They're not made from unicorns, containing magical ingredients that allowed me to lose body fat for the first time.

However, the mindset I had while eating those things certainly did help with that.

A BIT ABOUT MY JOURNEY

If you don't know my story, there's a lot to it. But for the sake of time (knowing that you have a life and most likely don't want to sit down and read what I have to say all day long), I'm going to skip most of it and start with my fitness journey. I found my love for health and fitness after college ball. Once baseball was done, I spent a lot of time in the gym. I needed something to distract me from the fact that I wasn't a baseball player anymore.

My dad competed in bodybuilding back in the day, so weight training had always been a staple in his routine. He brought me along and lifted with me as I was trying to get out of my post-baseball depression.

If you know me, you know I don't really have much of an on/off switch when it comes to anything active or physical. Ask me to play against you in any sort of physical sport or activity, and I'm going to give it my all. I may suck, but I'm going to give you everything I have. It was the same thing with resistance training. I didn't have the best form, and my mind-muscle connection was far non-existent. But I tell you what, when I was in that gym, I gave each rep my all.

After a while, I actually began to see a change in my body. It's not the reason I was in the gym in the first place, but there were definitely changes in my body that I could see as a result of simply working hard. So because of that, I obviously asked myself what could happen if I took things seriously. And right before your eyes, I became your typical bro-like gym rat.

I started listening to what all of the Olympia and instagram guys were doing (being too much of an idiot to even take into consideration that those dudes are the 1% of the 1% of genetic freaks, and take a good serving of anabolics each day). I trained one muscle group per week, and I went to absolute failure on every single set. I completely killed my body in the gym. On top of that, I ate A TOOONNNNNNN of food. But hey don't worry, it was "clean" most of the time so I wouldn't get fat. Or so I thought..

Over time, I got pretty freaking huge. I reached a whopping 240 pounds while eating anywhere between 4,500 and 5,000 calories each day. I did have a ton of lean mass, but my body fat was at an all time high. I believe it was around 25%. At first, I didn't give a crap about my body fat. Why? Because it was bulk season all year, baby. Needless to say, I kept shoveling food down my throat to put on more and more "muscle". As you could imagine, I just got fatter and fatter, and finally hit a point where I started caring about my body composition and wanted to make a change.

Once I reached the point of feeling too heavy, I decided it was time to cut down. Gotta look good for the beach at some point, right?

The cut consisted of a little less food (because all hell would break loose if I lost muscle mass), and some cardio when I felt like it. I figured that if I kept eating around 4,000 calories of clean food and added in some cardio every now and then, I'd easily lose weight!

Yeah... that didn't happen.

Months later, I found myself in the same spot. 235ish pounds, tons of fat on me. I thought to myself "HOW IN THE WORLD IS THIS FREAKING POSSIBLE? I'm eating clean, how could I not be losing fat?"

Here's what I'd say to my younger self: "You didn't pay attention to the real science, you idiot!"

WHAT I FAILED TO SEE

The present me is right. The old me wasn't paying attention to anything but what the 290-pound Olympia competitors were doing. I was doing what THEY did for THEIR body to succeed. I missed the biggest piece.

I WASN'T A 290-POUND OLYMPIA COMPETITOR.

It didn't matter if I was eating clean. I was ignoring the facts. The 2 big things that I failed to acknowledge were the following:

1. Gaining/Losing weight is about calories in vs. calories out. Simple math.

2. I was a 20-year-old ex-baseball player. I failed to do what was right for ME. I did what THEY did because it worked for THEM.

I didn't take the time to understand how the human body works. I simply accepted the fact that eating clean is just what you're supposed to do to lose weight. The first time I heard it, I accepted it as truth and I went on with my life.

So what's so wrong with eating clean?

Nothing really, it's just that I placed eating clean on a pedestal above the most basic understanding of weight loss: calories in vs. calories out.

Here's the truth: Weight loss and weight gain comes down to calories in vs. calories out.

Since I was eating more calories than I burned in a day (even though they were "clean" calories) I gained a ton of body fat. Whether I was eating chicken and broccoli or donuts, I would've gained weight. Same thing goes for fat loss, I could eat nothing but Hostess snacks all day long and lose weight, as long as I'm burning more calories than I eat in a day. In fact, a Kansas State professor did just this to prove the point. Don't believe me? Google "Twinkie Professor."

Now don't be that person that just closes the browser and decides they're going to eat nothing but Twinkies all day long because Adam said it's good for fat loss. That's not what I'm saying. You don't need to have a PhD in nutrition to understand that eating nothing but Hostess snacks is unhealthy. All I'm saying is that weight gain and weight loss comes down to calories in vs. calories out.

And that's what I was missing.

I didn't take the time to figure out how many calories I burn in a day. I didn't take the time to figure out how many calories I'd need to eat in order to lose fat and build muscle.

Not wanting to continue this hellish cycle of gaining 10 pounds and losing 2, I began to track my intake in order to figure out what the problem was. Once I began tracking my intake, I slowly began to see what and how much of it I was actually putting into my body. I also found two big rocks (they kinda go hand-in-hand) that needed to be addressed.

1. Being "strict" while allowing myself cheat meals

2. No moderation whatsoever

The lack of moderation in my diet absolutely killed me. I would eat clean all week long, and then allow myself a cheat meal or a cheat day where I'd eat an extra 1,500 calories in a meal, or an extra 4,000-5,000 calories in a day. Once I saw that, it all made sense. My weekly caloric intake was through the roof because I binged and went completely out of control.

Moving forward, I allowed myself to enjoy the things I wanted when I felt like it. I'd have some Reeses or a cookie here and there. I noticed that my cravings went down a ton, I didn't feel guilty about eating those foods, and my weekly caloric intake dropped tremendously. I FINALLY STARTED TO LOSE BODY FAT!

Did the cookies allow me to lose body fat? No, of course not. But moderation did.

Once I began to fully understand the concept of calories in vs. calories out, I learned a ton about MY body and what I needed to do for MY body, given MY history, MY genetics, and MY goals. Hitting those goals slowly became a LOT easier. I learned how to adjust my caloric intake to build muscle and to burn fat. I learned how to treat my boy well by eating natural whole food sources while treating myself when I felt like it.

With time and effort, I went from a place of unconscious incompetence to conscious competence.

THE TAKEAWAY

Managing your nutrition and learning how food works with your body is a lot like managing money. If you were to invest your money in some sort of stock, you would (I hope) study its history, its habits, and see how it reacts to certain changes in the market. The same thinking applies to your body. Before you invest your calories, time, and attention to your goals, figure out how your body will best use them, that way you can develop a plan that works best for YOUR body, allowing you to trust the process as you're climbing toward your goals.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adam is a fitness professional, baseball fan, and cookie fanatic based in Fort Collins, Colorado. After hanging up the cleats, he found a strong interest in the human body and how it performs. Since then, Adam has been transforming lives through fitness in a fun and encouraging atmosphere. As an ACE CPT and Fitness Nutrition Specialist, he is constantly moved to help people improve in all walks of life. If you’re interested in hiring Adam as your coach, fill out an application here.

How Not to Get Fat in College

For most, college is the first time that you're out of the house and completely on your own. You're in charge of everything. New schedules, new responsibilities, new choices, and plenty of crossroads. Your fate is in your hands. This means that you are in an extremely important stage of your life. Good or bad, the habits that you create now, on your own, will influence your decisions for years and years to come.

Due to these new opportunities and experiences, I've seen a lot of damage done. I've seen too many of you completely throw away your health due to "the college experience". Not only have a lot of you decided to throw away your health, but you've also just put on a bit of fat and quite frankly it's not a good thing. I know you probably haven't heard the word "fat" on your campuses, since your schools feel like they have to be extra sensitive to your feelings or whatever. But I'm not your safe space. I'm here to give you a light slap on the face with a side of advice and encouragement. By they way, that was the slap in the face, the rest is nothing but advice and encouragement :)

Let's not get off on the wrong foot. I don't want you to be under the impression that I believe weight gain in general is this horrible thing that should always be avoided. We all gain weight. Sometimes it's healthy, and sometimes it's not. In this situation, it's almost always the latter and that's why this article was written.

Habits

Remember how I was talking about decisions and habits at the beginning? Well, that's where it all starts. As you know, this is the first time (whether you're a freshman or not, it's still new) that you're out of the house making nearly every decision for yourself. It's so liberating. You can do whatever the heck you want, with seemingly no consequences. Due to the nature of this stage in your life, you're like this piece of clay, just waiting to be molded all over again. Parents can brag about how well they raised their kids all they want, but no matter how they raised you, you'll make decisions however you want. You have an opportunity to completely rebrand yourself and start over. Having said that, the things that mold you into the young adult you'll be after school are the friends you hang out with, and the habits you create in college. 

We all know what friends are, and we all know what habits are, but just to make sure I'll give you a refresher on habits. 

According to Brilliant Living HQ, "a habit is the repeated thinking and behaviors that become automatic..."

These habits are created by behaviors, which are initiated by cues. Following the behavior or action there is a reward. Cue, behavior/action, reward. 

So how does this play into your stage of life (college), your health, and the rest of your life? 

Habits and Health

As mentioned earlier, college is place where students gain a lot of body fat, and seem to take poor care of their health. This is bad for two reasons:

1. You're getting fatter and it's most likely not looking good, and it's hurting your self-esteem. 

2. This weight gain is a result of poor habits that are developed in college. These poor habits leak into life after school. Next thing you know, you're 50 pounds overweight and you have several health issues in your 30s. 

Sure, I may have titled this article "How Not to Get Fat In College" and I'll teach you how not to get fat in college, but throughout that process I'm going to stress the importance of habits, too.

So here's how I'm going to do this. I'll keep it simple. We'll identify the problem, what's causing the problem, what the solution is, and how you can change your habits for the better through that solution. 

Since we've already identified the problems (weight gain and poor habits), we'll address why this is happening.

What's Causing the Problem?

You're smart, right? You're in college and you know exactly what the problem is. An overconsumption of alcohol, and and overconsumption of food. Ultimately, the problem is overconsumption of calories from those two sources.

If I could summarize this issue into two gifs...

I'm not going to sit here and say that the solution is to stop doing both of these things for the rest of your life. I'm not your mother. 

But what I am going to do is teach you how to make sure you DON'T put on excess body fat, create bad habits, and damage your long-term health.

Two Different Approaches

We know that the problem is an overconsumption of calories through food and alcohol, and we know that the solution is properly managing calorie intake. The question now is: how do we do that? 

I want to break this section of the article into two different sections, one for each approach. 

There are two different ways you can manage your caloric intake. Both will keep you enjoying college, but you'll be doing it in a safe way that will enable you to create good habits in your life. 

Approach Number One: The Tracker

If you've been following me and reading my articles for a while, you know how much of a fan I am of macronutrient tracking. If you haven't been following me and you didn't know that, well shame on you. And now you know. 

Tracking food intake does one major thing for us all. It completely opens our eyes to what we're putting into our bodies. Beyond that, it allows us to think of food as nutrients and fuel, rather than just palatable items that only serve our taste buds. Through tracking, you're able to learn how much food you need to maintain your weight, and how much you should be eating based on your goal. It's an accurate measurement to make sure you're not doing anything to damage your body composition and health. It's like a budget for your food. If you go over your budget in real life over and over again, you'll be broke. If you go over food budget over and over again, you'll be fat.

Bada bing, bada boom.

So if you enjoy numbers, you have experience with tracking, or you don't mind taking a few extra minutes each day and you'd like to learn, I'd suggest going this route and keeping track of what you eat and drink each day. And yes, this includes the moments where you drink too much and you eat three burritos rather than one. 

Beyond learning about what's in food, what quantities and serving size actually look like, and realizing how much or how little you really eat/drink in a day, tracking macronutrients can help create some great habits. 

One of these habits is thought. Think about the budget analogy again. When you have a budget, you're forced to think more about what you're purchasing, why you're purchasing it, how much you're spending on it, and whether or not you should actually be purchasing it. Same thing goes with tracking. Tracking makes you think these things to yourself:

"What are the macros in this meal?"
"Do I have room for these macros in my day?"
"Should I use all of my carbs on these pop tarts?", etc. 

Before you know it, you'll have a different relationship with the food and drinks you're consuming. You'll really think about what's best for you and your health before you dive into chugging or stuffing your face. It'll be a habit before you know it. 

If you need a place to go to find a good starting point for what you should be eating, check out iifym.com to get your numbers. 

Alcohol is a lot more tricky to track and takes a bit more practice. But that's ok, I wrote an article on this just for you :)

Approach Number Two: Being Intuitive

This approach is a bit more advanced and I recommend it to those who have experience with tracking food and want a bit more freedom in their life. This can be done by a beginner, but it's a lot harder to implement this if you don't have a good idea of what's actually in the food/drinks you're eating/drinking. 

Being intuitive includes many practices that can help you stay lean in college while creating great habits for the rest of your life. Some of these practices are:

Completely rejecting a diet mentality
Listening to your body
Recognizing real hunger

These basically can be packed into one, and that one thing would be respecting your body. But, since intuitive eating can actually be a bit more complex than it sounds, I'll touch on each one a little bit. 

Completely rejecting a diet mentality can be dangerous which is why I only recommend this intuitive eating thing to those who have experience in tracking food and thinking deeply before they make decisions. Note: this is not to say that diets aren't dangerous either. They definitely can be and that's why I've never put a client on one. But as you know, complete freedom can offer some enticing but dangerous opportunities whether it's about food or whatever it is y'all college students do nowadays.

But you know that. You're in college. If someone is to completely reject a diet mentality, it opens a world where possibilities are endless. There are no rules and regulations to keep the individual within healthy boundaries for the food and drink intake. So the only way to make this really work is by listening to your body.

Listening to the body is something that is completely forgotten about by most of us. We don't understand what being full is. We understand what being stuffed is, but not full. Heck, we don't even chew our food enough. Listening to your body includes many things like understanding hunger and fullness. Are you actually hungry, or do you just feel like you need to eat? Are you actually full? Or are you physically stuffed to the point where the thought of more food makes you gag? 

Here's my advice when it comes to college and intuitive eating. SLOW THE EFF DOWN. I know you have so much to do and there are a lot of things happening. When you eat, don't be on your phone, don't watch TV. Think about what you're eating. Think about each bite. Chew your food. Chew your food A LOT. Did you know the purpose of chewing is not just to get it down, but to actually help liquify the food? So yeah, chew.

When you're drinking, SLOW THE EFF DOWN. If someone is encouraging you to chug, or you feel like you want to chug, stop and realize that you're doing it for a false sense of approval that you ultimately don't give a crap about. I'll try not to get too into the moral dilemmas behind binge drinking, so here's this piece of advice:

Try not drinking on a full stomach, but rather an emptier one.

"SAY WHAT?!"

I know it sounds crazy, but if we're trying to avoid overconsumption of calories, we're also trying to avoid overconsumption of alcohol. And if you're out trying to feel the effects of alcohol - don't think I'm an idiot. I know exactly what you're doing. Because if you're going to tell me that you enjoy the taste of an IPA more than a Coke, I won't believe you. - you'll feel it quicker than you would if you had 2 pounds of pasta and bread in you. Also, take more time in between drinks. Especially if your stomach is on the empty side. Don't go into the bar expecting to slam 3 beers and 2 shots because that will be a freaking disaster and it won't be a good night for you.

Just like tracking food, being more intuitive and listening to your body will help you slow down and think. Beyond that though, it will help you understand what real feelings are, what real hunger and fullness really is. It'll help you understand what your body is telling you. You'll know when your body has had enough, and you'll know when you're being lied to because your mind is telling you it hasn't had enough. 

Catch my drift? 

Bottom line. Stop, think, act. Slow down, and then slow down some more.

Anticipate your environment before you get into it, and have your actions ready. 

Takeaway

College is an opportunity to make or break your present and future self. Don't only make the right decisions, but be prepared to make the right decisions. 

Take care of your health by either tracking your macronutrients or eating intuitively. Heck, practice both at the same time. Implement either or both of those into your health journey and I'm willing to bet that your body composition, physical health, and mental health will change for the better.

As always, thank you for reading. If you have question feel free to leave a comment or shoot me an email. For those that are interested, coaching spots are open, and I have also made myself available for consultation. They're a great way to sit down with a professional and figure out a plan that works well for you as an individual without breaking the bank. 

Adam is a fitness professional, Chipotle fanatic, and cookie enthusiast based in Fort Collins, CO. After hanging up the baseball cleats, he found a strong interest in the human body and how it performs. Since then, Adam has been transforming lives through fitness in a fun and encouraging atmosphere. 

Adam is an ACE CPT and Fitness Nutrition Specialist and has years of experience in fat loss, muscle hypertrophy, and sports performance training.