6 Hacks For Losing Those Annoying Last Five Pounds

At some point in your weightloss journey, you’ll hit a wall. You’ll be merrily losing weight for months at a time. Then, all of a sudden, your progress will come to an end – and that’ll be it.

At this point, most people just throw in the towel, give up, and tell themselves that their body is just “a certain way.”

But that’s not true. The body is incredibly malleable – especially if you’re under fifty. And so you always have the option of recovering your youthful body type. 

It’s just a matter of adopting the right strategies. 

But what are the right methods to lose that final five pounds? Let’s take a look. 

6 Hacks For Losing Those Annoying Last Five Pounds

 

Start Lifting Weights

Your muscles are your most metabolically active tissues in your body. They burn through calories like there’s no tomorrow. What’s more, when your muscles are in a trained state, they affect the tissues around them, helping to burn fat. Building muscle, therefore, is one of the most powerful things you can do to shift those final pounds. 

It’s not about becoming a bodybuilder. You don’t need to look ripped. It’s just about making sure that your muscles are working efficiently to the point where they send signals to the rest of the body to burn fat. Once your muscles start using insulin efficiently, it changes the entire chemistry of your body, encouraging it to get rid of remaining fat and make you look more athletic. 

Keep A Food Journal

Keeping a food journal is another big innovation that could potentially help you lose those final few pounds. As you’re going through life, it’s easy to grab a bite to eat here and there, thinking that it won’t make a difference. But, ultimately, snacking takes its toll. And eventually, it all adds up to prevent weight loss. 

Keeping a food journal, therefore, keeps things real. It serves as a permanent record of your food habits – what you’re doing right, and what you’re doing wrong. And that actually makes it easier to hold yourself accountable and see what you need to change. Of course, if you know that you only eat healthy foods around mealtimes, then you’re safe. But, if you’re like 95 percent of people, you probably snack – often without realizing it. 

Do More High-Intensity Training

Have you heard of high-intensity interval training? It’s a special exercise technique that involves pushing your body as hard as you can for a few seconds, and then resting until your heart rate returns to normal in between. You can do sprints, burpees or intense spurts on the stationary bike – anything that elevates your heart rate to 90 percent of its maximum. 

High intensity training doesn’t sound like it would be effective. You’re not burning hundreds of calories in a session (sometimes training only lasts a few minutes). Instead, what you’re doing is activating critical pathways in the body that encourage it to become more youthful. You’re sending stress signals to all your cells that they have to work hard, clear out old proteins, and begin functioning at their best. And, often, they respond. Over time, your body begins to resemble how it did when you were in your teenage years. In many cases, the transformation can be remarkable. 

You don’t need to do high-intensity training at every workout. Once or twice a week should be enough. 

Use Cosmetic Approaches

Sometimes, body fat is so resistant to diet and exercise that nothing seems to shift it. If that sounds like you, then you can try experimenting with cosmetic approaches, like TruSculpt iD. 

Sometimes fat cells don’t yield their energy, especially around the hips and stomach. And that can make it almost impossible to lose the extra pounds. The idea here is to break down fat under the skin so that the body can harness it for energy and recycle it. By freeing it up, it suddenly becomes much more usable. 

Always Eat Post-Workout

Eating post-workout is actually one of the best times to do it because your body is crying out for nutrition. Your insulin sensitivity is also at its highest, so blood sugar levels won’t send signals to your fat stores, telling them to deposit extra fat. 

Prioritize Sleep

Lastly, to really succeed on your weightloss journey, prioritizing sleep is essential. There are two reasons for this. The first is that sleep helps you better regulate your hunger hormones. Getting seven to eight hours between the hours of 9 pm and 8 am can really help. The second is that sleep makes you less likely to crave snacks during the day to keep energy levels high. 

The second is that sleep makes you less likely to crave snacks during the day to keep energy levels high.