P90X3 was a great adventure and journey for me getting back into my fitness regimen after falling off the horse. The short 30 minute workouts and variety in the various workouts kept things fresh and exciting throughout the 90 days. There is one thing that I am noticing from a handful of my challengers was that they were hitting a P90X3 weight loss plateau. I’m sure they are not alone so I thought it be best to write an article about it. It seems that a lot of people (including myself) hit a weight loss plateau around the 60 day mark. I experienced this in my P90X3 journey. Although there are many underlying factors that can cause a plateau I was noticing one common theme with me and my challengers who ran into this issue.
For myself and a handful of my challengers we were dropping weight fairly steadily with P90X3. I was tracking calories and macros and around the 57-65 day mark I stopped losing weight. My nutrition wasn’t perfect but it was with-in the 80-20 rule. Meaning 80 percent of my nutrition was “good”.
Something you may or may not know is that our bodies are very in-tune to what we are doing and can adapt fairly quickly (6-8 weeks). And if you are tracking your calories and macros religiously and notice the weight loss hit a plateau then we need to adjust to get our bodies out of its own comfort zone.
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What Is Happening?
Like I said above there are many under lying factors that can cause a weight loss plateau with P90X3 but if you are tracking calories and hitting a specific number everyday it may be time to stop.
One of the greatest things with P90X3 is that the workouts are only 30 minutes however this also means that the calorie burn (aside from yoga and Pilates) is pretty much the same everyday. So here we have created a situation where we eat the exact same amount of calories (Example: 2,000) and burn the exact same amount of calories (300-500) EVERYDAY. And after 6-8 weeks our body has figured out what we’re doing.
Solution To The P90X3 Weight Loss Plateau
There are several different ways to combat the P90X3 weight loss plateau but I’m only going to cover 3 very easy ways to get that scale moving once again. So here we go:
1.)Have a refeed day. A refeed day can help restore your leptin levels. Especially if you have been dieting for a longer period of time. How often to have a refeed day will also depend on how long you have been dieting. A refeed day every 4-5 days can work well. Our goal here is to raise our leptin levels so you’ll need a good amount of carbohydrates. Some will take in more than 70% of their calories in carbs on a refeed day. But in simple form, just make sure your carb intake is higher than your protein and fats in terms of macros. Don’t think of it as a cheat day because you’ll need to restrict your fat intake, sorry loads of pizza and ice cream just won’t work. On your refeed day you’ll need to eat your maintenance calories plus 10-50%.
2.)Do the 3 Day Refresh. The new 3 Day refresh program is a great and natural way to break a weight loss plateau. It’s not recommended to do a intense workout while doing the refresh but you could do the refresh during your “transition/recovery” week in the P90X3 Schedule. I lost 7 pounds with the Refresh breaking a plateau I was stuck in for months.
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3.)Zig Zag your calories. Assuming you are in the right calorie zone. Try the zig zag method. For example if you’re eating 2,000 calories per day (2,000 X 7) that’s 14,000 calories per week. So rather than just eating 2,000 per day we are going to zig zag that amount each day but the total for the week will remain the same. So you might do something that would look similar to this:
Monday: 2,000
Tuesday: 1,600
Wednesday: 2,400
Thursday: 2,000
Friday: 1,800
Saturday: 2,200
Sunday: 2,000
Total: 14,000
You can see here that with the zig zag and refeed methods, our bodies will have a hard time adapting to how many calories are coming in, keeping it “guessing” making it a more efficient fat burner. If you hit a P90X3 weight loss plateau give one of the above methods a try and let me know if it worked for you in the comments below.
(((What is the Difference: Weight Loss vs. Fat Loss)))
Don’t Let A P90X3 Weight Loss Plateau Stop You!
Taking on a program like P90X3 has been an amazing journey for me. It helped me drop more than 20 pounds in 3 months (with a plateau). My biggest tip I can give you is no matter if you hit a P90X3 plateau or not KEEP GOING. Even though I hit a”weight loss” plateau I kept pushing play no matter what. You have to keep going. Sometimes just because the scale is not moving doesn’t mean you are not dropping body fat. If you’re not sure how to measure body fat click here. I know most of our population is more interested in the scale but do yourself a favor and take measurements and a body fat reading. If the scale is not moving BUT you are losing body fat that’s actually a better way to go.
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Yours In Success,
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