Metabolic crash is a very common thing that occurs with anyone trying to lose weight, including fitness competitors. It happens so frequently that it has become the norm and even accepted within the fitness industry. The truth is that it is not acceptable, the “gurus” and “expert” trainers are ruining people’s lives and health for a trophy or a competition, or to lose a few kilos. Anyone can lose weight, but are you doing it the healthy way? Are you endangering your health? Find out if this has happened to you or is happening to you, and how you can fix it and reverse its effects.

At some point, it has become the norm to diet a certain way. It’s simple, eat fewer calories than you’re burning and you’ll lose weight. This is true, however any good trainer will know that there are many other important factors besides the number of calories in vs. the amount of calories that comes out. Your metabolic health is extremely important, especially for fat loss, I mean why wouldn’t you want to burn more fat without starving yourself and overloading cardio? Essentially that is exactly what is happening, people are falling into this vicious cycle of losing a few pounds on a low calorie diet while doing 2 hours of cardio a day. Now to explain it further. Suppose these bikini girls are eating such a low calorie diet (1000 calories or so) and they are doing 2 hours of cardio a day and working out. Between the 2 hours of cardio and the workout they are surely burning over 1000 calories, and may see a drop in body weight at first and then level off. What is the first thing you would do? Cut more calories and do more cardio, and again now you’re eating 800 calories a day and doing 2.5 hours of cardio, then for a week you lose weight, then plateau once more. Do you see the trend here; you’re driving your metabolism straight to the ground. If you’re on such a low-calorie diet and expending so many calories, there’s no reason you’re not really losing body fat unless you’ve messed up your metabolism.

Now, on the other hand, why not work your metabolism to your advantage? Why not let your metabolism do the fat burning for you? Your BMR determines how many calories you burn while resting, the healthier your metabolism is, the more calories you’ll burn while resting. So why not use that to your advantage? Read that sentence a few more times to really sink in!

Here is a method to use. First of all start your diet much earlier, DO NOT crash diet, like anything else in life, if you go too fast you will crash. Just like landing a plane or driving a car, the slower you go, the safer you are. By adding a few more weeks to your diet, you allow yourself more carbs to start with and gradually reduce them as needed. I generally recommend cutting carbs on a weekly basis if you need to. If you’re burning body fat, you don’t need to keep cutting it or cut it drastically. Let your metabolism work for you, the more intense your training sessions, the more intense your cardio, the higher your BMW, which means you will burn more calories at rest. It’s such a simple formula, if you have a healthy BMR of 1500 calories per day, and you do an intense 20-30 minute HIIT session, your caloric output from just rest and a short cardio session is 2000 calories or more. Now if you run your BMR on the ground at 300 calories. You would have to do 3-4 times the amount of cardio just to make up for the difference in your metabolism. Wow, did you get it? When you starve yourself and ramp up your cardio like crazy, sure you burn more calories in the gym, but outside of the gym you’re spending significantly less. Now tell me again why you paid your trainer a large sum of money to waste time in the gym, make you feel like crap, damage your metabolism and your health.

The best part is that after a competition or a wedding, you won’t gain a ton of weight back when you start eating normal again if you did it the right way. This is because your metabolism is still revved up, even when you start eating normally, your body still burns a lot more calories than the guy or gal with damaged metabolism, therefore no slump or rebounds.

If you feel tired, sluggish, or are at the point where you do 3 hours of cardio a day and literally eat nothing, my advice is to stop doing it! No show, trophy, award or award is worth your health. If this has happened to you, you can reverse it by gradually adding carbohydrates back into your diet. Don’t overload yourself, instead slowly add carbs weekly, perhaps adding 10-20g more carbs each week.

My final advice is to be open minded and question everything in life. Just because a trainer has a good track record and their clients win many shows doesn’t mean they are a good trainer or even a trainer you should work with. Put your health first, that’s what a trainer does, and that’s the difference between a trainer and a trainer. A trainer cares about you, your health and well-being, while a trainer just wants you to lose weight or win a show at any cost to your health.