Have you ever started a new weight loss program that was great for the first two weeks and then nothing? These are called weight loss plateaus, and they can be frustrating enough that many people quit, blaming the weight loss program for their lack of progress. In reality, it is your own body that has established a new body set point for weight.

The human body is a very efficient machine and once it has established a certain weight as a set point or standard operating weight, it will do everything possible to keep it there. Your body makes adjustments to metabolism and fat storage (among others) to maintain its set point and it seems that no matter what you do, you just can’t lose any more. This process is known as adaptive thermogenesis.

To overcome these weight loss plateaus, you have to break the body’s set point and essentially shift it to a new body weight set point. The best place to start is to better understand the processes you are trying to change, which is the process of adaptive thermogenesis. This is actually the body’s way of automatically reducing energy output when intake through the diet is decreased in order to maintain the body weight set point.

Take a diet example to help explain the process. You decide that if you can cut at least 500 calories from your diet, then weight loss should be a no-brainer, so you go ahead and do the 500 calorie cut, but nothing happens. Your body has adjusted its energy needs to a level that is now 500 calories less than it used to be, so your weight remains stable. You get desperate and lose another 500 calories from your normal intake, thinking that 500 wasn’t enough, so 1000 calories should be enough, but again, nothing happens. Adaptive thermogenesis has again adjusted the body’s need for energy to adapt to the new level of caloric intake, and weight remains stable, despite the fact that the calorie reduction was extreme.

No luck fighting yourself? No, of course not, but it will take more than just dieting to prevent adaptive thermogenesis, continue to lose weight, and reach a new body weight set point.

What is the magic secret of all this? Ok, there’s no magic secret, but it takes a combination of diet and exercise to do the trick, but not just any old diet and exercise program will always do the trick. Intense metabolic resistance training is the key to breaking adaptive thermogenesis and resetting the bodyweight set point.

Metabolic resistance training is a series of compound exercises with very short rests between sets that is designed to literally jolt the system into compliance. Combined with a serious weight loss diet, this technique will generally kickstart the body’s adaptive thermogenesis reaction to reduce your weight to the next bodyweight set point.

What you want to do now is continue your program in maintenance mode to reset your system so that your new (and lower) weight is where it’s supposed to be. Maintain this new weight for at least the next 4 weeks before trying to lose more weight. Now, when you restart your weight loss efforts, you are starting at a new, lower normal body weight level. Use this step loss method when you’ve hit that plateau and can’t seem to lose any more weight. This is very effective in overcoming adaptive thermogenesis and establishing a new body weight set point.