The Truth About Losing The Last 10 Pounds

If you’ve been stuck on those last 10 lbs for what feels like forever, you’re not alone.

You’ve probably tried cutting out your favorite foods, spending a lot of time in the gym, or obsessing over every calorie, and it eventually ends up backfiring on you. 

I’m going to explain why getting to your goal is so tough and what you can do about it.

After struggling with the same 10 or 15 pounds for over a decade, I finally figured out how to be comfortably lean without worrying that an evening out, a holiday, or a vacation is going to ruin all my hard work.

If you’re sick of restrictive diets and extreme workouts and are ready to try a new approach, the most important thing is to be consistent.

That doesn’t mean always eating clean or working out every day.

You’re better off managing your calorie intake so it’s reasonable and allows you to fit in small servings of your favourite treat foods than to white-knuckle your way through the week and binge your way through the weekend.

1,600 calories a day Monday to Friday and 3,000 calories on Saturday and Sunday will stop your progress.

But if you’ve gotten this far, you’re probably not doing anything that extreme anymore. You’re probably fairly consistent, just not consistent enough for the most challenging part of the journey.

When people start a diet, they’ll often tell you they’re fine, not even craving their favourite foods. That might last a few weeks, maybe even a few months, but eventually, we all know what happens—a food binge.

So, in order to be consistent with your nutrition and workouts, you need to set reasonable expectations and do something sustainable.

Three weight training workouts every week is better than five workouts one week, one workout the next week, skipping the next week because you’re too busy at work, and then four workouts the next week.

You might be thinking, I work out with weights.

But do you do a structured, progressive resistance training program that you’ve been following for several months?

Do you increase your weights as you get stronger?

Do you switch your program often enough but not too often to get muscle-building results?

How long are your rest periods?

Are they too short to get maximum strength and growth, or too long to get the volume you need for hypertrophy?

Are you using mainly compound exercises to work more muscle groups at the same time, or mainly doing isolation exercises like bicep curls and tricep extensions?

It’s not just about going to the gym and randomly pushing and pulling weights around. Your muscles respond to regular, structured workouts that have a focused goal.

That’s exactly how I designed my workouts in my online fat loss program, The Lean & Strong Academy.

Most members are surprised at the results they see after thinking they were already training properly.

If you do feel like you’ve been doing things right—both nutrition and exercise—you might think it’s a weight loss plateau.

That does happen, but it’s usually not the reason that your progress is stalled.

Once you get to the last 10 lbs, if you’ve lost some weight already, the first part of that journey probably felt easier.

You just reduced your calories a bit, increased your exercise, and your body responded with weight loss.

But larger bodies burn off more calories than smaller bodies, so your calorie requirements go down as you lose weight. 

Getting into a calorie deficit naturally gets harder. You just can’t keep eating fewer calories.

There is some metabolic adaptation that happens when you lose weight too, so your body temporarily decreases the amount of calories it’s burning.

But generally, if you don’t panic and persevere through that sticking point, your body will adapt again. 

Give it 2 to 3 weeks and check in with all the other areas I’m going to talk about. If you’ve been reducing your calories for a while, you might feel hungrier.

The hormones that regulate your appetite, leptin and ghrelin, do change.

Hunger is sometimes a sign that your calorie deficit is working, but sometimes it comes from not managing your calories and macros throughout the day.

If you go long periods without eating, you might feel ravenous later on and not make the best food choices.

The leaner you are, the more you need to focus on managing your appetite.

That comes from planning balanced meals with enough protein, carbs, and fat in regular intervals, usually having three or four feedings per day.  

You may also want to look at whether what you’re experiencing is genuine hunger and not just an increased appetite driven by habits and feeling deprived.

If you’re having a sweet treat like cookies or chocolate after dinner, that’s not hunger. You’re not really hungry if you’ve just eaten.

You’ve got a powerful habit that’s controlling your behaviour.

I’ve experienced this myself, and many of my clients mention this as well. 

You can start off by only having a treat after dinner three times a week instead of every day. You can also try a substitution, like having some fruit or herbal tea instead.

After dinner, you can also brush your teeth or rinse with mouthwash—that tends to discourage eating.

Once you’re down to the last 10 lbs, everything you do has a bigger consequence. 

You don’t have as much wiggle room as when you’re 30 lbs from your goal.

That’s why, if you’re not doing it already, it’s important to track your food intake.

If you’ve gotten this far without tracking your calorie and macro intake, you might not think it’s important.

But now that you’re close to the goal, you need to inspect things more closely. 

It’s easy to underestimate how many calories you’re eating or forget about the little things, like extra snacks or that small glass of wine with dinner.

Often, just paying more attention to what you’re taking in with food and drink can help you improve your nutrition and reduce your calories.

You need to account for extra sauces, condiments, and oil, which can increase your calories without you noticing. 

Watching your portion sizes is also important because it’s not just what you eat but how much of it.

Even eating all minimally processed whole foods doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be able to get off that last 10 lbs of fat.

Throughout my 20s, when I tried to eat clean, I would pour out a bowl of olive oil and dip in the most healthy whole-grain bread I could find.

Oils are 120 calories per tablespoon, and I’m pretty sure I had five or six in there.

I would have just been better off enjoying that chocolate that I really wanted.

I guess it’s no wonder I always had those extra pounds of fat hanging around my belly.

As you get down to the final 10 lbs, measure your portions more carefully, especially for calorie-dense foods like nuts and oils. 

Weigh food that you eat at home to make sure you’re not overdoing it.

And while you’re keeping your calories in check, you also want to see where you’re at.

The scale can be helpful at the beginning of a weight loss program, but it gets less useful as you get closer to your goal. 

You want to be focusing more on fat loss and less on weight loss, although in most cases, you’re still going to see the changes in the scale.

In the final stages of the fat loss process, you’ll see if your body composition—the ratio of lean tissue like muscle, bone, and organs to fat—is getting to where you want it to be. 

If you’re not seeing changes in the scale, but your stomach is getting leaner and you’re seeing more definition in your arms, that’s great. Your body is transforming the way you want it to.

But as many people get closer to their weight loss goal, they may find they don’t have enough muscle to go further. 

You can keep losing more and more weight, but some of that’s going to be muscle.

You’re smaller than you were, but your belly fat is still hanging around, and you don’t feel like your muscles are defined.

Be patient.

Getting that toned look that most people are after requires losing fat and building muscle. Many people don’t have the patience they need with muscle building to get the effect they want.

It takes months, and often years, and it’s not easy. You have to push yourself. 

People end up stopping just short of their goal because it feels so hard.

Most people give up because they’re fed up with being so restrictive and not seeing progress. 

But pushing past that feeling and keeping a closer eye on all aspects of your lifestyle will help.

Fat loss isn’t linear, and it gets harder as you get leaner. 

Your body will fight back with hunger and sometimes fatigue, especially if you’ve been on lower calories for a while.

Research shows that people who have been dieting for long periods tend to reduce their NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis). 

Fewer calories. Less energy. Less calorie burn throughout the day.

Which means that even if you were to eat the same amount of calories, you would start to gain weight.

This is why it’s so important to keep up your daily movement. 

Even if you’re exercising regularly, moving around throughout the day will affect your energy expenditure.

Walking, cleaning, getting up from your desk regularly to move around—all of it adds up over time.

Remember that being in a calorie deficit and trying to lose those last 10 pounds can cause you to naturally reduce your movement, so you need to push back. 

The other thing you should be pushing is weights to make sure you can build the muscle that you need.

Not only does muscle burn slightly more calories than fat, but it’s an active tissue that makes you more likely to move easily and with energy. 

So weight training is the stimulus you need for muscle, and protein is the material you need to build it.

As you get leaner, make sure to check your protein intake. 

Not only does it help build and maintain muscle, but it also keeps you full and satisfied for longer.

The idea is that it keeps you from overeating on calorie-dense foods.

I normally recommend 0.7 to 1 g of protein per pound of body weight per day. 

If you’re pretty lean, and 10 lbs from your goal is probably decently lean, you might want to aim for the higher end of that range.

Particularly if you’re over 35, since our ability to absorb and use protein for building muscle goes down as we get older. 

Since your calorie goals are likely to be lower if you’re close to your target weight, you need to make sure that you’re using the right protein sources for each meal.

Ivana Chapman