Stuck in a plateau, wondering how to lose the last 10 pounds? With these simple tweaks, you’ll break the stall and lose the weight for good.

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Most of the awesome content you get on this site is designed to help the folks trying to make sense of this fat loss stuff.

It’s all about taking the big rocks of health and nutrition and fitness and distilling it down to the simple stuff to get you to take action.

But what happens when you’ve been taking action and you’ve been handling the big rocks consistently and now you’re looking to finish the job and complete the journey?

If getting to that final goal weight is within reach and you’ve been struggling to make it happen, this article is for you.

Today, we’re going to address how to lose the last five to 10 pounds. This will apply if you’ve been doing everything right and the progress is working fine. And it will apply to the peeps that may be caught in what is commonly referred to as a “plateau.”

Let’s get into it.

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First of all: Do you really have just 10 pounds to lose?

A common thread that I see from people looking to lose weight is that they underestimate how close they are to this goal of developing washboard abs.

Getting lean is attainable for almost every one. But, it will take much longer than you actually think.

Managing those expectations is one of the biggest parts of my role as an online fitness and nutrition coach. Along with the game of keeping you consistent and patient, those are the biggest attributes of having a coach to help you see it through to the end goal.

But, typically, when you say you have five to 10 pounds left to lose until you see abs or hit that physique goal that you are chasing after, in reality, you likely need to lose double that amount.

So, prepare yourself for the fact that once you lose five or 10 more pounds, you might need to lose another five or 10 more to reach what you’re looking for in progress pictures or the mirror.

What is a realistic timeline before I can see my abs?

The next question I commonly get is around expectations and patience. Again. And it’s rooted in this idea that we can just magically make fat loss happen and do so before that important deadline.

The magazines have convinced you that six pack abs are possible within the next eight weeks if you drop a few slices of bread from your diet and just pick up some HIIT training.

This is not true.

In order to see your full body transformation through to the end, you need to prepare yourself that it could take months. It might even take a year or more.

Once you understand that, it’ll be so much easier to finally hit that goal because you’ll free yourself of the arbitrary deadlines and you can just focus on doing the work consistently and enjoying the process.

So how do you lose the last 10 pounds? Let’s discuss.

Once you’ve been training hard and eating consistently within your diet the next step is to make sure you’re tracking your data.

Treat your body transformation like your own body’s personal science project.

And you need strong data in order to get an “A.”

Tracking the data

How do you know where to go if you don’t know where you’ve been? That’s the biggest question that you must be able to answer along the fat loss journey.

And to answer that question, you must be tracking the data.

You can’t possibly know if you only have 5-10 pounds to lose if you aren’t really managing the data well. And the total data includes more than just a weekly scale weigh-in.

Be meticulous and consistent in tracking the following:

• Daily scale weigh-ins and then average the weight for the week
• Weekly measurements at the waist and hips (and other markers like chest, thighs and arms)
• Progress pictures taken monthly
• Workout logs to determine if you’re getting stronger (this is why a true strength training program is so important)

Then you’ll need some more subjective data analysis:

• Are you sleeping well and with consistent quality
• Stress management
• Are clothes getting looser or tighter

Until you understand how all of those markers are progressing or regressing, you’ll be unable to make meaningful assessments of your science project.

The result is bouncing around to new and shiny programs or calorie targets, when in reality, a small tweak might be all you need.

Understand the variables so you can truly understand the data.

The most common tweak to make, though, is to do absolutely nothing

In most cases, the answer to the question about how to lose the last five to 10 pounds is the most boring, unsexy thing you’ll want to hear.

If you’re doing everything right and tracking the data accordingly. And still eating in a calorie deficit consistently.

Then, the answer is to simply do nothing.

That’s it.

When progress slows, do a quick audit to make sure you’re checking off all of the important boxes. And that starts with ensuring you are still in a caloric deficit.

Calories can start creeping up when you get comfortable in a diet over time. Sneaking bites, not tracking foods, eating out more than usual. It all adds up.

When we talk about being in a plateau, usually the problem is more tied to adherence and not some sticking point where fat loss stops.

However, there will be a point along your journey when the metabolism will adapt to your new lower calorie intake.

In that case, before you drop calories, ensure that you are doing some of the following to help maximize that deficit before you drop calories, hop programs, do something drastic or quit altogether.

Keep picking up heavy things

If you’ve been ignoring the gym, it’s time to get back to it and refocus your efforts on getting stronger.

Increase daily movement

Walking can help kick up your metabolism and burn excess calories to get things moving.

Up your protein

While I generally like to keep my protein recommendations pretty easy and just ask beginners to shoot for about 90-100 grams of protein per day, more protein during a cut can help.

This is due to what we call the Thermic Effect of Food, and it makes up a pretty decent chunk of your metabolism. Simply put: your body burns calories to power the digestive system to break down the food that you eat. Protein burns more calories in digestion than carbs or fats.

If you’ve been struggling to lose the last 10 pounds, then eating more protein might help move things in the right direction. Aim for about 0.7 to 1.0 grams per pound of bodyweight.

Eat for more whole foods

It’s much harder to be on point and accurate with calories if you’re eating processed foods.

If It Fits Your Macros is great … in moderation. 80% of your foods should be whole, natural sources like lean proteins, fruits and veggies.

The other 20% can come from some tastier favorites.

And most importantly, flex the patience muscle

Instead of throwing your hands up and quitting or doing something drastic like changing plans or cutting carbs or doing endless hours of cardio, just chill out and let your body work.

How to make a tweak to lose the last 10 pounds

Okay, let’s say you’ve been tracking the data and you have been super consistent with your calories and your protein.

You’ve been crushing your workouts and you’ve been losing not only scale weight, but inches off of your waist and hips.

But now things have slowed down to a halt and you’re wondering if it is time to tweak things.

This is where so many people go wrong. This inflection point will make or break your ability to get down to that goal weight.

If you have been doing all of the above, the next questions to ask yourself are:

• How long have you been super consistent?
• And how long has this stall been happening?

We tend to freak out if the average weight doesn’t budge for one to two weeks. That, my friend, is not a stall. That’s just natural and common with weight and water retention.

Instead, a real stall is being 80-90 percent consistent for a month without progress.

Go back and read that again.

Yes, a full month.

If you’ve been hitting your calories and protein and workouts for a month and things are not progressing according to all of your data points, then you can think about making a slight adjustment.

Emphasis on the word, slight.

All it takes is a tiny tweak to move things again. Just drop calories by about 100 per day and then continue with the process. You’ll likely want to drop the majority of those calories from a collection of carbs and/or fats. See above for that explainer on why protein is so important again.

Check out my guide to counting macros to make more sense of that.

But what about cardio?

Great question. Cardio is not needed for fat loss. Instead, it should be diet and then strength training that power your journey.

However, you might get to a point where the thought of dropping your calorie target even lower sounds like absolute misery. I get it. This is common with folks who are shorter, especially women (sorry).

The calories burned from traditional cardio activity is minimal. But, they are still calories burned. And if you burn more calories than your body requires to maintain its weight … that is still a calorie deficit.

If dropping calories leads you to a deficit that is lower than about 25-percent of your maintenance level of calories, then cardio might need to be added.

For example, let’s say your maintenance calories are 1,800. If you’ve been trying to diet down for a while and hit an actual stall, I would not drop calories lower than about 1,350 (or a 25-percent deficit from 1,800 calories).

In this case, add a few rounds of low-impact, steady state cardio once per week for about 30-minutes. Cycling, elliptical, even the treadmill can help. We’re not talking high intensity intervals here. Just do some hamster wheel sessions.

Maybe you need a diet break

If you’ve been dieting for an extended period of time, then you might need to take a period off from dieting to eat at maintenance. This is commonly referred to as a diet break.

A diet break is not an invite to eat like an asshole. Instead, it is a two week (or longer) period where you can eat to your hunger levels. No need for rigorous tracking here. And you can use this time to enjoy a few foods that you normally would not during your cutting phase.

Again, this is not an invite to eat like an asshole. And yes, the scale will jump up during this period. Much of this is glycogen (stored energy), water retention, excess sodium and extra gut content (aka, food stuff and poop). 

The weight will flush out as soon as you get back to work.

Why break from a diet? Because metabolism is finicky and can adapt to the lower calorie targets of dieting. 

How often should you take a diet break? Aim to break away from dieting every 10 to 12 weeks at most, but they can be as frequent as every eight weeks.

Ideally, you’d plan them around events like vacations or holidays. But, they should be a strategic part of your dieting plan. And you should map them out in advance to give you some light at the end of the dieting tunnel.

A two week diet break won’t completely eliminate the impact of that adaption, but it can help with adherence and does provide some psychological and even small physiological benefits.

Keep the diet break to two weeks at minimum, don’t go much longer than three or four weeks to avoid the risk of excess fat gain.

Final Word to help you finally lose the last 10 pounds

This stuff can be super confusing and equally frustrating. I get it.

But I’m here to tell you that the most important part of this journey is simply never giving up.

The scale will stall from time to time for seemingly no reason at all. The measurements might not budge for a week or two and make you feel like shit. And that damn mirror will play all kinds of tricks on you throughout.

Stay the course. You are not alone in this journey. Others have been here before, too. Which is why I include some of their stories and experiences right here.

Patience is the most overlooked and underrated part of this process. If you can understand how to embrace this journey and just look objectively at the data, you will succeed.

Let me help you figure how to lose the last 10 pounds … 

Finding the right time and right workout plan can be incredibly overwhelming. But, I’m here to help you out.

If you have any questions, reach out. I answer all of my emails at pete [at] petecataldo [.] com … Hit me up with the subject line “Lose the last 10 pounds” and I’ll answer any questions you have.

Or you can hit me up anytime on the socialz on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

If you enjoyed this post, maybe you’d like more knowledge bombs from me. I’d be honored if you join my mailing list to get regular updates every time I post something pretty dope.