One of my clients had a monthly assesement today and had no change from last month.
Was this a bad thing? No, because he has had a week long holiday and some family events over this time.
We knew these were coming up and our plan was to maintain his progress for August and now kick on for next month.
A good strategy to help improve adherance to a long term fat loss goal is to add in a maintainence phase every now and then.
A maintainence phase is where you eat at a level of calories that maintains your progress for a period rather than being in a deficit.
This allows you to enjoy more freedom for a while, which can have great physcological benefits and allow you to refocus on the long term goal.
Theres no rules for adding in a maintainence phase, you can do them whenever you want/need a break, but a good time is if you have life events such as holidays, weddings etc coming up.
Things to note:
A maintainence phase is not a free for all where you eat as much as you can, you should still keep up good behaviours and eating quality foods just with higher calories.
This ensures you keep the progress you have made so far.
Also the scale will go up, but this will be due to the higher volume of food, raised glycogen levels and water retention not because you have gained fat.
If you need any help or have any questions just let me know.