Q: Mike, My name is Matt. About a year and a half ago I was sick of being fat and undertook a personal mission to lose weight. I got in the gym and worked out 5-6 days a week and got on a diet. I lost almost 80 lbs. I would like to lose another 40-50 lbs to get to my goal. But now I'm stuck. I can't find a meal plan or diet that will help me lose more weight. I switch up my workouts every 4-5 weeks. But the diet is killing me. Any help you could give me would be appreciated beyond words. Thank you so much. I'm currently 270 lbs My goal is 220

A: Hi Matt, first of all congratulations and great job on losing those first 80 pounds! You should already be very proud of your accomplishments, even if you are not yet where you want to be.

Now, how to go about those last 40-50 pounds... First we have to acknowledge that going from 350 pounds to 270 pounds is always going to easier than going from 270 to 220 for anybody, so the approach that was good enough for the first 80 pounds may not be good enough any more. This may mean better diet or better exercise program or both.

Unfortunately I don't know what your current exercise program and diet are like, so I assume you are making the most common mistake people make when trying to lose weight: eat too little. It's very counterintuitive, but eating very little for a long period of time will start working against you when it comes to weight and fat loss. For somebody like you 'too little' means less than 1500 calories daily and certainly less than 1200 calories. If you eat very little for a long time your metabolism will shut down and your body will simply refuse to burn any more fat. Even a perfectly designed exercise program would not be able to overcome this.

The way around it is to slowly increase your calories at the very least to 1500 calorie daily and ideally to 1800 or more calories daily. You may gain a little bit of weight while doing so, but it is necessary to snap your metabolism out of its funk. Once your metabolism re-awakens your weight loss and fat loss will start again. Obviously these extra calories still have to be as healthy as possible. Again, realize that without adequate nutrition your body cannot operate at its peak level and that peak level is what you need to lose the extra pounds. Give your body a few weeks or even months to get used to new higher calories and you will see the fat loss restart.

Read my Nutrition article to make sure your diet is up to par. You may also want to use the Fitness Guide to get an idea of what your ideal diet may look like (put 220 lbs into the Fitness Guide as your weight). The Fitness Guide output diet will be much higher in calories than your current one but you'll notice that the biggest chunk of those calories come from protein -- feel free to cut down that protein intake to what you can comfortably can manage without increasing carb or fat intake of the proposed diet).

If you are not sure your current exercise program is up to par, read my Weight Training article as well.

Finally, always feel free to come back here and post your detailed diet and exercise plan either in the Q&A section or in Fitness Blogs which are also free and would allow me to check up on you over time as you update your blog. Hope that helps!