It is not uncommon that I talk with someone about their weight loss and they are completely baffled about why they can't lose more weight. They are training hard and they are using a solid high protein, reduced carbohydrate, low calorie diet but they just aren't losing weight fast enough.

The first question I always ask is - "Do you track your compliance?"

They respond "Huh?"

The truth is that you may have an amazing training and diet program but if you aren't following the plan then you might as well have a bad training and diet program. You may be thinking. "Yeah, compliance, I've heard that before, I actually DO track what I eat." That's well and good but let's takes this compliance thing one step further and look at the little things.

Let's be honest. You can eat an extra piece of toast and not mark it down. You can make that teaspoon of peanut butter more like a tablespoon and not tell anyone but in the end the tape measure never lies. It is these small food indiscretions that most people don't may attention to but in the end they can be the deciding factor in your fat loss. You can overlook them and lie to yourself now but you'll be disappointed later on when the time comes to measure your progress - the tape measure never lies. It is better to be honest about your compliance so you can make strides to fix the holes in your plan, then lie to yourself, not lose the weight, and be stuck saying "I don't know why I'm not losing any weight."

Are you making this mistake? Be honest with yourself. Let's look at some things that you should be doing on a daily/weekly basis. If you aren't physically tracking your compliance then you need to start there. How many of your planned meals are you eating? How many are you missing? That is step one. The next step is to ensure that you are accurately tracking your compliance. This is an area we are all tempted to cheat in.

One of the not so obvious reasons why I recommend that people "chunk" their food prep and do in 1-2 times a week is because many people snack while cooking (I'm very guilty in this area). A slice of chicken here, a couple carrots there, you know what I'm talking about. These things add up. If you can't cut out your nibbling when cooking it is very important that you "chunk" your prep. The difference could be as much as 500 calories a week saved (maybe more!).

You mission is to get your compliance in check. In order to guarantee your success this is the only change that you should make over the next 2 weeks. Don't change your diet, don't change your training - just focus on accurately tracking your compliance and under the radar snacking. If after 2 weeks you notice that your measurement are going down or the the scale shows that you've lost more weight then we know that was the problem.