By Milos Rankovic
8 REASONS WHY YOU ARE NOT LOSING WEIGHT AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT
6 REASONS WHY YOU ARE NOT LOSING WEIGHT ABD WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT
By Milos Rankovic
Do you feel like you are doing everything right but the excess weight is not coming off? You are tracking your calories, doing cardio several times per week and shop your food only at the premium organic supermarkets but somehow the number on the scale won't get down?Are you having a feeling like you tried everything but nothing seems to work? You might be wandering what is the reason for all this lack of results?
Is it damaged metabolism? Toxins accumulation? Maybe hormonal imbalance? And before you go for the day cleanse program in order to jump start your damaged metabolism read this article until the end.
I will tell you what are the 8 common reasons why the weight is not moving down even when it seems that you are doing everything right.
1. LACK OF AWARENESS ABOUT HOW MUCH YOU ARE REALLY EATING
I know what you might be thinking now: What does he talk about, i don’t have awareness issue, i know exactly how much i am eating with my every meal! And i trust that you do that but hear me out. What the research consistently show is that people really suck at estimating how much they really eat.
Most of the people will underestimate their caloric intake by staggering 20-50%. And it’s not that only regular people are having a hard time estimating their caloric intake.
In one research even trained people like registered dietitians surprisingly underestimated their caloric intake by whooping 20%. And on a top of regularly underestimating our caloric intake we tend to overestimate how much calories we are spending through the exercise as well.
One research showed that people though that they burn almost 3-4 times more calories than they actually did during their workout sessions.
In this particular study when they asked to estimate, some participants thought they burned 4000 calories when they actually burned only 200. So when someone says his meal was 500 calories it is most likely that it was closer to 1000, and when the same person says that he spent 1000 calories during his cardio
session, most likely he spent less than a 500. And the 500 calorie deficit suddenly becomes more than a 500 calories surplus. There is a lot of reasons why it’s difficult to accurately estimate your caloric intake but
for now just have in mind that If you are not losing weight for a longer time period and you are actively dieting there is a tracking issue going on and we are about to explore it more in the next sections of this article.
2. Mindless snacking in between the meals
Either at home and very often at work place we tend to engage in something that Is popularly called mindless snacking.
You know the situation where there is always some jar of cookies, peanuts or other candies at your working desk or at your kitchen table? And every third time that you pass next to that kitchen of office table you grab a few pieces along the way. The sad truths is that that habit alone can make you get hundreds of extra
calories during the day without you even being aware what is happening. When i ask people to track how many snacks they have during the day they become shocked when they realize that what they taught its just a few pieces of almonds “suddenly” became a hundreds of calories worth of snacks per day
Remove the snack from visible places at your home or office. At least replace high calories snacks like cookies and candies with some fresh fruits or raw nuts. If you really need to have something in between the meals, have pre prepared snack that is in line with your calorie goals and don’t let full jar of hyper palatable
snacks hang around during the whole day at your home or workplace. One particular study done on secretaries measured how visibility and proximity of candies on the work place influence eating behavior and came to conclusion that the” proximity and visibility of a food can consistently increase an adult
consumption of it”. They also stated that: “People ate an average of 2.2 more candies each day when they were visible, and 1.8 candies more when they were approximately placed on their desk vs 2 m away”
3. “Healthy food” is off limits
Another common reason why you are not losing weight although everything seems perfect on the surface lies in the fact that you think that just because you are eating “healthy” or “organic” than total amount of food you eat doesn’t matter You have the assumption that as long as you eat “clean” and avoid “bad “foods
you can eat as much as you want and still lose weight. If that is the case than i have a news for you – you can’t lose excess body fat if you are not in the caloric deficit no matter how “clean” and “organic” you eat.
Fat loss is happening when your body is spending more calories than it’s getting from the food you eat, there is no other way around. And although it is more difficult to overeat by eating more whole and minimally
refined foods, it is still possible that you eat more than your body needs especially if you have a lot of high calorie whole food choices like fatty fish, nuts, olive oil, high fat cheese or fatty red meat. The approach of eating unlimited amount of healthy foods works very well in the beginning of fat loss process especially if you are transitioning from the diet composed from mostly high processed high calories junk.
In that case just by switching to a healthier food choices will automatically decrease your total caloric intake and make you lose excess body fat.
But after some body weight being lost you will come to the position that eating “clean” food is not going to be enough and you will need to adjust the actual amount you are eating if you want to continue to lose excess body fat.
4. You think that organic junk is not really a junk
One of the big problems in this segment that needs to be mentioned is also massive expansion of organic junk food. Organic chips, chocolates spreads, cookies and ice creams. Some people think that if food has organic label on it can be eaten without any limitation in regards to total amounts. If you are one of them I have a sad news for you, organic junk food is still a junk food and surprisingly some of the organic products can have even more calories than the regular ones. So be smart and don’t fall for a overpriced, over hyped and still super caloric organic junk products
5. Sneaking calories
This one is for all of you that really meticulously track their food intake, that is very careful with snacks and know enough not to trust the organic food over hyped claims But even when you are so committed and super careful there are ways how the excess calories can sneak in behind your back without you even realizing it - and this is especially common after you already lost some weight and then got stuck at the
plateaus.
There are several ways how the calories can quietly sneak into your diet:
Extra tablespoon of olive oil or your favorite dressings that you put on your salad, fattier vs leaner cuts of meats, extra piece of nuts here and there, fresh fruit juices that you don’t even count as food.
All of the above mentioned foods and food products can easily sneak i hundreds if not thousands of extra calories into your diet without you even realizing how it happen. Whenever you are dealing with calories in liquid or semi solid state like oils, nut butters, condiments or juices there is a big chance that you are going to over consume it and you will not even be aware of it.
6. Your cheat days are ruining all your efforts you made during the week
There is a big belief in the fitness industry that if you stick to your diet 6 days in a week , on the day 7 you can literally eat whatever you want and in whatever quantities you want.
And this is where the problem emerges. People practice this habit in a way that after the whole week of moderate caloric deficit they go on a full junk food binge party over the weekend. And let me tell you one thing, it is very common that one full day of junk food feast can negate all caloric deficit you were accumulating over the week.
Just do the math. Lets say that you are having moderate caloric deficit of 500 calories per day, 6 days per week. Great, you successfully accumulated 3500 calories worth of deficit. And what happens next is that you go out to Mc Donalds and eat meal that looks something like this: 2 big macs, 1 large fries, ice cream and large coke. Having that meal you just ingested 2500 calories worth of food in a single meal and you probably maxed out your total caloric allowance for the whole day.
But the things are not done there as the day basically just began so in the evening you order large papa Johns pepperoni pizza with extra cheese. That one only is going to be around 3500 calories. Add some wedges or desert on a top of that and you officially ruined your whole week of dieting. And the worst thing is, what i just described is not even a half what some people do when the weekend comes. I am sorry but having good food choices over the week is not allowance for junk food binge over the weekend. Your fat loss will definitely come to a halt and you will definitely not develop good long term relationship even risking developing potential eating disorders.
7. You are experiencing water retention
This one is very common with people who are dieting and it’s not uncommon that water retention can mask the real fat loss for weeks leaving the person who is dieting braking its head about what is really happening.
Water retention can happen for several reasons bit the most important one when it comes to dieting are definitely elevated cortisol levels. Cortisol is a stress hormone that can get elevated with long term dieting as body perceive lack of food as a stress and reacts by elevating level of stress hormone cortisol which lead to chronic water retention. Combine the stress of dieting with the stress of life we are facing everyday and now you have huge water retention, masking weeks of successful fat loss, playing with your mind and making you wander why the things are not moving forward and what are you doing wrong? You can’t do too much about this one except to be patient and don't freak out. You can also practice some stress relive techniques like meditation, going for a walk, or having 1 -7 days of reefed where you would increase your calories and carbs to a maintenance level (not talking about cheat day here) Increasing your calories slightly and introducing more carbohydrate in the diet can make cortisol level drop down making you experience water drop. This is the magic behind how some people start eating more food and suddenly
they lost weight. There's no magic folks, it was just water retention all along.
8. You gained muscle and lost same amount of fat.
This one is another possibility especially with the beginners. Initially you might lose few kg of body fat and at the same time gain few kg of muscle so body weight doesn’t change. This can happen more if someone is beginner with strength training as rate of muscle gain cannot keep up with the rate of fat loss with more experienced dieters.
But I heard that if you have thyroid issues your metabolism slows down that much that is almost impossible to lose weight?
While it is true that hypothyroidism can lead to lower energy expenditure, the magnitude of the effect is hugely overrated and also depend from how severe the condition is. With people who have mild hypothyroidism there is almost no difference in their metabolic rate compared to people without any issues.The picture is a bit different when we talk about people with severe hypothyroidism but still not that dramatic as people often think. With severe hypothyroidism we are talking about 8% reduction in total daily energy expenditure which when we translate to real numbers represents around 200 kcal for someone who’s total daily energy expenditure is 2500 kcal.
We are looking at the reduction in energy expenditure equivalent to even less than one snickers bar.
If you suspect that you are having hypothyroidism than you should definitely visit a specialist so that medications can be prescribed accordingly. From my experience for majority of the people who think they are not losing weight because they have thyroid issues it all comes down to lack of awareness of actual caloric intake and daily activity levels which for most people is very low considering influence of technology on every segment of our daily lives.
So there you go, 7 reasons why you are not losing weight although it seems you are doing everything right.
You either lost fat but gained same amount of muscle, or you are experiencing water retention or there is simply a lack of awareness of actual caloric intake and activity levels.
It’s not broken metabolism, it’s not about toxins, and your hormones are probably just fine
