One of the most common questions or frustrations we hear from both clients and friends is the question, “Why am I not losing any weight?”
This question is usually followed up with a long list of everything this person is currently trying or has tried to use to lose weight, and most of the time, they are all fine things.
However, losing weight and really chipping away toward the body composition of your dreams isn’t easy, and there are many roadblocks for most of the population in trying to achieve these goals.
Instead of trying to provide a quick cop-out answer to all of the people asking this question, I’ve decided to list 7 possible reasons why you may not be finding the success you are working so hard to achieve.
For those looking for THE solution to your own weight loss struggles, be careful while making honest assessments about your situation. For example, it is highly unlikely someone who already exercises extremely intensely, daily and moves around a lot throughout the day needs to exercise more to lose weight.
Let’s dive in!
1. You Are Still Eating Too Many Calories
One of the most important pieces of any intelligent weight-loss plan is being in a caloric deficit. All this means is that you must consume fewer calories than you burn over the course of a day to lose weight.
So the first natural thing to check are your calorie intake numbers!
I know people can be hesitant about tracking their caloric intake, but if you truly want to be sure that you are in a caloric deficit, tracking your calories is a fantastic tool we have in our toolbelt.
A Quick Summary on How to Track Caloric Intake
The best way to figure out if you are in a caloric deficit is to weigh yourself multiple times per week, and track your daily caloric intake. If the scale continues to stay the same OR it increases, you must either eat fewer calories, or expend more energy.
Continue to track your calories and weight adjusting your activity level or calorie intake until the scale begins to go down. Once you’ve reached that point, then you know about how many calories you need to be eating to lose weight.
The process is a bit more nuanced than that quick explanation, but this explanation gets the general idea across.
One thing to keep in mind before you decide to cut more calories are your hunger levels. If you already find yourself very hungry throughout the day on the amount of calories you’re eating, I probably wouldn’t suggest lowering your calories any further as you will likely not adhere to the plan.
Instead, maybe take a look at the composition of foods you are eating and sub in more non-processed, satiating foods into your diet.
2. You May Be Incorrectly Tracking Your Calories
Maybe you read the previous section and said to yourself, “but I am tracking calories and I’m STILL not losing any weight.”
The simple fact is that you may be incorrectly counting calories.
This is where investing in a food scale might be a beneficial investment for my trackers out there that don’t have one, or for those people who want to try and better hone in on their calorie numbers.
Using apps like MyFitnessPal (which is a fantastic free tool) can be great, but adding things like “medium banana” or “serving of broccoli” don’t tell the most accurate story of what you just ate.
If the banana is only 20 calories off from what you actually ate, it may not seem like a huge deal. That being said, if every single entry into MyFitnessPal is 20 calories off, then your calorie numbers could be off by a few hundred come the end of the day.
This isn’t ideal.
When using tracking apps, it’s important to be as detailed as possible when entering the foods your are consuming on a daily basis, and a food scale will tell you exactly how much you are eating.
3. You Aren’t Exercising Enough
In our current American culture, there isn’t much movement that occurs throughout the course of our day unless we force ourselves to do more via some activity.
Think about the average American life: you wake up, go (mostly) sit at work for 8 hours, maybe run to the store, make or order dinner out, sit and watch Netflix. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
I’m clearly diminishing the actual human experience here to make a point, but the message is important: Unless we purposefully add some sort of movement or exercise to our weekly routine, we likely aren’t getting enough from our current lifestyle.
Some people may read that and get a sense of dread thinking about that treadmill that they used to be a slave to, but there are so many options that you can probably remain active without needing to use that specific tool that you despise.
Here at IVRY, we think that weight lifting is the best option because we both subscribe to a bodybuilding routine and find that this is the most enjoyable type of regular exercise that fits our goals.
Here are some other activities that could also work:
Running
Biking
Rowing
Walking
Hiking
Throwing the frisbee with the dog
Playing with your kids
There are plenty of other great activities that would help any person become more active, but those are just a few things many people have access to.
For those who already have pretty regular exercise routines and are still struggling, it may not be the exercise. I would suggest however taking a hard look at your exercise program to see if you could push yourself a little harder.
4. You Are Relying TOO Much on Avoiding Certain Foods
Some people set really unattainable restrictions on themselves when trying to diet, and those sorts of restrictions can really backfire on your progress.
A lot of people when beginning a diet will categorize many foods as foods to avoid. Problem is, those foods are tasty and even some of our favorites.
By totally restricting yourself like this, you may eventually find yourself in a moment where you lose your self-control and just go on a tear, eating all of those foods you were restricting yourself from.
The problem may not manifest itself THAT intensely, but avoiding certain favorite foods altogether for long periods of time is likely to lead you have a mindset of, “well I already messed up, so I may as well keep going…” and this mindset it what can lead to those moments of binging.
Instead of totally avoiding certain foods, learn to eat and enjoy them in moderation!
Some practical examples on how to enjoy your favorites in moderation:
Instead of ice cream nearly every evening as dessert, save it as a treat for one night
Instead of eating 4-5 pieces of pizza, have two slices and maybe tack on a salad
Instead of binging 10-15 drinks on a Friday night, have a one or two drinks a couple nights per week
Instead of going out to eat or ordering takeout for nearly every meal, try and cook a few of those meals at home instead
One of the most important things you can do for your relationship with food is to learn how to enjoy the foods you love while having the self-control to consume them in moderation.
This is a skill that really does take practice and discipline to achieve, but everyone is probably capable of reaching that point in their relationship with food.
5. You Aren’t Getting Enough Sleep
From my personal experience, I think that sleep is a highly underrated topic of discussion for an overall healthy lifestyle, and a lot of us just don’t quite get enough of it.
I’m not going to pretend I’m a scientist with a PhD, but there is a ton of scientific data detailing how sleep deprivation affects the systems in our body. A lack of sleep can diminish recovery times, leave us with little energy, and can lead to chemical imbalances.
These chemical imbalances can lead our bodies to think they are more hungry or require more calories than they actually need which is something you probably don’t want your body confusing when trying to lose weight.
Along with the chemical imbalances, our bodies aren’t optimally recovered on little sleep which can lead to decision making skills and willpower being diminished.
If for no other reason, getting enough sleep leaves most people feeling better and more alert/energetic throughout the day, so why not add this to your routine?
6. You Aren’t Drinking Enough Water
This is another one of those things we all get told but most of us never follow through with.
A pretty general recommendation for most people is to drink half of your bodyweight in ounces of water per day. So that means a 200 lb. dude should be drinking around 100 oz. of water per day.
That’s a lot of water!
Our bodies are mostly comprised of water so it makes sense to most people that we need to drink it in order to stay healthy, but the amount of water most people should be drinking is a number that they rarely reach.
I’m not qualified enough to dig into the science behind why consuming water is a good idea, but again, there are plenty of studies done by reputable and respectable sources that explain why water is so important at a cellular level.
Here are some things I can speak on in regards to water:
leaves us feeling more satiated (natural appetite suppressant)
flushes waste out of our system
limits the amount of other liquids you drink that are likely higher in calories
helps lubricate our tissues and joints
In general, drinking more water is likely not going to hurt you, so if you already don’t consume enough water, then this could also be an easy adjustment to your daily routine.
7. You Sit Most of the Day
I hit on this a little bit in point 3, but most American jobs require people to be on a phone or in front of a computer all day which means that most people are seated for almost 8 hours a day at their workplace.
For those people that sit most of the day at work and get little movement outside of that, a daily one hour exercise may not be enough movement to expend enough calories.
Here are some things you can do to move a little bit more throughout the course of your workday:
park further from the entrance
get a standing desk to do work
get up and walk down the hall every 30-60 minutes
stretch every so often
walk around the room while on the phone
go for a walk between meetings
A lot of little movements over the course of the day can add up to a meaningful amount of activity.
In Summary
Today we examined 7 possible reasons why you may not be losing the weight you are wanting to lose:
You are still eating too many calories
You may be incorrectly tracking your calories
You aren’t exercising enough
You are relying too much on avoiding certain foods
You aren’t getting enough sleep
You aren’t drinking enough water
You sit most of the day
I warned readers earlier to be careful when trying to diagnose your own issues because each situation and person is different. With that though, there could be one or more reasons on this list that are inhibiting your current fat loss goals.
When it comes down to losing weight, we do believe that being in a caloric deficit is the most important aspect of the process.
That being said, it can be really hard for the average person to confidently diagnose their issues and exact calorie numbers to see progress.
One of the benefits of having a coach is that we help you throughout that entire process. Not only do we provide the necessary accountability to stick to your goals, but we have the experience to help you hone in on the things you need to be doing to reach those goals.
Both Andrew and I are currently adding clients to our rosters and would love to be the support that helps you reach your goals!
If you read this article and think it might be time to hire a coach to help meet your needs, click here to learn more about what it is we do, and if you are already prepared to get started on the process, just say hello by heading here to give us some more information.
Until next time-
Josh