Sometimes you diet, exercise and track your calories. You do everything right but still you find that you haven’t lost even an ounce. And why is that? As a trainer I do come across this question pretty often and honestly the answer to this question isn’t very easy to come by. But when I do encounter someone who says she is doing everything right and still no results, a list of possible problems run through my head and that’s what I want to share with you today. Below are few of the scenarios that I feel could be the culprit in your quest to lose.
You Underestimate your calorie intake and over-estimate your calorie expenditure
9 out of 10 women will report inaccurately what they eat and how much they workout ad that’s the truth . Which is why food journalling is so important. Most of them even use” I exercised today” as an excuse to overeat or over indulge. How many times have you faced a food temptation and said to yourself well this is the last time and I will make up for it by doing some extra workout or eating less in my next meal”. I guess we all do this from time to time .
But did you know that this is one of the major reasons you are not losing cause you could be doing this very often and without even realizing it. for instance a 3 mile walk burns approx 240 calories but u straight away head to a restaurant after that you easily gulp down an extra 1000 calories in few minutes without even noticing it. What this means is that exercise can help you lose when you are really using it to burn extra calories, not as a reason to eat more.
Relying alone on exercise to do the trick
Exercise has many other health benefits other than helping you lose weight. It helps you create calorie deficit which you need to drop body fat. But i’ll say it again and again , if you are relying solely on exercise to lose weight then you are fighting an uphill battle.
Here’s why, It’s true exercise burns calories but not as much as you think. When you consider the total calories burned throughout the day, exercise burns very little ( here I am talking about low to moderate intensity exercises , high intensity interval training will definitely burn more but it’s not quite possible to do them all throughout the day unless you are an athlete or striving to be one).
So an hour of intense activity might burn 400-500 calories for most people but on the flip side it’s easy to eat few hundreds even thousands of calories in few minutes. In short if you don’t change your diet and reduce your calorie intake exercise alone won’t help much. You cannot out train a bad diet. So the best way to lose is to cut back on what you eat and increase your physical activity through exercise, not one or the other.
You are not eating as Healthy as you think
Here’s the thing we all think we eat pretty well. In fact even people who eat pretty bad diet don’t think they eat bad at all. No one really wants to admit that their diet is quite unhealthy.
Eating too many calories or not eating at all both have an adverse effect on your body’s metabolism so the best bet is to eat healthy in right quantities. If you are not meeting with the basic guidelines for a healthy diet which involves way more than just counting calories or you don’t exactly track what you eating then don’t make assumptions about how good your diet really is.
Research confirms that 90% of the time people underestimate the quantity of food they eat so read labels and measure.
Exercising to lose weight
If you are exercising regularly then you are not only burning off extra calories but also doing your health a lot of good. But when it comes to weight loss you will have to choose well what type of exercise you are doing.
High intensity cardio intervals are the best bet for losing weight and match it up with strength training u hit two targets at the same time you lose fat and build muscles. So just relying on one type of training method won’t do you any good in long term. Combine different training methods and customize it for better results.
Consistency is the Key
When you come down to the last few pounds consistency in your efforts is even more important. A lot of people stick to strict diet and exercise for quite sometime but their habits aren’t consistent for a long enough.
Has this ever happened to you that you eat right workout religiously for a whole week only to step on the scale that weekend to find that you haven’t lost an ounce? “what’s the point , You say to yourself” and go back to your old habits of overeating and skipping workouts. Or maybe you just eat right one day and fall off the wagon the next day.
Or perhaps you are pretty consistent except for the occasional outings and parties where it is very easy to fall prey to food temptations and get knocked out in delicious palate. there goes your sense of tracking, measuring out of the window. And you don’t even realize but you eat way more than its required.
So here comes practice portion control . Therefore eat right and exercise as consistently as possible and apply both moderation and portion control when it comes to indulging.
You are not measuring yourself right
I have seen in many cases where my client is losing inches and body fat but not weight and she is still not happy…despite the obvious changes they still want the scale to move.
Remember one thing that scale does not tell you the whole story so never rely on it solely. If you are noticing other improvements as in how your clothes fit or losing inches and body fat then that’s your Que , you are on the right track and you are making good progress.
Hence by relying only on numbers on the scale you miss out on the actual changes that are taking place in your body. Be Aware.
Do you really need to lose more??
You have already lost quite an impressive amount of weight and body fat and you have come down in a very decent range of BMI and body fat percentage but you want to go further down just for the sake of looking good or better performance.
Well there is nothing wrong in wanting to go low further after you have reached your optimum weight but here it gets pretty difficult as the body gets to a set point and starts taking that as the optimum weight for that person this is what is known as when you reach a plateau .
Your body adjusts to this weight range and stays there happily so if you want it to change you will have to be far more determined and consistent then you were at the beginning. It’s easier with people with lot of fat to lose weight but for those who have less body fat to begin with gets pretty tough.. so unless you want to give it a lot of time an dedication you are just fooling yourself.
Lastly you may have an underlying issue
When all else fails you’ve truly adhered to everything I have said above and still you don’t see any changes then its time to get yourself checked with your doctor. A slow thyroid or some kind of hormonal disorder could be the reasons you are finding it difficult to lose .
Try and figure out what the problem is and take help if needed to remove the problem then get back to tracking your food honestly, measure yourself regularly and burn excess calories through increased physical activity.
Let me know if you have any questions regarding this blog . You can leave your comments below.
Thanks Soma
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