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5 reasons why you are not losing weight

Dec 07, 2021

Hint: It has nothing to do with your lack of self control or overeating 

 

Learn the top 5 reasons you aren't seeing results and how you can overcome these obstacles to start reaching the goals.

 

In the society we live in, it has become ingrained in us that the reason for our weight gain is due to our lack of control around food and inability to eat less. While losing fat does come down to calories in versus calories out and you need to be in some kind of deficit to lose weight, there are many factors that affect both.

 

Let’s first discuss the importance of your physical and mental health. Dieting is not good for either and I will give you a few reasons why. Dieting pulls you away from your body’s signals and has you so focused on the scale that you ignore the signals your body is trying to tell you. If you are noticing negative changes in your sleep, mood, energy levels, sex drive, menstraul cycles, and more, these are signs that you body is not happy and your physical health is depleting. Your weight does not determine your health. If you are sacrificing your physical health for a look, you might want to reevaluate your goals because your body will rebel and the diet you are on is not going to be sustainable. Weight loss can be achieved, but it should be a journey focused on behavior changes and not a quick fix. Think about your body as a car. When your check engine light goes off do you ignore it? No, you take it into the shop, figure out what is wrong with it, and get it fixed. It should be the same for your body!

 

When it comes to your mental health and dieting, you often feel like a failure because you are unable to stick with the excessively restrictive diet. You think you lack will power but in reality you are unable to lose weight because the human body is wired for survival, not because of your lack of willpower. When your body senses starvation, it does everything in its power to keep you alive. This includes increasing your hunger hormones. Do you ever find yourself in a restrict and binge cycle? Yeah, that is because your body is smart and doesn’t want you to starve!

 

 1. You have chronic stress 

 

A little bit of stress on your body is normal and can be beneficial. Think about working out. When you workout, you are putting stress on your body and you actually tear your muscle fibers. This increases the inflammation in the body but if you make sure to rest, your muscles will grow back stronger and the inflammation will go back down. Yay, you just got stronger!

 

However, a lot of stress on the body over a long period of time can cause chronic damage to the body, our performance, our mood, our productivity, our relationships, and our quality of life. Stress increases the amount of cortisol (stress hormone) in the body. Stress causes us to stay in the sympathetic nervous system (“fight or flight”) which increases our heart rate, blood pressure, circulation, and slows down digestion, growth, and reproduction. To add to this, cortisol stimulates fat and carbohydrate metabolism (meaning they get broken down to be used for energy) which increases your appetite for calorie dense foods and sweets. 

 

While all of the above are bad, it also aids in weight gain and promotes fat gain at the abdomen. To make it worse, dieting is a stressor to the body. So if you have chronic stress and you are trying to diet, you are adding even more stress to the body which will make these symptoms worse. Make sure to manage your stress before trying to go on a restrictive diet.

 

Some ways you can work on managing your stress are: yoga, meditation, journaling, breathing exercises, working with a therapist or coach to shift your mindset, and improving your sleep routine. 

 

 2. You are not eating enough

  

Like I mentioned above, you do need to be in a deficit to lose weight BUT if you are excessively under-eating, your body will shut down. 1,200 calories is not even close to the amount an adult woman needs to function daily, let alone add in a workout or any other activities throughout the day. 

 

One of the main issues with diets is they want you restricting a lot of calories or full food groups. So what happens when you restrict your calories? Let’s break down how diets typically work. You may have “let yourself go” and gained a few pounds that you now want to burn off so you go on a diet. At first, it feels easy! You see results fast and it doesn’t feel that bad. But as you cut calories and workout more, you are adding a lot of stress to the body and your body slows down your metabolism. When your metabolism slows down, so do the amount of calories you burn. Your body essentially becomes efficient and wants to hold onto more energy (in the form of fat stores in the body) so you stop seeing results. At this point, you are probably wanting to cut more calories because you have plateaued but your body’s defense mechanism against starvation makes your cravings unbearable and you cave. This often leads to binging on food and giving up your diet because it wasn’t sustainable.

 

If you want to shed some pounds you are going to need to eat more and keep your metabolism revved up. Learn what your maintenance calories are and start listening to your body’s signals and using that as cues for what your body needs. If you have been yo-yo dieting for awhile, you need to eat at maintenance for awhile (I am talking 6-12 months) so your body can heal. When I work with clients, they often start to lose weight during this increase in calories because their metabolism starts to pick up. This is also a great time to work on your relationship with food and start challenging the beliefs you have around food and health. Then, if you truly feel you would be happier with some weight loss, go into the slightest deficit so that weight loss is slow. Remember this should be a marathon and not a sprint. If you start to get side effects, eat more food!

 

 3. Your hormones are unbalanced

 

Hormones play a huge role in fat loss and overall health and there are a lot of signs that will let you know if you may be experiencing a hormone imbalance.There are many hormones that can cause weight gain or impede your ability to lose weight but these 7 are the most common: cortisol, leptin, estrogen, thyroid, insulin, testosterone, and growth hormone. 

 

Without getting too detailed with what each one does, just know that imbalances of these hormones can cause insomnia, weight gain, mood swings, feeling wired yet tired, low energy, foggy brain, skin issues like acne, high blood pressure, indigestion issues, irregular periods, infertility, low sex drive, and much more. If you feel like you are having issues, I have linked my hormone quiz for you below. Take the quiz HERE and see if you may be experiencing a hormone imbalance!

 

If you feel like you have a hormone imbalance, diving into another restrictive diet is not the answer and will most likely make your problems worse. Work with a coach or a doctor to rebalance your hormones and I guarantee you will feel better.

 

 4You are only focusing on the scale as a measure of your progress

  

While the scale can give you some data as to how you are progressing over a long period of time, your weight will fluctuate based on a number of variables. Your body is mostly composed of water and your water weight will fluctuate daily which will change the number on the scale. Things like salt, carbs, alcohol, and mental/emotional/physical stress will all cause you to hold onto more water weight.

 

So if you are relying on the scale to measure your progress, you could be going down a negative rabbit hole. I think most of you can agree that stepping on the scale and seeing lower numbers means you are having a good day whereas seeing a higher number means you are having a bad day. While you might feel on top of the world when you see the number go down, seeing the number go up might lead to drastic behavior changes. You might be inclined to drop calories to an unhealthy range or over exercise to compensate. Both of these lead to more stress on the body. As we have already discussed, more stress on the body will lead to water retention and over a longer period of time, weight gain. Along with that, the scale really affects your mental health. You become addicted to hitting a certain number and may feel unworthy if you don’t reach your goals. 

 

You can now see that over analyzing the scale can negatively affect your mental, physical, and emotional health. But, I think it is important we also talk about realistic progress. Everyone wants quick fixes. While restrictive dieting can get you to drop a lot of weight in a short amount of time, it is inevitable that you will plateau and most likely will gain it back. Your body's ability to survive will make you hungrier and when you stop seeing progress, you may have the urge to binge and give up. The restrict and binge cycle is a vicious one but you can get out of it. You just have to take a different, long term approach. Realistically, depending on the person and their goals, weight loss should be a 1-3 year journey that includes changing behaviors. It is about creating new habits, quitting the “all or nothing” mentality, and finding a balance in your life.

 

So if the scale isn’t the best way to measure your progress then what is? There are many ways to measure progress. Some of the ways I encourage my clients to measure progress is biofeedback. This includes mood, sleep, energy levels, ability to think, workout performance, and more. You can also measure progress based on how your clothes are fitting and the regular thoughts that you are having. Are you thinking more positively and learning how to work through your negative thoughts? Have you changed the way you react in certain situations? These are all signs that you are on the right path!

 

 5. You are too focused on perfection

  

It is easy to fall into the all or nothing or perfectionism mindset when you live in the society we live in today. Maybe you grew up with parents who placed a lot of pressure on you to be perfect and always do your best as a child and that has put a lot of load on you in adulthood to be perfect in every aspect of your life. Maybe society as a whole has pressured you to do better at work. We often think that if we are resting, we are being unproductive or if we don’t do something right we are failures. The thoughts we create in our minds make us feel some type of way, and those feelings make us take action which leads to a result. If you think that you aren’t doing enough, you might feel disappointed in yourself. This disappointment will lead you to work harder and as a result you might end up burnt out. So how does this relate to nutrition?

 

The beliefs you learn as a child will bleed into every aspect of your life, including how you view food and exercise. The all or nothing mindset is another vicious cycle. You want to lose weight so you go all out dieting and exercising. But the lack of balance often becomes miserable. You cancel all social events and won’t allow yourself to have a bite of a cookie because you see that as failure. Your foot is full force on the gas and it's only a matter of time until you crash. When you do crash, you completely give up. Every ounce of structure and discipline is thrown out the window and this typically leads to a binge. Then the cycle repeats. You got the binge out of your system so now you can go back to excessively restricting your food and exercising. 

 

So how can you stop the cycle? It starts with your thoughts and unlearning beliefs. You have to understand that balance is key to success. You also need to realize that rest is productive. When you rest, you are allowing your body and your mind to recover. This is good for both your physical and mental health. In my nutrition course, I will give you the tools to shift your thoughts so you can see different results. If your thoughts remain the same, the results will also stay the same. 



To conclude, following fad diets that are extremely restrictive to lose weight is not the answer! I promise these diets will do more harm than good. Just think about the last time you did a diet and you were able to sustain it for life. I bet none of you can say you are still following a diet you started years ago. It most likely worked, then failed, and you went back to whatever you were doing before.

 

So if diets are not the answer then what is?! I believe if you can change your behaviors to promote a healthy balanced lifestyle you will see more results than you think. We too often have the “all or nothing” mentality when it comes to life. Instead of trying to be perfect, focus on being consistent and making progress. Building habits doesn’t happen overnight but if you truly want to find a sustainable diet, you will need to focus on long term goals, and the small wins along the way, versus trying to find a quick fix to look good in a bathing suit for summer. If you focus on building the habits now, I guarantee a few years from now you will be so happy you did! 

 

If you feel lost and don’t know where to start in your journey, fill out an application for my VIP 1:1 coaching program HERE and set up your free consultation with me today!

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