THE FRUSTRATION!
Ever step on the scale only to find out NOTHING has changed?!
Oh, the frustration! …the agony! ….the “I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong!”.
After a free-for-all summer filled with vacations, BBQ’s, weddings, and grad parties, you may be looking forward to the fall:
Getting back to exercising or starting your fitness journey!
Eating better and limiting alcohol!
Going to bed earlier and enjoying more sleep!
Adding strcuture back into your day/schedule!
Look at YOU! Embracing the end of summer and on a mission to gain back control!
After a few days or weeks of exercising more and eating better, you step on the scale, anxious to see some progress and then….
NOTHING!
What the actual ______ ?! How is it possible to be exercising, eating better and still NOT getting results?
This is a super common frustration that can cause you to give up completely because if nothing’s changing, what’s the point?
BUT, before you throw in the towel, let’s dive into the whole weight loss thing because aside from exercise, other lifestyle factors significantly impact your weight.
And, you may not even realize what these things are / how much they are sabotaging your progress and results.
Outside of exercising, what you do at home, in the office and on the weekends is equally important!
Make no mistake, exercise is necessary for improving health, building muscle, living a better life and yes, contributes to weight loss but without making changes outside the gym, losing weight can be delayed or completely stalled altogether.
Taking time to reflect on what you do all the other waking hours of your day is the first, most important step to understanding why that scale isn’t budging.
This helps you identify where to start making changes so your behaviors match your goals, and you start getting results!
In this blog, you are going to learn:
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10 Reasons you aren’t losing weight
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10 Tips to kick start your weight loss
10 REASONS YOU AREN’T LOSING WEIGHT
Here are 10 of the most common barriers I see as a coach holding people back from losing weight and keeping it off. SOme of these things may be brand new or, may be thinigs you think / feel are going well when in reality, they’re a big time barrier for you!
#1. Stress: High stress levels affect your body in many ways, including your hunger hormones.
When stress is high, your hunger hormone rises, while your satiety hormone that normally keeping your appetite in control, drops. This shift causes increased cravings for processed foods and snacks – think pizza, fries, cookies, ice cream, cereal, chips, crackers…
Pro-tip: Find healthy habits to alleviate stress. Adding behaviors into your life to manage stress helps you eat better, boosts your mood and enhances performance when exercising! In addition to regular exercise, try 5 minutes of meditation, a walk outside or around the house or journaling.
#2. Sleep: Like stress, sleep can wrekc havoc on your cravings and appetite, triggering cravings for highly processed foods and snacks.
When it comes to sleep, your body needs 7-9 hours of quality sleep to repair and recharge. Lack of sleep not only drains your energy and performance when exercising but prevents your body from being ablt to repair and recover – which is necessary to make changes and give you results.
Pro-tip: Set a consistent, nightly bedtime that allows you to get a minimum of 7 hours of sleep. Next, before going to bed, write down your to do list and shut off electronics at least 30 minutes before your head hits the pillow.
#3. Fitness Trackers: While fitness devices are helpful for monitoring daily step counts and heart rate, they are NOT accurate for counting calories burned. In fact, the margin of error can be upwards of 93%!
When it comes to know your caloric burn, DO NOT rely on a fitness tracker. I repeat, DO NOT rely on your fitness tracker – here’s why:
Studies show most people grossly overestimate the number of calories burned through exercise and daily living when setting up fitness devices. These inaccuracies mean you are NOT burning as many calories/day as your device shows and this overestimation can lead to a calorie surplus which causes weight gain or maintenance.
Pro-tip: Focus less on the fitness device and calories burned and more on building a consistent exercise routine.
Aim to exercise 3-5x/week and I promise you doing so will have a lasting, positive impact on your energy levels, how you feel and physical results!
#4. Portions: If you are not losing weight, despite exercising and all of these other things, it’s becasue you are eating in a calorie surplus.
How does this happen? There is a major discrepency in how much you think you eat vs how much you acutally eat. In fact, studies show people underestimate how much they eat by 40%! That is a LOT of calories not being accounted for!
At its very core, weight loss depends on calories in (how much you are eating) vs. calories out (how many calories are you burning). The combination of inaccurate devices plus underestimating how much you’re acutally eating is a common reason you aren’t losing weight.
Pro-tip: Log your food for the next 7 days to include how much you are eating (you can use a food scale or measuring cups) and what you are eating. After the log is complete, look at the quantity and quality of foods eaten. This is a very eye-opening expereince 🙂
#5. Diets: Have you been a chronic dieter a good chunk of your life?
Eating too little can be equally detrimental as eating too much when looking to lose weight- here’s why:
Over time, your metabolism self-regulates and adjusts to the amount of food you are eating. Since your body’s main goal is to keep you alive and maintain body systems and functions, if you aren’t eating enough, your body utilizes what it has for keeping you alive, not a smaller waist!
Eating real, nutrient-dense foods in the appropriate amounts for your lifestyle is of the utmost importance when feeling and performing at your best.
Pro-tip: Avoid prolonged / ongoing dieting because less isn’t always better. If you need help understanding how much you need to be eating based on your goals and lifestyle, work with a coach (I am always here to help you!) because we are the experts and know how to do this for you!
This is going to be unique to your goals and lifestyle and not something you want to guesstimate or, leave to a fitness device with default settings.
#6. Weekends + Cheat Meals: Practicing healthy habits Monday-Friday isn’t enough. If your weekends consist of “cheat meals”, drinks and constant loosening of the reigns, you can and will undo any progress. The choices you make on the weekend count!
Pro-tip: Practice CONSISTENCY 7 days a week if you want to make changes and lose weight. This means making better choices on the weekends and sticking with healthy habits like exercise and eating real foods Friday-Sunday. You can still enjoy life, create balance and hit goals!
#7. Alcohol: One of the biggest culprits ruing your weight loss!
Even moderate alcohol consumption (2 drinks per day for men and 1 drink per day for women) can ruin progress- here’s why:
When you drink alcohol, your body has to metabolize that first as a fuel source, meaning everything else you eat gets stored as body fat.
Even worse? Your body’s ability to burn fat can be stalled for 12 – 36 hours so all that hard work at the gym is now paused.
Plus let’s be honest, drinking leads to poor food choices. Together, these calories quickly add up; a perfect example of how you can undo a week’s worth of progress in a matter of hours.
Pro-tip: If you want to lose weight, there are trade-off’s. Limiting alcohol consumption is an effective tool for weight loss plus, you will feel better, have more energy, better workouts, and wake up hangover free!
#8. Low Muscle Mass: The more muscle mass you have, the more efficient your body becomes at burning fat and calories. Enough said.
Pro-tip: How do you increase muscle mass? By regular strength training 3-5 times per week (what we do at Results Fitness), eating real foods in the appropriate amounts for your body, getting 7-9 hours of quality sleep per night AND regulating stress levels CONSISTENTLY.
#9. NEAT: Outside of exercise, what’s your daily activity level? Are you mostly sedentary? Moving a lot? Somehwere in between?
Your daily activity levels outside of exercise is known as NEAT: Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis.
Some examples of NEAT activities include walking upstairs, laundry, cleaning your home, short walks around the block, and playing with your kids. Although you may spend an hour exercising, movement during the other waking hours is just as important.
Pro-tip: Set a daily step goal and get moving! The recommended daily step target is 8,000-10,000/day and remember, fitness devices are effective tools for tracking steps. There are also free apps you can download and use on your phone. If you use the iPhone, your health app already tracks steps for you!
#10. Consistency: If you’re working to lose weight, think about how long it took you to put on the weight you want to lose.
Point being, losing weight is NOT happening overnight.
A few days or weeks of regular exercise and eating better won’t move the needle. Long-term, sustainable changes take time. Your body will not change overnight but with consistent effort, time and patience, the changes will come!
Pro-tip: Shift your mindset away from looking to dieting, cutting carbs, going Paleo/Keto and missing out on life as the only way you can lose weight. Instead work with a coach like us here at Results FItness so that you can learn HOW to create a sustainable, healthier lifestyle with balance.
Weight loss should NOT be about overhauling your entire life all at once or going to extremes. Neither is sustainable, often leads to binging and in the end, nothing’s changed.
It’s about learning how to build better habits and over time, making small, incremental changes to your daily habits.
At Results Fitness, this is part of the process and WHY you succeed! Working with coaches and being part of a supportive community eliminates the guess work, keeps you accountable and makes the process way more fun!
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Remember, when it comes to weight loss, your results or lack of are directly linked to lifestyle habits outside the gym.
If you are not losing weight, not seeing the results you want, take time to write down your daily habits and choices, starting with your diet.
Make note of the food you eat (are you prepping meals at home? going out to eat often? drinking alcohol? grabbing processed convenient foods?) and then the quantity of foods you’re consuming. Log the foods and quantites for 3-7 days and use that data as a starting point for making minor tweaks.
Next, get moving ! Steps are accessibel to everyone and something you can start and do on your own starting now. Set a daily goal and then slowly increase over time.
If you are exercising or, ready to start, aim to exercise 3x/week. From there use the pro-tips you’ve learned today to continue tweaking the different lifestyle factors that are holding you back.
This is about PROGRESS – not getting it all perfect/being perfect every day. It’s a one day, one thing at a time so this stuff becomes part of your daily norm/lifestyle! Over time, these small changes will 100% snowball into the most amazing results guaranteed!
Stay patient. Stay consistent. Stay fueled.
If you need help hitting your weight loss goal, improving your health or, just curious how this could work for you, our team if here to help get you started with a personalzied plan to succeed! Schedule a FREE intro with our team so that you know what to do and how to start. Book your intro HERE!
