If you are struggling to lose weight, you need to get real with yourself and get back to basics. Not only is it important to pay attention to how much you are eating, but what you are eating, when you are eating, why you are eating and how you are eating. Weight loss is not simply about calories in and calories out, it is about taking your whole body and lifestyle into account. If you want to lose weight, and keep it off for the long-term, you need to focus on food quality, creating balanced meals, supporting digestion, adding more natural movement to your day, managing stress and getting good sleep. You don’t need fancy bells, suppliments and pills to lose weight, you need to focus on the basics, do them well and repeat them day after day after day.
So, if you are struggling to lose weight and keep it off, here are 6 of the most common reasons you’re not losing weight, and what to do instead.
1.You Exercise Too Much
You Exercise Too Much-
It’s true that high-intensity interval training (HIIT) boosts your metabolism and workout performance quickly. However, if you’re doing high-intensity workouts every day, the metabolic effects of those workouts begin to diminish. Instead, your body gets stressed out by the over-exercise and starts to slow down its metabolism, actually putting on weight. Some low-impact exercise, like walking, might be a good idea to incorporate into your routine.
2.You Don’t Drink Enough Water
You Don’t Drink Enough Water-
Your body needs water to break down stores of fat. It’s a biological process, and it requires H2O. Breaking down fat is also not a vital process — so if your body’s short on its water supply, it will be one of the first things to stall. To encourage the breakdown of fats stored in your body, stay as hydrated as possible.
3.You’re Stressed
You’re Stressed-
Stress of any kind — body stress, emotional stress, etc. — releases the hormone cortisol, which can cause many side effects including weight gain. To minimize the cortisol in your system, try to keep stress to a minimum. Stress-reduction tactics, such as meditating or listening to music, can also be effective.
4-You’re only restricting calories.
Calories in vs. calories out, right? Wrong. If our bodies were simple math equations we would all be able to lose weight by the flip of a switch, but that’s just not the way things work. Our bodies are smart, and their job is to protect us, and although calorie restriction may work in the short-term, in the long-term it is a flawed plan. The more you cut calories the more your body will adapt and fight against it, so over time, the more you cut your calories, the more your body will slow your metabolic rate, meaning that it will force your body to burn fewer calories
. As you continue to restrict calories, your body will adapt to the amount of energy (calories) that you give it and burn less energy (calories) in order to balance the amount of energy (calories) you are eating. So, in the long-term, your body will burn fewer and fewer calories forcing you to eat fewer and fewer calories in order to continue to lose weight and, at some point, you will just run out of calories to restrict.
5. You’re not sleeping well.
The first and most obvious reason why sleep matters for weight loss is because the amount of sleep you get directly affects how much food you put in your mouth. The later you stay up the more you will eat and snack and the more it will impede your progress. However, the second (and more important) reason why lack of sleep or poor sleep affects weight loss is hormones. Lack of sleep can increase both insulin and leptin levels causing the body to become desensitized to their response. What that means is that insulin is more likely to store food as fat, and due to the reduced sensitivity in leptin, you are more likely to still be hungry after eating
6.You’re not addressing digestion.
Yes, you are what you eat, but just because you put something in your mouth does not mean that it’s going where it needs to go. In order for your body to actually utilize the food that you eat, it must be able to digest and assimilate it appropriately, so although someone may be eating a healthy and well-balanced diet, if you have poor digestion it may not be doing the full job it was intended to do.
-Amit Baisoya , Nutritionist
