Why Am I Not Losing Weight?

Weight loss is easy but it depends on: What you eat, work up a perspiration, and enjoy the rewards of your effort.

But slim down doesn’t always seem that simple.You can feel like you’re doing all the right things  and you might lose some weight at first, but then you might reach the dreaded weight-loss plateau.

I’m sure you’ve been there: You’ve followed your diet and you’re still not losing weight.

Don’t give up. Below you’ll find the reasons to help you start losing weight again.

Reasons You Might Be Struggling

Having Unrealistic Weight-Loss Expectations

To be successful with losing weight, you have to have realistic as well as healthy expectations. And patience! You wouldn't lose it all in a week or month either.

You might find that you are not actually losing weight but your body composition is changing.When you lose body fat, you’ll be able to see it in how your clothes fit and in your pictures.

You Don’t Eat Enough Food

Super low-calorie and elimination diets - like those that are probably clogging up your social media feed right now and ignore the fact that food is fuel. Calories, that includes often-maligned carbohydrates and fat, are required for you to live and breathe… let alone to lose weight in a healthy way.

If you do not take in enough calories, you may not be as fast and as strong as you could be, and may even break down rather than build up your muscles.

“One of these mechanisms may drop the metabolism as low as possible. In general, we recommend, unless under medical supervision, should not keep your calories below 1,200 calories per day.”

You’re Not Eating Carbohydrates (or Protein or Fat)

For a healthy diet - whether or not you are trying to lose weight - the calories you eat should come from a combination of healthy carbohydrates, proteins, and fats.

Carbohydrates provide the body with the energy it needs and are a good source of many vitamins and minerals.Carbohydrates are all about energy and are found in foods like fruits, vegetables, breads, pasta, and dairy products.

Your body utilizes these foods to make glucose, which is your body's main vitality(energy)  source.

Whole-food sources of unrefined carbs are vital to keeping energy levels up so that you can crush your workouts. The fiber found in these carbohydrates, will help you stay full and help you be less likely to snack on something unhealthy.

In addition, when you eat less carbs, your body does not stock as much glycogen, the stored form of your body’s primary fuel source, glucose. And since each gram of glycogen contains three grams of water, the scale will reflect that reduction in water weight. But that’s all it is: water weight. So, while the lower number might be encouraging, it doesn’t reflect your progress toward your ultimate goal that is weight loss.

In addition to losing primarily water weight, to make less in extent too far on carbs can leave you chronically low on energy, which can hamper your weight-loss efforts and keeps you more sedentary and lowers your workout performance.

You also need protein and fat. Both protein and fat will help you feel full, but fat also helps regulate your hormones and protein is vital to building lean muscle mass, the primary determinant factor of your metabolic rate. The more muscle you have results in faster your metabolism.

Trying to Change Your Whole Lifestyle At Once

Going on a diet sounds like it’s just one simple change in life. But, in reality, following a healthy diet and weight-loss plan may include  learning new recipes, shopping for new foods, changing how you spend your time after work, potentially getting up earlier to work out, fighting cravings for junk food, drinking more water, increasing your step count and so much more.

That’s a lot to take on at once and that can leave you feeling overwhelmed.

That’s why a habit-based approach can help, especially to them who have a history of going on and off diets.

Always Try to focus on changing one thing at a time, and practicing that change until it’s really cemented, and then work on adding in the next one. Some good examples of healthy changes:

•         Try to eat vegetables in at least two meals each day
•          Eat no less than one meal a day without distractions.
•          Cut soda  from your diet
•          Add a 15-minute walking after lunch or diner
•          Drink enough water
•          Up the intensity of your workout program

You Don’t Get Enough Good Sleep

Just because you can “power through” on not much sleep, you cannot thrive that way - especially when it comes to weight loss.

When we sleep, body fat makes two important hormones, leptin and adiponectin.Leptin is our body’s best natural appetite-suppressing hormone, while adiponectin is helpful in making our body respond better to insulin.

We all know that  inadequate sleep, in addition to being tired is every dieter’s worst enemy, we will be hungry and crave carbohydrates. 

In addition, one small study found that when dieters slept for only 5 and half hours, they experienced 55% less weight loss and also saw their lean body mass decrease compared with those in the study who got 8 and hours of sleep.

Stop treating sleep as a negotiable when things get busy. To set yourself up for success, establish a regular sleep schedule, and then schedule everything else on your to-do list around it.