Whether it is due to no motivation or unknowingly sabotaging your efforts, it is frustrating not losing weight like we want to.
Here are 22 reasons why you aren’t losing weight broken down into three sections: nutrition, exercise, and other.
Nutrition
The biggest factor why you aren’t losing weight has to do with your nutrition. Calories in vs calories out is very basic and will give you a good idea of what you are doing wrong.
Overeating Food:
Overeating food is by far one of the most popular reasons you aren’t losing weight. Although it is hard to do, you can overeat healthy food.
Tips:
- Plan and prepare meals in advance; know what you are eating and when you are eating it and get it done.
- Remove the guesswork; read labels and understand what you are eating.
- Learn to slow down and enjoy your food. In such a busy world it is hard to slow down, but it’s a must.
Poor Portion Control:
Being unable to consistently control your portions will be a huge reason you don’t lose weight consistently… or at all. Learning how to control how much you eat will be the greatest thing you can do for your weight loss journey.
You can still eat your favorite foods if you are able to have portion control.
Tips:
- Find what helps you stay organized; plan and prepare meals in advance.
- Use tupperware or other items that you can use to separate portions and have control.
- Use food scales and measuring utensils to ensure you aren’t measuring with your stomach.
You Don’t Eat Enough
Believe it or not if you do not eat enough, you will not lose weight. Your body’s metabolism will crash and your body will not burn off calories so easily.
Tips:
- Slowly drop the amount of calories you eat so you ensure you don’t crash your metabolism.
- Utilize a “cheat day” every 2-3 weeks to reward yourself with good food and help spike your metabolism.
You Eat Out Too Much
Eating out too much is a huge obstacle to get over for your weight loss journey. You do not have the same control as you do at home and you are more prone to overeat.
Tips:
- Only eat out occasionally; This gives you something to look forward to.
- Learn to cook; it is the most important skill you can learn.
- Learn to be more efficient with your time. Too many “not enough time” excuses pop up too often.
You Don’t Pay Attention to Labels
Food labels give you an incredible amount of information. Learning to read these are important.
Tips:
- The fewer the ingredients, the better.
- At a bare minimum know how many calories are in a serving, and that you measure the serving.
Too Many Processed Foods
I am a fan of the 80/20 rule; that is 80% healthy foods and 20% what you like. Many people have that switched.
Processed foods can be harder on your body to digest and generally have a lot of calories.
Tips:
- Keep the intake of processed foods to a minimum; enjoy life but use control.
- If you can’t pronounce the ingredients, you may want to try something else.
- The fewer ingredients, the better.
You Eat Too Many Carbs
While carbs seem to get a bad rap, overly processed foods generally are higher in carbs. Excess carbs are stored as fat for energy later. Check out the science behind low-carb diets on overweight individuals.
You Are Trying to Out-Exercise a Bad Diet
Just because you run on the treadmill for hours doesn’t give you an excuse to go eat Chipotle or eat an excessive amount of food.
Tips:
- Find foods that satisfy your hunger and are nutrient dense; it is hard (but possible) to overeat sweet potatoes and chicken breast.
- Don’t justify eating out by the amount of work you put into the gym.
You Have Tried Too Many Fad Diets
Fad diets are bad. There’s nothing worse than hearing someone say how they’ve run x amount of fad diets and they give up trying to lose weight.
The reason you didn’t lose weight because you’ve tried the “get rich overnight” type schemes that simply don’t work. Learning how to utilize the tips I’ve given you in this article and this site will greatly improve your health.
Tips:
- If it has a name, it’s a fad diet
- If it involves a concoction of ingredients that magically help, it’s a fad diet
- If it’s in a magazine, it’s a fad diet
Exercise
You Don’t Get Enough Exercise
Exercise (think: activity) is important to a healthy lifestyle. You don’t have to go to the gym for hours to benefit from getting up and moving around.
Tips:
- Get active and find hobbies and activities you enjoy participating in.
- Don’t limit yourself to just the gym.
You Aren’t Pushing Yourself
Getting up for a leisurely walk is much better than sitting on the couch all day but there will come a time where you must push yourself to make improvements.
Tips:
- Create a log of activities done and strive to do them longer, better, or faster.
- Set activity goals and achieve them.
- Challenge yourself to push harder every day.
You Aren’t Lifting Heavy
Weight training is important for weight loss. More importantly, weight training helps you tone up and get stronger as well. Weight training is important for weight loss and a healthy lifestyle.
Tips:
- Get to the gym and follow a good workout routine.
Other
You Don’t Get Enough Sleep
Getting enough sleep is one of the most important things to maintaining a healthy lifestyle. When you do not get enough sleep, your hormones go crazy, stress levels go up, and your body stores energy instead of burning it.
Tips:
- Make sleeping a priority.
- Follow a strict routine of getting up and going to bed the same time every day.
You Don’t Have Any Support
Having a support system is important to achieving your goals. If you are having trouble finding support from friends and family, look to reach like-minded individuals with similar goals to help support each other.
You Have Emotional Eating Issues
Emotional eating isn’t talked about as much as I feel it should be, and it is a problem. There are many different types of emotional eating and each has their own level of difficulty to fix.
Tips:
- Learn your triggers; whatever emotion triggers you, stay away from it.
- Learn when you are triggered; being able to catch yourself starting to emotional eat will help you stop.
- Focus on your goals whenever you get triggered and realize it is a process to work on.
You Have No Motivation
Weight loss motivation needs to be cultivated daily. If you are wanting to succeed at your goals, you need to visualize them and stay motivated.
You Are Holding Water
Whether it is that time of the month or you are simply bloated, know that holding water will increase your bodyweight.
Tips:
- Eat somewhat consistently. Adding extra carbs or sodium one day can raise how much water you are holding.
You Have Too Many Excuses
Simply put if you want to reach this goal then you cannot have any excuses. You have to do whatever it takes to make it happen.
Tips:
- Whenever you catch yourself coming up with an excuse, stop that train of thought and direct it to visualizing your goals.
You Expect Results Too Quickly
When you start your weight loss journey, you need to realize that you are not going to just lose weight instantly because you’ve picked up a piece of broccoli. Your body has to adjust and start changing gears before you will start noticing changes.
Tips:
- Give your new diet and exercise program at least 1 month before deciding if it is failing you.
- Consistency is key.
You Do Not Have A Plan
You know you want to lose weight, but how much do you want to lose? How soon do you want to lose it? Simply stating you want to lose weight and not coming up with a plan to do so will lead to failure fast.
Tips:
- Write down exactly what you want
- Learn how to create SMART goals
- Learn what it will take to reach those goals
- Just do it
You Don’t Keep A Log
Keeping a log is very important if you want to maintain success. A log will let you look back and see what did and did not work, how long you’ve been doing a particular exercise or diet, and a nifty little history book to show your friends and family how it’s really done.
You Aren’t Consistent
You’ve followed all of these tips yet you still aren’t losing weight.. what gives? The last key to all of this is consistency. Learn to be consistent every day, every week, every month, for every year if you want to achieve your goals.
Learning to be consistent will bleed into other areas of your life and improve every aspect of it.
Tips:
- Create rituals and stick to them
- Don’t be afraid to try new things and find what works best for you
Conclusion
If you’ve made it this far and think that I am telling you all of this on my “high horse” then you are mistaken. I deal with emotional eating and it is still difficult for me to control portions and not go all-out with my eating.
This is a process and this is something that gets easier the more you practice and the harder you try, so don’t let one slip-up ruin your enthusiasm of reaching your goals.
