7 reasons you cant lose weight, and how to fix them!
- Too impatient! Surprisingly the main reason that people fail to lose weight is not that they are too lazy or lack willpower. On the contrary, the main reason that people fail is that they are too impatient. They think that the harder they work and the more they punish themselves with drastic caloric deprivation, the faster the weight will come off. This is a sure fire recipe for failure. It took years or decades to gain all that fat and you cant expect to turn things around on a dime. It can take a full year or more to get your weight down to healthy levels again.
- Too much exercise! People who are too impatient often think that the more exercise the faster their fat will come off. The problem is that overdoing the exercise is a sure way to get injured and then game over. Things like running are really hard on the body, especially when you are overweight. You have to stick to low impact exercises like walking, swimming, or biking, and even then you have to be careful not to overdo it.
- Too drastic a diet! When people are in a hurry to lose weight, they often think that starving themselves is the solution – bad idea for THREE reasons. A 25% caloric reduction is a good number to target which will allow optimal fat loss without any muscle loss.
- drastic caloric reductions burn off muscle
- drastic caloric reductions cause eating disorders
- drastic caloric reductions lead to feelings of deprivation and disasterous binge
- A bad nutritional plan is why many people fail at weight loss. Its NOT just counting calories and making sure you get enough protein to avoid muscle loss. Successful fat loss is all about hunger management. There are a lot of techniques that help to keep you from being hungry while at a caloric deficit. Low carb, keto and intermittent fasting are three examples. There is no right and no wrong, its a matter of which works best to manage your hunger. Many people who have become obese have done so because they do not understand what good nutrition is. What I STRONGLY suggest is that you use my custommealplanner.com to design yourself a meal plan with a 25% caloric deficit. This will teach you the proper portion sizes and the kinds of foods you need to become accustomed to if you want your weight to stay off long term.
- Micromanaging weight! One huge mistake people make is in trying to micro-manage their weight. Every day they jump on the scale and if their weight is too high they starve themselves, if their weight is down then they reward themselves with junk food – NO! Do NOT micromanage your weight. Choose a good nutritional plan, choose a good exercise plan, and stick to it religiously. Do not make daily or weekly adjustments. Its OK to weigh yourself but only when you have charted it for a month to see how your weight line is trending do you make adjustments. Do NOT adjust your nutrition more often than once a month. Choose a course and stick to it.
- Lack of good support network! This is one of the toughest things to deal with, the fact that your friends and family are not supportive of your weight loss. Rather than rooting you on and telling you that you can do it, hang in there, they tell you to “live a little” and have a piece of birthday cake. Find yourself a good, supportive online community like sweat4health that can help provide the support that your friends and family dont provide.
- Depression and mental illnesses. One last thing that is worth mentioning. Depression is a common cause of weight gain and an obstacle to weight loss. Depression is something that often requires the help of a medical professional to overcome. Same with eating disorders, they require the help of medical professionals.
So I am willing to be that if you failed to lose weight last year, it was because of one or more of the above reasons. So please, use a sensible exercise plan, a sensible nutritional plan, and be patient. It can take a year or more to lose the weight, be patient! You CAN lose weight! Get yourself a good support network like sweat4health and make it happen!
