Trying to lose weight can be a confusing and frustrating process. You might think you’re doing all the right things, but even then, some people still don’t see that much progress, if any at all. If that sounds like you, I’ll help you understand why you’re struggling to lose weight, and what you can do to fix that.
Weight loss primarily occurs when you consume less calories than you burn, which puts you in a calorie deficit. Fat is how your body stores energy, so if you consistently take in less energy in the form of calories than your body needs, it’ll gradually start burning fat for additional fuel. Even with other factors that impact weight loss, such as hormones and metabolism, they do so because they can affect your ability to be at a calorie deficit.
In theory, it’s actually pretty straightforward. If you’re not seeing the results you want, this can most likely be attributed to a couple key causes.
You’re Still Eating Too Much
Losing weight isn’t simply about eating less, it’s about eating less than your body needs. While there are plenty of factors that influence how many calories you need to maintain your weight, women typically need an average of 2,000 calories while men need an average of 2,500. This really isn’t that much, and can easily be exceeded if you’re not closely watching what you consume. Just because you’ve reduced your portion sizes doesn’t necessarily mean you’re actually in a calorie deficit.
Even if you do attempt to track your calories, you still might be ingesting more calories than you realize. You might not be reading nutrition labels correctly or you could be underestimating your serving sizes. In addition, there are many ways you could be unknowingly increasing the calorie content of what you eat and drink, which I discuss in my post How to Cut Back on Calories without Dieting. For example, while the vegetables in your salad might be very low in calories, pairing them with a heavy, oil-based dressing might end up adding back all the calories you were hoping to save.
Lastly, maybe you’re just having a hard time sticking to your diet plan. You know how to achieve the necessary deficit to lose weight, but you always end up overeating because you get hungry. This could be due to a variety of reasons, from the foods you’re eating to how you’re eating them. For some helpful tips on combatting a big appetite, I’ve previously written a post on how to reduce hunger when you’re dieting.
You’re Not Burning Enough Calories
Like I mentioned in the beginning, weight loss depends on both the calories coming in and the calories going out. While properly managing your calorie intake is the most effective way to lose weight, optimizing your calorie expenditure can definitely enhance and speed up the process. For example, maybe you’re on a diet plan and had previously been making good progress, but after a few weeks your weight has begun to plateau. Instead of continuing to reduce your calorie consumption, another option could be to burn more calories through more exercise and physical activity.
Despite common belief, going on the treadmill isn’t the most efficient way to burn calories. Instead, high-intensity exercises that really elevate your heart rate are ideal because you can burn a significant number of calories in a short period of time. I suggest several great options in my article Best Cardio Exercises to Burn Calories Quickly, but by no means are you limited to just these.
On the other hand, maybe the issue isn’t with how you work out, but with what you do when you don’t have time to go to the gym or exercise. It’s understandable that you might not have the time to go to work out every day, but on those days, it becomes all the more important that you find ways to stay active and maintain a high daily calorie expenditure. Although walking isn’t the most efficient way to burn calories, it certainly beats sitting around all day. Walking to and from work and choosing hobbies that involve being on your feet rather than sitting down are some easy ways you can maximize the number of calories you burn aside from your dedicated workout sessions.
You’re Burning Fat without Realizing It
Generally speaking, adjusting your calories consumed and calories burned are the predominant ways to ensure you lose weight. If you feel like you have a good grasp on both, yet still aren’t making much progress, you can examine other aspects of your routine, but also consider the fact that it’s entirely possible you’re burning fat without knowing.
If you’re focusing on the number that pops up on the scale every day, then you might believe that just because that number isn’t going down, you’re not achieving weight loss. In reality, however, it can be more complex than that.
More specifically, if you also regularly perform resistance training while trying to lose weight, then you could actually be simultaneously building muscle while reducing fat. This could be why your weight isn’t changing or might even be going up. While this is much harder to achieve for experienced lifters, it’s very possible for beginners.
In addition, day-to-day changes in your weight are impacted by more than just body fat. Water weight, waste, and food volume in your body can play a big role; if anything, fat loss is a very gradual, so large swings in body weight, both up and down, are mostly caused by these other factors.
Lastly, to see better results, all you really might need is a little more patience. Like I said, weight loss is a slow process, and along the way, your body may try to prevent this from happening. By nature, your body doesn’t like being pushed out of its comfort zone, so it might try to hold onto its stored fat and maintain its weight for as long as it can. However, as long as you persist with a proper diet and exercise routine, you’ll eventually start to see a transformation.
Have Trust in What Works
I know the thought of losing weight can be daunting, and actually trying to achieve it might feel impossible at times. As someone who has gone through this journey myself, I definitely experienced all of this in the process. However, like with most things that happen in the human body, losing weight is a scientific process. It can be explained in objective terms and doesn’t vary that much from person to person.
Sure, there are endless routes you can take to achieve it, but the methods that actually work ultimately boil down to the same core principle of being in a calorie deficit. If you understand this concept, and can correctly implement it into your life, this will create the necessary conditions for weight loss to occur.
