Why You Won’t Lose Weight (Part 1)
There are a number of reasons why you may fail to reach your weight loss goals, and most of them are completely under your control. This article will be a 2 part series where we will discuss a few of the most common reasons why you are not losing the weight you want to lose. If you are struggling to lose weight and can’t seem to understand why, I hope this article will be a reality check for you.
Reason #1 That You Won’t Lose Weight: You’re Too Lazy
I don’t mean that you’re lazy in the sense that you’re not working out enough or pushing yourself hard enough in the gym. I mean that you’re too lazy to fix your bad diet. If you remember from a few articles back, you cannot exercise enough to make up for a crappy diet. Changing your diet takes concentrated effort, and you cannot just wing it. In order to assure that you’re not eating too much, tracking your calories is an absolute MUST, especially if you are new to weight loss. It’s really not that hard, as calorie-tracking apps such as MyFitnessPal offer you the ability to scan barcodes on food packages so you don’t have to manually enter everything. Also, you can get a high quality food scale for about $10-15 on Amazon. I have had this one for two years now and it has served me well. If you’re serious about losing weight, you should be tracking every single thing that you eat and drink; even things you may not think you need to track such as dressings, cooking oils, seasonings, sauces, alcohol, and any other beverage besides water.
Reason #2 That You Won’t Lose Weight: You’re Lying to Yourself (and Your Trainer)
This section will be a little lengthy because I think it is the most important one to address. Without a doubt, this is my biggest pet peeve when it comes to helping people lose weight. “I’m only eating 1,000 calories per day and I still can’t lose weight!” 9.99999 times out of 10, statements similar to this are blatantly false. As a trainer/coach, I hear things like this all the time and I’m going to do my best to explain why they annoy me to no end. At its simplest level, losing weight is just a math problem. Weight loss will occur NO MATTER WHAT as long as you are consistently eating fewer calories than you are burning on a daily basis. This is true for 100% of people, 100% of the time. Plug in some numbers into this BMR calculator (this estimates the amount of calories you burn per day just by being alive, not even counting the calories you burn during exercise) , and it’s not hard to see that a statement such as the example above about only eating 1,000 calories and not losing weight is ridiculous.
I think people make these kinds of statements for a few reasons. One is that they don’t want to admit to themselves or their trainer how much they are actually eating because their ego is involved, and they are scared of being judged. This is silly because if you are paying somebody to help you lose weight, they need to know exactly how much you are eating, not just what you feel comfortable admitting that you’re eating. Another reason people lie about their caloric intake is that they aren’t actually tracking their intake. Refer back to point 1. Lastly if people are tracking, they might not be tracking everything. For example, maybe somebody tracks the solid foods that they eat for their meals throughout the day, but forget about tracking the 3 handfuls of nuts they had throughout the day, the extra ranch dressing they ordered with dinner, and the 2 drinks they had with dinner. Sometimes people don’t think it’s necessary to count just 1 cookie they had, but in the end, it all matters.
I hope these two reasons can be an eye opener for some of you to why you are not losing weight. Next week we will talk about two other reasons that can be affecting your progress.