7 reasons you’re not losing body fat
Has your weight loss hit a plateau? Losing body fat isn’t just a case of cutting out all the foods you enjoy and starving yourself for long periods of time. Dieting can make you miserable, down and grumpy. Have you reached that stage where you feel like you aren’t losing weight anymore? Have you tried everything only to find that no matter what you do the scales aren’t changing and inches are remaining?
It’s time to reassess and look at some of the reasons why you aren’t losing any more body fat. Here’s 7 of the most common ones, here goes…
1. You aren’t tracking your food
If you are on a weight loss regime you should be consuming a set amount of calories for your body type. It should be a calorie deficit ideally in order to lose body fat. If you aren’t tracking your food with a food plan or monitoring what goes in then it’s easy to lose track and consume over your calorie requirements making it hard to lose weight.
2. You aren’t tracking your body measurements properly
A big mistake many dieters make when trying to track body fat is to only go by the scales. When tracking body fat loss you should be measuring the inches too. This way is more accurate, especially if you are weight training because lean muscle weighs more than fat! Track your weight and measurements and record weekly. Also taking visuals in photos to compare progress is a great idea.
3. You aren’t getting enough protein
Eating protein at 25-30% of calories can boost metabolism by 80-100 calories per day and make you automatically eat several hundred fewer calories per day. It can also drastically reduce cravings and desire for snacking. This is partly mediated by protein’s effects on appetite-regulating hormones, such as ghrelin and others.
4. You are eating over your daily maintenance
You need to be on a calorie deficit to lose weight – so your energy expenditure needs to be greater than the fuel going in your body. You may be eating very healthy foods but you still may be going over your daily calorie needs. Work with a nutritionist, personal trainer or use a free calorie calculator to tailor your own food plan.
5. You aren’t exercising enough
Quite possibly the biggest one is exercise. If you aren’t exercising and burning the fuel your putting in you won’t lose weight. Are you doing enough cardio and weights? A nice mixture of the 2 will help greatly with your weight loss journey. It is also very effective at burning belly fat, the harmful “visceral” fat that builds up around the organs and causes disease.
6. You are drinking too much alcohol
Alcohol is catabolic. Your body can’t store it as energy so if you consume it, your body will need to burn it off first before it can work on the body fat. Alcohol is also very high in calories so all round it’s really not worth it is it if you are trying to shed body fat?
7. Your expectations are too high/ crash dieting
Have you expected your body to perform a miracle? Sustained weight loss is not about losing shed loads of weight every week; it’s about losing a healthy amount like 1-2lbs a week. Many TV diets and weight loss clubs don’t teach you how to lose weight properly they use crash dieting principles to get weight off fast but not keep it off. More often the weight comes back on and more!
After reading the above do you think there may be a few obvious reasons now why you aren’t losing body fat? Remember there are no short cuts to healthy weight loss. Slow and steady wins the race and makes for life long changes.
Would you like a meal plan to help help kick start your program?
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