Can’t Lose Weight
Can’t Lose Weight:
- Can’t Lose Weight? What do you do when you try to lose weight and nothing seems to work?
- You’ve tried eating healthier and exercising, but the scale just won’t budge and it seems like there’s no hope of getting your weight down where you want it to be.
- If this sounds familiar, take heart, because there’s a reason why your body isn’t responding the way you hoped it would and there are things you can do about it to help turn things around.
Reasons You Are Struggling
Can’t Lose Weight there are many reasons why you may be struggling with weight loss. Here are some of them: eating too much, not exercising enough, lack of motivation and focus, taking on too much at once and more.
Each one will stop you from losing weight even if you follow a perfect diet plan and training program. So read on to learn what is stopping you from losing weight so that you can fix it.
Not enough good nutrition
Your body requires all of its vitamins and minerals in order to function properly, meaning you’ll have a hard time losing weight if you don’t eat healthily.
Make sure you eat enough protein, whole grains, fiber, vitamins A and C, and iron in your diet. Eat plenty of lean meats and fish to get good quality protein without consuming saturated fats.
Opt for healthy sources of carbohydrates like brown rice or quinoa instead of breads or pastas made with refined flour.
Whole wheat pasta is okay too but try not to make it a regular part of your diet; high-fiber diets are great for overall health but can make it harder for your body to absorb essential nutrients from food—the bad kind along with those that promote weight loss!
Too much stress
Can’t Lose Weight? We all know how excess stress can affect health in many ways—stress has been linked to sleep problems, high blood pressure, and increased risk of heart disease and stroke.
But it turns out it also impacts your weight. For example, stressful situations can cause levels of cortisol (the hormone that triggers stress) to rise, which in turn causes you to gain abdominal fat.
Researchers suspect that chronic stress leads over time to a depletion of energy stores, such as glucose and lipids.
So if you are having trouble losing weight despite dieting and exercising regularly, make sure your health isn’t being affected by stress or illness like depression or anxiety.
Lack of exercise
If you don’t exercise at all, or if you exercise but still can’t lose weight, it’s possible that your body is working against you.
In some cases, too much stress from work and/or family obligations keeps people from sticking with an exercise routine that would work for them.
But stress also slows down metabolism (which burns calories) and affects how much fat is stored in different areas of our bodies.
Some people are naturally more efficient at storing fat in their hips and thighs because of their hormone levels; for others, storing fat around their middles seems to be a natural tendency.
Disordered eating
Food is fuel for your body. If you eat too much or not enough, you’re going to throw your body out of whack. For many people, disordered eating begins in childhood and carries on into adulthood.
According to a 2010 study by The University of Adelaide’s Research Centre for Women’s Health and Wellbeing, 25 percent of Australian women are restricting their intake of food at any given time.
While dieting can lead some people to feel like they’ve failed at losing weight and often results in emotional distress, eating disorders (such as anorexia nervosa) have even more serious consequences: eating disorders are a leading cause of death among young girls and women across all demographics.
Not enough sleep
Sleep deprivation leads to higher levels of ghrelin, a hormone that increases hunger. One study found that getting just 1/2 hour less sleep than usual caused a decrease in calories burned by 15%. Over time, a deficit of 3,500 calories (or about 1 pound) can easily accumulate simply from eating more at night and sleeping less.
In addition, sleep deprivation can have a significant impact on your mental health. Studies have shown that sleep deprivation can cause depression, anxiety and irritability—all of which affect appetite control.
To lose weight safely but quickly you should cut back on screen time before bed (if possible) and make sure you get enough quality sleep each night.
A failure to plan your day around food
If you take a hit and miss approach by eating whenever you feel like it, you may be unintentionally sabotaging your weight-loss efforts.
Research shows that people who eat most of their meals at regular times tend to lose more weight and keep it off, compared with those who skip breakfast or do other irregular eating patterns.
So how often should you eat? Experts say that your eating schedule should include three main meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner) plus two or three healthy snacks each day.
Some people call it intermittent fasting; others call it time-restricted feeding.
It’s not only about weight loss, it’s about health in general
Keeping track of what you eat and how active you are can help you achieve your ideal weight and maintain a healthy lifestyle.
Use a food journal to write down what you eat, how much, and when. A food journal can help show whether your diet is nutritionally sound and address any issues with portion sizes or allergies.
Keeping track of your activity level in addition to diet habits can also shed light on weight gain. For example, if you notice that on days when you don’t work out (which should be most days), that’s when your food intake tends to creep up too high—that’s a red flag that it’s time for exercise! To best keep track of yourself on paper, use our Food Journal Template.
Prioritizing exercise over diet
Too many people focus on diet first and exercise second. Dieting is a great way to drop pounds, but burning more calories is a better way to drop pounds for good.
Exercise raises your metabolism, which increases your resting energy expenditure (the number of calories you burn at rest).
Plus, being physically active makes it easier for you to be active later in other ways—so you become fitter throughout your day and can play longer with your kids or friends.
By exercising before you eat breakfast, you will feel more energetic during your whole day. Your level of energy should make it easier for you to eat less in general or avoid junk food snacks since physical activity helps suppress hunger pangs as well as boredom-driven eating caused by depression or fatigue.
Too much time spent on social media and mobile apps
These apps can create a false sense of fullness, leading you to eat more than you actually need.
A study published in JAMA Internal Medicine found that participants who reported using social media for at least four hours per day were 40 percent more likely to be overweight or obese than those who said they used it less than an hour per day.
The authors speculate that people who frequently use these platforms are less likely to feel satisfied after eating.
Whether or not it’s an actual cause-and-effect relationship, use of smartphones is almost universally tied with poor sleep quality, which only exacerbates any weight gain concerns.
A bad relationship with your parents or siblings
As a child, did you have a difficult relationship with your parents or siblings (or both)? Your current relationships may have grown out of that difficult experience.
If you have any unresolved issues with your family members, whether they were difficult or supportive, now is an important time to work on resolving them. Reconnecting with people who were close to you when you were younger can bring great joy and re-invigorate old relationships while establishing new ones.
Look at life through a new lens. Look at things from their perspective. Reach out and learn from them. Perhaps it was not them who was difficult but rather something that was happening in your life at that time that caused all of it for everyone involved (you included).
Talk about what happened if there is something specific on your mind.
