Top 5 Reasons You Can't Lose Weight

Here are the top 5 reasons why you can’t lose weight and what you can do about it.

1) Too many calories:

If you are eating more calories each day, (or at least on a consistent basis) than you are using, you are not going to lose weight. People will almost always under estimate the amount of calories that they are eating each day. The food industry today is geared towards convincing us to consume as much as possible. This is a good business plan for them, but a bad lifestyle for us. The more that we consume, the more that they profit.

This is why we are told that we need to eat 6-8 small meals a day. This is supposed to keep our blood sugar levels on an even keel and keep our bodies from rebelling against us and going in to “starvation mode“. First of all, I totally disagree that the body will go in to starvation mode from eating less than 6-8 meals a day. I have used intermittent fasting as a way to cut calories and have never had a problem with this phantom “starvation mode”. Although I don’t believe in the tooth fairy or the boogey man either. I guess it’s because I stay very lean by cutting calories and have never experienced the starvation mode, tooth fairy, or the boogey man! I guess I just need to see it to believe it.

Trying to lose weight and exercise properly can be super frustrating, especially if you are not making any consistent progress. Don’t feel bad, at least you’re not trying to run a fitness blog!

Regardless of how many meals that you eat, you need to create a caloric deficit on a consistent basis, in order to lose weight. The more meals that you eat, the more chances that you have to overeat or eat useless calories from drinks, coffee creamers, salad dressing, etc. that you do not even realize you are eating. Keeping a food journal is an excellent way to keep track of what you eat and how many calories you take in each day. If you don’t want to do this all the time, at least do it for around a week. I think that you will be surprised at what you really eat on a weekly basis. Once you see how many calories that you are normally taking in, you can then cut them down and see what results you get. After that, it is just a series of adjustments to keep your calric intake less than the amount that you use.

2) Not enough Exercise:

Between your exercise and diet, you need to create a caloric deficit. This goes back to what we talked about above. Too many calories, regardless of what exercise routine that you do, will not result in weight loss. A good friend of mine once said that, “You can’t out exercise a bad diet.” This is one of the truest things that you will ever hear. Diet is the most important because if you do not have this straight, you are going to just spin your wheels. Once you are eating correctly, you should exercise regularly to increase your metabolism and burn more calories. Exercising regularly is important, but exercising correctly is even more important. This leads us to our next reason.

3) Incorrect exercises to achieve fat loss:

I see people at the gym every day that are overweight and make little progress in their weight loss efforts. They work out hard and are consistent, but make no progress.

Why is this? The main reason is because they are not training correctly to achieve their goals. . . if they even have a goal. The common thing that people usually do when they start to exercise is to either start jogging around the neighborhod, buy a treadmill, or join a gym and use the treadmill. If they join a gym, they may take a spin class or an aerobic class. These are all good to a point and can be a part of your fitness routine, but in order to lose weight, you need to do some form of resistance training.

Thankfully, it is more and more common to see people regardless of age or gender doing resistance training. People are starting to understand the benefits of resistance training and realize that there are many different kinds. It doesn’t have to be in a gym pumping iron like Armold. There are so many routines that are great for this and include strictly bodyweight exercises, resistance bands, light dumbells, and even kettlebells, all of which can be done at home or even outside in nature.

[I think we all had those moments when our jeans didn't fit like they used to! Regardless of where you are at today, you can always start fresh and make progress towards your weight loss goals!]

Resistance training is important because in a nutshell, it will make your lean body mass grow which will burn more calories, while causing your body to burn fat instead of muscle. Of course there is much more to this, but if you just understand that you should be doing it, that is good enough for now.

What about cardio? Well, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t do it, but if you are short on time I would stick with the resistance training. If you have more time, I would do interval cardio training versus steady state cardio after your resistance training.

4) Not being consistent with your diet, exercise, or both:

Eating right and exercising correctly are important, but doing them on a consistent basis are even more important. If you eat perfectly for a month and then fall off the wagon, or eat pretty strictly with an occasional cheat for a year, which do you think will create better results? Of course doing it for a year. If you are consistent, you won’t need to be as strict. This is good because being able to cheat a little will make it easier to stick with it for the long term.

This is the same with exercising. Showing up consistently is half of the battle. As stated above, exercising correctly is the other half. But if you don’t bother exercising at all, it won’t matter what routine you are following. (Or not following, in this case.)

If you are serious about losing weight, this needs to be a lifestyle change, not a diet. If you are thinking of this as a short term approach that you can do for awhile and then go back to your normal life, you are going to be unhappy. If you go back to what you have always done, you will go back to what you always weighed and what you always looked like. Make this a permanent change and you will see permanent results. There is no magic pill or way to cheat the system, which leads us to the last reason why you can’t lose weight.

5) Looking for the elusive magic pill:

The supplement industry is amazingly huge and have some of the best marketers and copywriters working for them. They are incredible at making the average person pull out their credit card and buy the latest breakthrough diet pill. Their ads come in the form of magazine ads, infomercials, radio ads, tv ads, etc. The diet and weight loss niche is huge and ripe for the picking from the supplement industry. How nice would it be if all we had to do was take one of these pills or drink mixes each day and the weight would just fall off of us. It would be great if it did that, but the problem is that we don’t live in the land of make believe, we live in the real world.

People are always searching to find a quick fix for their weight loss problem and these companies are all too happy to take their money and give them little to nothing in return. In this day of the internet and social sites like Myspace and Facebook, believe me if their was something that actually worked, the news would spread like wildfire!

The truth though is that none of these supplements or magic pills work, which is why there are always new ones coming out. If there was the perfect diet and the perfect little magic pill that actually did what they are advertised to do, they would never need to create any new ones. people would be able to just take the pill or follow the diet and the obesity problem in America would be over. We all know that this isn’t reality, but something inside us tells us that maybe, just maybe this one will work.

This is all that the supplement companies need, just a small glimmer of hope and they got you! $39.99 per bottle and 3-6 business days later, you are happy to get your little mail order miracle, only to be disappointed again. Please stop buying in to this hype, literally buying in to it. It will save you money and you can quit trying to cheat the system and begin doing the only thing that has ever worked, hard work and discipline!

So there you have it, the top 5 reasons why you can’t lose weight. All of these reasons will keep you from a prolonged caloric deficit, which should always be your main goal. Without this, you just aren’t going to lose any substantial weight on a consistent basis. I wish I could tell you that it was easy and fast, but I am all about the truth without the hype.

I have summed up this entire post in one sentence below:

“Eat less calories than you use on a consistent basis through diet and proper exercise, without being distracted by the magic pills that cause you to lose more money than weight!”

Learn it, live it, and you will most definitely lose it!

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Tagged as: can't lose weight, cardio, Cardio Training, Physical exercise, rapid weight loss diets, Resistance training, Weight Loss

{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }

Raymond June 21, 2010 at 5:49 am: O know supplements are a waste of time but I still keep an eye open for that wonder powder that will fix all.
I think eating so often is waste of time unless you are feeling hungry otherwise you are just stuffing your guts.
Nice reminders on how to do the business!
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Dave June 21, 2010 at 7:57 pm: A nice and simple approach to getting in shape. If only people didn’t try to make weight loss so complicated. Great summary to steer people in the right direction.
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Darrin June 21, 2010 at 8:24 pm: Excellent tips. I would argue that the importance lies more in the quality of the calories you take in rather than the quantity. Fat storage is regulated primarily by hormones, and it’s much easier to work on that level than consciously restricting calories whenever you are hungry.

Modern diets, high in heavily-processed foods, have been shown to cause leptin- and insulin resistance, both blunting our ability to tell when we are full and causing our bodies to store away fat whether we are exercising or not.

The best solution is to rely on the same foods that allowed our ancestors to effortlessly remain so lean: lots of meat and vegetables, and some nuts, fruits, seeds, and eggs thrown in for good measure.
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admin June 22, 2010 at 9:09 pm: Raymond,
If you ever find the wonder powder that actually works, let me know so I can quit bashing the supplement industry!

Dave,
I think the diet and supplement industry purposely try to make it harder than it is. It’s kind of hard to put “eat less and exercise more” in to a bottle and sell it!

Darren,
I agree with the quality versus the quantity, but if you are eating too many calories to create a caloric deficit, you’re not going to lose weight. It won’t really matter if it is good calories or empty calories. Once you get your calories down then quality quickly becomes very important, like you stated.

I am in the middle of reading the “Primal Blueprint” from Mark Sisson which talks about eating the same way that you mention. It really makes sense to me and has opened my eyes to a lot of different ideas on how to go about your day. Do you agree with what he talks about in his book?
David June 24, 2010 at 4:37 pm: I used to eat 6 meals a day, but I just couldn’t get lean enough that you could actually see any muscle definition. Now I eat 3 meals a day based around lean protein, small amount of fruit and tons of veggies. In fact since I have increased the quantity of veggies in my diet and reduced grains I have been feeling much better, and my sleep has improved too!

And you are absolutely right about the exercise. Everybody seems to think more cardio is the answer, when some short intense resistance training sessions could really help them turn things around. Great post.
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admin June 26, 2010 at 5:39 pm: David,
I really need to eat more fruit and vegetables! I am better than I used to be, but still need to get better. Thank god for intermittent fasting to keep me lean!