Losing weight seems like it
should be easy: eat less and move more. But people who try it soon find out
that it is anything but straightforward. Shedding the pounds often requires
making wholesale changes to your lifestyle, altering many of your most cherished
habits - such as eating a gallon of ice cream in front of the television in the
evening.
Sometimes, though, you can stick
doggedly to your protocol and still find that the number on the weighing scales
isn’t going down. What the heck is going on?
In this post, we’re going to take
a look at some of the most common reasons people don’t lose weight, no matter
how hard they try. The purpose is to help encourage you if you’re struggling to
shed the pounds and provide you with the insights you need to achieve lasting
success.
You’re “Dieting”
While dieting is the primary
approach for weight loss, evidence suggests that it probably isn’t a good idea.
Ninety-five percent of people who go on diets end up gaining all the weight
that they lost and more within five years. In many cases, it is better never to
have gone on a diet in the first place.
Traditional dieting doesn’t work
for two reasons. The first is psychological. The average person can’t live the
rest of their days in a reduced-calorie state, eating frugally all the time in
the hope that they will get the figure that they want. Eventually, they give in
to “temptation” and eat
something that they want. Then, when they fail, they throw their hands up
in the air and give up. Slipping up once tends to be interpreted as “not having
the willpower to see the diet through.”
The other reason traditional
diets don’t work is biological. After a few months, your body is crying out for
calories, and it will do pretty much whatever it can to get them. You feel
compelled to eat, and there’s not much you can do to stop it. It’s basic
survival.
Here’s a tip: don’t diet.
Instead, change your routine in sustainable ways. Focus on making 80 percent of
your meals healthy, and don’t sweat the rest. Eventually, you’ll lose weight
naturally, become more robust, and, hopefully, won’t have so many cravings for
junk.
You’re Not Eating Whole Foods
Have you ever looked at someone
in their forties and fifties who is lean and asked yourself how they do it? You
might be tempted to chalk it up to genetics (which is sometimes the case), but
more often than not, it’s related to their dietary habits.
For years, scientists have known
that people who eat so-called “whole foods” have far leaner physiques than
those who do not. Whole
foods seem to foster metabolic changes that keep fat at bay and make it
easy to maintain an ideal weight. Just eating plants “as they come out of the
ground” seems to change the body in a way that refined foods do not.
Swapping to whole foods is pretty
straightforward. Instead of eating cereal from a packet in the morning, swap to
oatmeal. For your lunchtime sandwich, ditch the white bread and choose
wholemeal instead, with homemade hummus and salad filling. And for dinner, base
your meals around beans and vegetables. Eat fruit for
dessert. Avoid anything heavily processed or that comes ready-made in a
packet. It probably isn’t doing you much good.
You’re Struggling To Sleep
Research suggests that people who
struggle to sleep tend to be the most prone to gaining weight. When you don’t
get enough shut-eye, you put your body into fat storage mode and disrupt your
whole rhythm. Instead of eating most of your calories towards the beginning of
the day, you save them for the end, leading to even more sleep
disruption.
Getting enough sleep is an
essential component of weight maintenance. If you’re struggling with your
sleep, try to stop eating around four hours before you go to bed, avoid blue
lights and, if you’re stressed, find an activity that allows you to
unwind.
You Have Unrealistic
Expectations
Before and after shots of radical
body transformations on social media make it seem as if it is simple to go from
one kind of body to another. The truth, however, is that people who achieve
these incredible feats of weight loss often spend years trying to achieve it
and do grueling workouts to make it happen.
While diet is the most crucial
component of any weight loss regime, many people supplement too for added
effect. Ordering Orlistat
online, for example, is a way to reduce the amount of fat that the body
absorbs from the diet, reducing total calorie intake. Don’t be surprised to
find that when you dig a little deeper, many people on these transformations
use more than food and exercise to shed the pounds. Sometimes losing weight
calls for radical action.
You Spend All Day Sitting Down
Sitting down all day is not good
for the human body. We’re designed to be always on the move, looking for food,
especially in the morning.
Most people, however, roll out of
bed, get in their car, drive to work, sit at their desk all day, and then drive
back to slump in front of the TV in the evening - an insufficient level of
activity to stay lean.
The good news is that you don’t
need a tremendous amount of activity to keep your metabolism and weight in
check. Many doctors recommend getting
up from your desk every hour or so to take a quick stroll. It doesn’t have
to be for very long - just something that gets your blood flowing and
challenges your cardiovascular system for a few minutes. A brisk walk to the
water dispenser ought to do the trick.
You’re Eating Out Too Much
There’s a big difference between
the food you prepare at home and the food you eat out. Researchers have found
that home-cooked foot contains vastly less salt, sugar, and fat than
equivalents made outside of the house - and more calories.
If you want to lose weight,
therefore, you’re better hosting dinner parties than going out to the nearest
food joint with your friends.
You Have A Medical Condition That
Makes Weight Loss More Difficult
Some people have medical
conditions that make weight loss significantly more challenging, these include
polycystic ovarian syndrome, sleep apnea, and the most famous,
hypothyroidism.
If you’re struggling to
lose weight, it might be because you have one or more of these conditions.
If you’re not sure you have a disease, go to the doctor’s office to find
out.
You Eat For Emotional Reasons
If you have a stressful life - as
most people do - you may find that you eat for emotional reasons. While you
know that some of the foods that you put in your mouth are getting in the way
of your weight loss plans, you do it anyway because it makes you feel
better.
Eating for emotional reasons is
more common than you might think. Furthermore, many people do it without even
realizing it. They get home from work, feel bad, and then immediately go to the
fridge to find a quick pick-me-up. More often than not, the foods that they
choose are unhealthy.
The trick here, strangely, is to
use diet to adjust how you feel. Often the better you eat, the more in love
with life you become, and the less stress affects you.
If you struggle to lose weight,
these insights should help. Don’t fall into any of the above weight-loss traps
if you can avoid it.
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