Why Can't I Lose Weight?
Strength
- by Eric Elliott, Nutrition Coach
Sometimes, no matter what you’re doing, the scale won’t budge. I’m eating clean you’ll say, I’m watching what I eat you might add, but nothing is happening.
WHY?!
Unfortunately, there are a plethora of reasons why you can’t seem to lose weight. Let’s go over a few.
1.You’re eating too much and not moving enough.
This one is a novel concept and elementally simple.
You’re likely eating too much and simply not moving enough.
I know the media often berates the narrative of move more, eat less as the way to fixing North America’s obesity epidemic and from an over simplistic view, it’s true.
The way to create weight loss, not just fat loss, is quite simple and has been proven over and over again
Get into a caloric deficit through either eating less, moving more, or both. I’m not kidding, it’s that easy.
Assuming all things normal, if you’re eating to satiety before and you simply reduce the quantity of your foods and start exercising a little bit more, you can start to see some drastic movement on the scale and in the mirror.
This is part of the reason there’s been an explosion in the fitness industry over the last decade and why approximately half of America uses fitness trackers on a daily basis that monitors, among other things, steps taken, and calories burned (to some degree).
Sometimes you might have to do both, meaning that improving the way you eat might not be enough to get things moving in the right direction without increasing your NEAT (more on that later) and exercise daily.
2. You aren’t going to bed.
Get your sleep. It’s not a myth, sleeping, when it comes to weight loss and vitality, matters. A lot.
You might not realize it, but sleep is actually hugely important when it comes to losing weight and getting the body of your dreams (pun intended).
In general, children and adults who get little sleep have larger waistlines, high body fat percentages and have higher numbers on the scale.
It’s also been shown that just one night of sleep deprivation can lead to a significant reduction in insulin sensitivity, which means that your body isn’t metabolizing carbohydrates as efficiently.
This means you could be adding fat unexpectedly through just not being able to handle your carbs.
What happens when you don’t sleep is that you generally increase your levels of cortisol.
Cortisol, for those of you who aren’t familiar, is our body’s stress hormone released when we are stressed and aids in the metabolism of fat, protein and carbs. It’s the body’s built in alarm system.
The only problem is if we are constantly secreting more and more cortisol, we can’t sleep and our body holds onto any ounce of body fat it can get.
From an evolutionary standpoint, if our body was stressed out (either from running away from a Sabre-tooth tiger, not having enough food or struggling to make a fire) our body held onto fat as a way of survival because we simply didn’t know when we would be able to eat again.
Your body has changed since then, but a lot of the same principles apply today.
This leaves out the point that if you’re not sleeping, your body is generally energy deprived and looking for all means of easy energy (empty calories aka junk food) it can get.
Dovetail poor decision-making ability because of lack of energy and sleep deprivation and what do you get?
You, shoveling a sleeve of Oreos into your mouth at 9 o’clock at night.
Go to bed. Plain and simple.
3. Increase your NEAT
Non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT), the cute and scientific way of saying all the exercise that isn’t actual exercise.
Fidgeting, walking around, breathing, cooking, literally anything that involves moving around and burning calories is important to burning fat.
While basal metabolic rate accounts for most of the total daily calorie expenditure, with exercise coming in closely after that, NEAT can account for between 10-50 percent of total daily energy expenditure.
That can make a significant impact when it comes to how many calories you’re burning per day and then how much fat you’re able to burn on the scale.
It should be noted that increasing your NEAT does not mean exercising more.
Cruising on your bike where your heart rate is relatively low (180-age) would be considered NEAT but you are telling me you just like to run so you run an extra 20 km per week, does not count as NEAT. That’s exercise. Don’t fool yourself.
When you look at a variety of people who are “naturally lean,” there’s a good chance that their NEAT is higher than average.
How do you do this?
Simple, get out and get your 10,000 steps a day.
Walk with your dog, walk with a friend.
Get out and get moving.
Sitting down is one of the worst things we can do for our weight loss goals and one of the easiest low-hanging fruit problems that we can fix.
4. You’re not tracking as accurately as you might think
When people start working on their nutrition, one of my first recommendations is for them to start tracking their eating.
In this instance, the typical response is either in support, or in direct contrast because “tracking is too much work.”
And I do get it. For some people, weighing and measuring isn’t the first place we need to go and we might not actually ever need to go there.
However, if you’re in a weight loss plateau, it can be extremely important to get diligent about what you’re tracking.
For starters, your servings might just be a little bit off.
Think about that “tablespoon” of peanut butter you had on your toast this morning. Was it really 15 grams--the equivalent of one serving?
(I’m convinced over half of the North America would have a panic attack if they saw what one serving of peanut butter looks like).
Then think about some of the pickings you had throughout the day that you just didn’t add to your tracking.
The crust off your kids’ grilled cheese sandwiches when they were done, the fun-sized candy bars you took from reception at work or the handfuls of movie popcorn you had on the weekend--these things all add up and can reach a drastic number of calories that you simply weren’t accounting for before.
Taking a close look at your food diary/journal with someone who knows what to look for is a great exercise in improving your overall success with weight loss.
5. You’re not eating enough
Given the answer for number one, this one might seem bizarre but it’s true.
Despite society telling you to move more and eat less, some people have damaged their metabolism to the point where there is no lower.
This is because of the principle of metabolic flexibility or adaptation.
What this means is that your metabolism can adjust based on the amount of food you’re taking in. I’ll use the analogy of a budget, like the episode of the Office when Oscar explains it to Michael.
Your mommy and daddy give you $5 to run a lemonade stand but you find out it only costs you $4 to run the stand. Now, you can give the $1 back to mom and dad but then they’ll know next time it only costs $4 to run the stand.
In this example, mom and dad are your body and you running the stand is your metabolism.
If you start out by eating 2,200 calories per day but drop down to 1,800 to say lose weight in a caloric deficit, sure you’re going to get some weight loss but eventually your body will realize what’s going on and adjust its daily expenditure so that you’re no longer burning 2,200 calories a day, you’re burning 1,800 and thus weight loss stops.
You reduce calories again, repeat the cycle a few times and next thing you know you’re eating half a chicken breast, one stalk of broccoli per day and can’t see the scale move.
What needs to happen instead is begging a reverse diet. Gradually, you start adding more and more calories to stimulate the metabolism into burning more calories so you can burn fat.
In a short example, I was once 213 pounds eating 1,600 calories per day. Over two years, I doubled my caloric intake, kept my exercise levels the same and dropped more than 20 pounds. No deficit, just feeding my body to help stimulate the metabolism.
Sometimes you have to go up in order to go down. It doesn’t always work as simple as that, but in that situation, you have two options:
- Eat less, somehow, continue to see no results and feel worse.
- Start to feel better and see the scale maybe move up slightly, move down or remain the same.
Seems like an easy solution to me.
If you fall into one (or more) of those categories we’re here to help. Shoot us an email nutrition@crossfitcurriebarracks.com and we’ll get you moving in the right direction.
Ps. That direction is a straight line to feeling great with the body you deserve.
