It is so frustrating when you know you are eating healthily and exercising regularly, both according to a plan designed to lose weight, to find the weight simply isn’t shifting – at all, or it is but too slowly. What’s standing in the way of you achieving your weight loss goals? Possibly a combination of factors – some you probably won’t even have considered.
1 Not Enough Water
One of the reasons you aren’t losing weight is because you don’t drink enough water on a regular basis. Water speeds up metabolism and can also help you with portion control.
Frequently asked questions
2 Not Enough Sleep
Good, regular sleep is important for successful weight loss. It gives your body rest between exercise sessions and helps to get you in to a routine.
3 Exercise on Empty Stomach
If you exercise on an empty stomach, your body will effectively shut down and preserve the fats etc. that you do have because it thinks it needs to go in to survival mode. You will burn muscle, not fat.
4 Dog Walking is Your Only Exercise
You think that a fifteen-minute walk with your dog every day is enough to get those pounds to drop.
5 Overeating Healthy Foods
It seems unfair, but overeating healthy is just as bad as treating yourself to more unhealthy foods each day. Too much pasta, dark chocolate, nuts, etc. will stall or hinder your weight loss.
6 Not Enough Protein
High protein foods take longer to digest, meaning that more calories are burned in the process.
7 Only Cardio
You might be stuck in a weight loss rut when you only run on the treadmill. Try working in some weight training too to increase your metabolism.
8 Too Many Cheat Days
A diet should be a healthy but strict food regime, and this means that having just as many cheat days as diet days is just not going to work.
9 No Breakfast
Skipping breakfast is bad for a diet because it means you will be hungrier and more likely to snack throughout the day.
10 No Portion Control
Sometimes healthy food can be made unhealthy simply because you cannot master portion control. Everything in moderation, and that includes your diet foods!
11 Partner Isn’t Doing the Same
It can be really hard to go on a weight loss journey if your boyfriend/partner/hubby or even housemate is still eating the old junk foods at home. It’s easy to slip back.
12 Leave out Entire Food Groups
The key to weight loss is to indulge in a healthy diet that incorporates all the food groups. If you leave some out then your body isn’t getting the love that it needs.
13 Not Enough Veggies
Getting your five to seven a day is vitally important when trying to lose weight. Fewer calories and more nutrients means you are more likely to maintain the new lifestyle.
14 You Eat While Standing
Standing to eat, by the fridge for example, can lead to mindless eating where you intake more calories than you intended.
15 Baggy Clothes
Another of the reasons you aren’t losing weight is that you wear baggy clothes, and therefore get tricked in to a false sense of security about what the extent of your problem might be.
16 You Love Condiments … Too Much
What good is a salad if you make it then drizzle lots of unhealthy sauces and oils on top? Condiments can be more unhealthy than you imagine.
17 Thoughtless Eating
Thoughtless eating is the kind of snacking you do while watching a movie or taking a long train journey. Are you guilty of grabbing the popcorn?
18 You Don’t Slice Your Food
It’s a simple trick, but studies have shown that cutting your food into small pieces can help to control overeating and trick you into thinking you are eating more.
19 Fizzy Drinks
Sugary carbonated drinks are the devil to any diet; you would really be shocked by how many calories etc. are in these liquids. Cut them out!
20 Not Eating Enough
Going on a starvation diet will have the opposite effect of weight loss; instead slowing down your metabolism and there slowing down weight loss.
21 Too Stressed
Stress is one of the key triggers of weight gain, with comfort eating being a universal practice. Try to make time for fun amidst your dieting so you don’t get down.
22 Overeating Fat Free Foods
Just because a product is fat free, is doesn’t mean it is going to be sugar free, and those calories can start to add up.
23 No Food Journal
If you don’t keep an honest food journal, then you won’t be able to identify trouble times and areas that are affecting your diet.
24 Always Dining out
You could be strict at home, but if you dine out a lot there is a danger that the rich foods and alcohol can eat in to the hard work you have been doing.
25 You Never Treat Yourself
Dieters who never allow themselves a little treat are much more likely to snap and binge at some point.
26 Wrong Post Work out Snacks
Just because you have been on a five mile run, it doesn’t mean you can have a couple of candy bars to celebrate!
27 Jet Lag
Do you do a lot of air travel for work? Jet lag is a common cause for ruining a diet because you simply never feel in the right head space to work out.
It is unlikely that any one of these on its own is the cause of you not losing weight but eliminate them and you should find those pounds melt away. Have you identified any of the above as things you need to work on or change?
