Reasons Why You Cannot Lose Weight
When you reach a point where you cannot lose weight no matter what you do, you may feel like throwing in the towel and giving up for good. Don’t! There are likely some very simple explanations why you cannot lose weight, and once you resolve them the weight should start coming off.
- You Are Eating Too Much
Sometimes you don’t realize just how many calories a food or drink has, so you ingest WAY MORE calories than you intend to. Make a list of everything you typically eat and drink in a day, and calculate how many calories it adds up to. A simple formula to determine your daily caloric needs is to multiply your current weight by 10. That gives you the amount of calories you would need to consume to maintain your current weight. To lose weight you can reduce the number of calories by 500 daily. So, if you need to eat 2,000 calories to maintain your weight, you would want to cut down to approximately 1,500 to lose weight.
- You Aren’t Eating Enough
Believe it or not, eating too LITTLE can also stall your weight loss! Your body feels like it’s facing a famine so your metabolism slows down and it becomes very hard to lose weight. Once again, figure out how many calories you are eating daily and if necessary you may have to bump it up a little bit. However, don’t bump it up by eating junk food. Instead, opt for higher-calorie healthy foods, like drizzling some olive oil on your salad, or eating an ounce or two of nuts for a snack.
- You Aren’t Active Enough
You cannot lose weight easily if you don’t exercise because working out helps you avoid having to reduce your caloric intake too low. If you can reduce your caloric intake by about 500 calories a day, AND burn 500 calories a day working out, you’re on track to easily lose up to 2 pounds per week.
- Your Diet is Poor Quality
What kinds of foods are you eating each day? Are you eating mostly whole, natural foods, or do you mostly eat packaged foods that are high in fat, sugar and sodium? Needless to say, your weight loss will be much easier if you feed your body GOOD QUALITY foods! Your body needs lots of vitamins, minerals and nutrients, so be sure to provide them with the foods you eat, and you may even want to take a high-quality multi-vitamin too.
- Medical Reasons
If you still cannot lose weight even though you have addressed all of the previous issues, there may be some medical reasons for your sluggish weight loss. Two that come to mind are an under-active thyroid gland, or a medication you are taking that is interfering with weight loss. Both of these things are well-known for slowing down your ability to release excess weight, and you should speak to your doctor to find out what’s really going on.
No matter what else you do, don’t lose hope! Just because you cannot lose weight easily does not mean you can’t reach your weight loss and fitness goals; you just may have to be a little more determined to get there than the average person.
