Sunday, March 8, 2015

Healthy Weight Loss Why Youre Not Losing Weight



Sometimes, people can diet and work out and track their calories and do everything right—but still not lose weight. I cant begin to tell you how often members, friends and even acquaintances ask me why theyre not losing weight despite doing X, Y or Z. Its one of the most common questions I get as a trainer. Sometimes, the answer isnt that easy to come by.

But usually, when someone seems to be doing the right things but not making progress, a list of possible problems runs through my head. These are the most common scenarios I tend to see that stop people from getting results—and they could be the culprits for your weight woes, too.

So here are a few cold, hard truths about why youre not losing weight. 

Youre eating back all the calories you burn.
When you work out, youre burning extra calories. Thats why exercise is so important in the weight-loss equation. But a lot of people overestimate how much they burn—and even use the "I exercised today" excuse to later overeat, overdrink (think alcohol) or overindulge. How many times have you faced a food temptation and thought, "Well, I worked out today, so its OK this time." Or even, "Ill have this now, but work out extra hard tomorrow to burn it off." If that sounds all-too-familiar, this is one major reason why youre not losing weight. For the exercise to help you lose, you cant re-eat all those extra calories you burned. And in most cases, we overestimate how many calories we actually burned and underestimate how many calories were actually eating, which means using that 3-mile walk (240 calories burned) to justify that restaurant meal (1,000+ calories, anyone?) leaves you in a worse position than if you may realize: at a calorie surplus.

The Takeaway: Exercise can help you lose when youre really using it to burn extra calories, not as a reason to eat more.

Youre relying on exercise alone to do the trick.
Yes, exercising can help you lose weight (and it has so many other health

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