Are you simply doomed to be at a weight you aren’t happy with? Despite all that you do you can’t seem to drop the weight. You aren’t eating that much and are staying active, so how could this be?
When most people start to struggle with weight lose we see the common scape goats come up. The big ones include hormonal issues, slowed metabolism, or genetics. Now these are all really important to healthy weight management, but it seems that the minority will fall into these categories.
I know what you are thinking. You must be in one of those categories, but you do everything right and you can’t seem to make that scale budge. While you may be, I want you to consider the possibility that you aren’t. That you body functions normally and there is a different reason you can’t lose the weight.
Weight management is an incredibly complex topic, and I don’t want to discount that in any way. Rarely is there simply one thing you can do to fix it. You probably need to address quite a few things to make significant changes. And while calories in versus calories out is only one piece to the equation, it is a pretty big piece and should be the foundation for what you are trying to do.
The hard part is do you really know how much you are taking in and how much you are expending? I can tell you that you don’t. You can use food logs and heart rate monitors. These things will only get you in the ball park though. They can still be useful but don’t bet on the numbers that you see.
In fact you probably already knew this if you have used an app like My Fitness Pal. One of the biggest mistake apps like this make is when they say if you eat this much and burn this much you will way this much by a certain date. This is borderline irresponsible of them to make claims like this. They have no way to make a prediction like this and to even include it is only a gaurantee to frustrate you.
But, like I said using tools like this can be part of your solution. It at least will make you aware of the quality and quantity of food you are eating.
I wanted to share a study that I hope will open your eyes to why most people are having a hard time losing weight. In fact this study recruiting obese individuals that classified themselves as diet resistant. Meaning that even when they dieted they still couldn’t lose weight.
Since most people are self documenting how much food they eat and how much exercise they perform, they wanted to compare that with what they were actually doing. When the researchers compared what subjects claimed they ate and exercise to what they actually did, the numbers are shocking.
On average participates consumed 47% more calories than they reported. They also reported 51% more activity than they were actually performing.
I couldn’t believe it when I saw these numbers. They ate almost 50% more than they thought. So if they thought they were eating 1200 calories they were really eating 1800. And if they thought they were burning 500 calories it was really 250.
When you are this far off with your calories in and calories out, no wonder it seems like you are doomed. You feel like you are being perfect, but the numbers don’t reflect that.
Maybe the most interesting part of the study, is when participants were asked about their nutrition they claimed that it was healthy despite not being able to lose weight. They also perceived the main cause of their obesity to be genetic and were commonly taking thyroid medication.
It is not the purpose of this post to call you a liar or that you have perfect genetics and an incredible metabolism. The point is to show you that these are not usually the MAIN cause of weight loss issues. Sure they play a role, but the bigger issues are just a lack of understanding how much, on average, you are consuming versus expending.
You might be doing okay during the week, but then each weekend you vastly increase your calories and sit more. This is a main cause of that see saw. You lose a few pounds then gain them right back. There is just not enough consistency.
So it is ok to track your numbers. It can be helpful still. But don’t rely too much on the numbers. Use them to help guide you. The main trick is to be consistent. If you want to see dramatic changes you must habitually practice good habits for long periods of time. Don’t always expect that quick fix and understand that you are going to have to do a lot of work.
If you need help getting back on track make sure you click here to schedule a free consultation where we can help give you a road map to start seeing some of these changes occur.