Sunday 3 March 2013

5 reasons you're not losing weight




If I had a £1 for each time I am asked why despite a healthy diet someone is unable to lose weight, I would be sunning myself somewhere exotic writing my blog!   It’s a question that pops up so often, I thought I would share with you a few of the most common reasons.

  1. How healthy is your diet?
Quite often, when we dig a little deeper, it’s not very healthy at all.  Lots of low fat, high hidden sugar foods that have the blood sugar up and down like a roller coaster.  Remember, to make a food taste good, if you take out the fat, you have to replace it with something which in most cases will be some form of sugar. Taking in all this sugar can get us locked into a cycle of craving more and more.  Balancing your blood sugar level is key to achieving long term weight loss – sugar is the enemy, not fat!   Check out some of the foods labelled as “healthy” in your cupboards, particularly breakfast cereals/muesli’s, low fat yoghurts, no surprises if sugar is up in the top 3 in the list of ingredients.

  1.  Not eating enough calories
Yes, you read that right, while eating too many calories is the obvious answer, eating too little is very common if someone is trying to shift weight quickly.
Often people cut their food intake to very low levels thinking less is better. This is counter productive as all that happens is your body slows down its metabolism (the amount of calories we burn at rest) and holds onto the fat that it thinks it may need later. This will cause your body to make less energy and produce less heat so that you will end up feeling tired and cold. You will also feel hungry, making it harder to continue losing fat.  It is very difficult to keep the weight off if you lose it too quickly.  Rapid weight loss is short term weight loss.

  1. Alcohol
Aside from providing empty calories, alcohol will make achieving a slimmer body more of a struggle.  This is because alcohol contains several toxins that the liver will want to get rid of or metabolise as quickly as possible.  The problem is that your liver cannot metabolise alcohol and fat or carbohydrates at the same time so if its busy metabolising the alcohol, guess what’s happening to the fats and carbohydrates.  Yep they will be stored as fat, for men usually the “beer belly” and for women around the hips and thighs.  So if you are drinking more than once a week be aware that you will be slowing down your metabolism making your weight loss efforts much more difficult.

  1. No Excuses
A tricky one, I know, because we are all very busy these days.  However health and fitness need to become a priority.  If you are too busy to exercise (I would say this is the most common excuse I hear), you will have to accept the fact that you will never lose those excess pounds.  Think about all of the things which take up 30 minutes of your day – television, face book, ebay, reading the papers etc and then ask yourself if  investing that time in your body, your current and future health and wellbeing would be worth the trade off.  I have never worked with anyone who can’t find a way to fit some exercise into their weekly routine.

  1. Dieting v lifestyle change
All diets work for a while as long as you stick to them.  But who wants to be on a diet forever?  Food is one of the great pleasures in life.  It supplies us with energy, lifts our mood, balances our hormones and keeps our immune system healthy. If you view it in this way and choose healthy foods that are good for you, not only will the weight drop off but you will feel great.  It’s when you think of food as “bad” that you get stuck in that never ending cycle of deprivation and reward.  Inevitably the “reward “  ends up being a  blow out on sugary, fatty foods that give you a quick buzz followed by those feelings of sluggishness,  guilt and self hatred, so starting the vicious cycle again. 

Its time to adopt some healthy lifestyle changes and ditch the diet for good!

So there are my top 5 reasons that might be hampering your weight loss efforts, do they apply to you?  Let me know.

Have a Happy, healthy week

Marie  x

No comments:

Post a Comment