The first week of a plan you follow often gives promising results, because of weight loss but also partly due to loss of body weight in water (eg. water that you retain in excess in your body).
The weeks that follow do not often give the same performance in terms of amount of weight lost, and often the followers of regime lament “Why didn’t I lose weight this week?” drop out of the plan, returning to their old eating habits (often unbalanced), returning all the weight they have managed to lose (in the first good week) or more (experiencing the yo-yo effect).
What went wrong? What factors have caused you not lose weight? Many people sabotage their own system by using tricks that do not work. Here is a list of the 6 most common reasons to answer your question “Why can’t I lose weight?” :
- Reduction of severe daily calorie intake: When you make a plan, you want to lose weight quickly – as soon as possible. Often, you want to force the weight off very quickly, so you severely decrease your daily caloric intake to achieve this rapid weight loss. Now, you must know that a severe reduction of daily calorie intake may have the exact opposite effect that you would think, causing your system to fail. Your body enters a starvation mode; your metabolism slows and weight loss stops, achieving what experts call a plateau. You will then ask “Why did I not lose weight?”. Most people who are dieting are becoming frustrated at this point and return to their old eating habits. But with a slower metabolism, weight comes back faster than it had been lost. Try not to drop below 1200 calories per day when you go on a diet.
- Remove the fat from a diet: Your body needs some fat to absorb vitamins and other nutrients. Fat also helps you feel more satisfied. Removing all fat from your diet, including good monounsaturated fat, makes you hungry all the time during your plan. Now a follower of regime that is hungry or over-consumption may be the differences of food. Add some “good fats” at each meal and snack during the duration of your plan and you’ll feel more satisfied, will be less likely to sabotage your diet.
- Eat only foods low in sugar for a plan; A healthy diet includes foods low in carbohydrates such as fresh fruits and vegetables, but trying to have a diet too depleted in carbohydrates (sugars included) and the long term effect is generally not feasible. Add foods rich in fiber, low fat carbohydrates in your diet but do not limit yourself to only eat foods low in carbohydrates.
- Eat healthy foods at will: Since it is healthy food, you say you can eat at will during a diet. The problem is that by doing so, you sabotage your diet. In fact, all foods provide calories, even healthy foods that are low in fat. The guideline for a successful plan is to work your body to burn more calories than you consume. And if you consume 3,500 calories per day by eating too many healthy foods low in fat and you do not burn 2,500, you will not lose weight. You will gain weight.
- You allow one cheat day per week to the plan: This is an old trick to avoid cracking during a diet. However, you must understand that a cheat dayonly works if you eat in small quantities (eg. eat 1 piece of cheese cake or anything else you love once a week), especially not in large quantities, especially during 1 full day. Indeed, in theory, allowing a cheat day can help you stay on your diet, but if you eat at will (just because you’re entitled to a day of dietary indifference), you’ll eat enough calories during that day to catch up all the calories you have saved earlier in the week.
- Make an Exercise program: This may seem contradictory at first, but if you decide to make a few hours of exercise every day to be able to eat more (which is a very bad idea since you should not be rewarded with junk food after exercise), or to burn more calories to lose weight faster, so you you’ll burn out faster. Muscles aching, time constraints, etc. will eventually make you want to skip a long and intense exercise program. Instead of trying to force yourself to do excessive exercises every day, try instead 30 minutes of exercise per day, any physical activity that you enjoy doing (not necessarily in the gym). This reasonable pace is sustainable for you in the long term, and help you not only lose weight but also to stabilize it.
A slow weight loss, moderate and steady is the key to successful dieting. Do not try to lose weight too fast by doing things in excess!
