10 Reasons Why We Don’t Lose Weight
Have you been on a diet or dieting for most of your life? Have you struggled to understand why you don’t lose weight? Or at least, why you can’t keep any weight loss off for very long (also known as yo-yo dieting)?
Many of us will resort to strange dieting fads, or seek help from different companies, assuming we can’t do it without them.
But our book, SmallerKnickers For Life, aims to change your thinking on dieting, and help you to gain and maintain a healthy weight for life. It’s not just about calories, it’s about a jigsaw puzzle of things that is unique to you. Unfortunately, there’s no magic wand, but once you understand all the pieces, and practice them, you can obtain that healthy lifestyle you’ve been after.
So below are a few reasons why people don’t lose weight, and some ideas on how to change them.
Underestimating The Impact of Our Habits
When we’re on a healthy eating plan and want long term success, we need to reset our mind and body so that they work with us, not against us. We are all creatures of habit, but can you recognise the bad habits that are sabotaging your success? We may try changing them, but it’s easy to slip back into old habits and patterns, unless we’re really aware of what we’re doing and why.
Our brain is designed to adapt its behaviour to change, and the first step is to make your habits conscious. Then start changing the ones that aren’t helping you, one or two at a time. Once they’re mastered, you can move on to others and replace them with helpful habits instead.
Not Getting Enough Sleep
Most of us have suffered a poor night’s sleep at some point in our lives. But continued lack of sleep can deplete our energy and increase our craving for carbs as a boost. We may also feel more emotional, angry or short-tempered. This all increases the chances of gaining weight. It’s believed that sleep-deprived people have reduced levels of leptin (the chemical that makes you feel full) and increased levels of ghrelin (the hunger-stimulating hormone) – not great for weight loss plans.
Some tips include avoiding blue light at bedtime, lowering the room temperature, avoiding stimulants (such as alcohol, coffee and nicotine) and learning how to manage your body’s natural circadian rhythm.
Being Stressed
We know that stress is something we all have to deal with from time to time – and we all have our own tolerances and stress thresholds. Prolonged stress is known to cause multiple illnesses in the body, including inflammation and pain. Additionally, the changes in our body’s chemical balance and the increased negativity can often find us reaching for the food treat and end up overeating.
Learning to control and manage stress firstly requires recognising what is driving the stress and how important it is in reality. Studies around resilience to stress have found it relates to positivity i.e. people who are more positive overall experience less stress. Exercise, meditation, pilates and deep breathing exercises are often among the best ways to reduce stress levels.
Finding Reasons Not to Exercise
Human beings are designed to move, having evolved from the hunter/gatherers foraging for their food. Today we shop online, travel by car/bus/train, use escalators and lifts etc. Joint and muscle stiffness from sitting for long periods, are often the reason why people do even less exercise.
Exercise keeps our bodies healthy, and the increase in energy also makes us feel happy and positive. Feeling good helps motivate you to keep up a healthy lifestyle, so chose exercise that suits your body and it’s current abilities, and is something you really enjoy.
Not Drinking Enough Water
Your body is 50-65% water, and water is needed to transport nutrients around your body, help with digestion and eliminate waste. Your body will signal it’s dehydrated, including the colour of urine, headaches and irritability. Dehydration also increases appetite, and you may experience what you mistake as hunger pains.
Know the minimum recommended daily intake of water and work out ways to ensure you drink it. Also, rather than reaching for food, have a glass of water and wait 15 mins to see if you’re really hungry or not.
Trying Fad Diets
Successful dieting has a bad track record, with many people reporting that they put even more weight back on after each failed attempt. Yo-yo dieting isn’t good for our overall health, and the success of some of the strange diets out there is short-lived at best. To maintain a healthy weight, we need to adopt healthy eating habits over the long-term, rather than resorting to short-term fixes.
We think about food a lot! But it’s meant to be fuel for our body, rather than something to be craved or to fix an emotional problem. Understand what nutrients your body needs – it isn’t a one size fits all, so you need to listen to your body.
Lack of Awareness to Hidden Sugars
Sugar is addictive and in most cases sugar is used as reward rather than a food to satisfy hunger. The recommended daily allowance of “added sugars” is 30g, but did you realise that these are hidden in most of our favourite processed foods eg. tomato sauce, coleslaw and even burger meals! Sugar is disguised under different names, so always read the labels carefully. But also watch out for your latte, fizzy drinks and fruit juices, and anything that is labelled healthy, as you may be surprised at their sugar content.
Unconsciously Reaching For Comfort Foods
We’re often triggered to think about food, even when we’re not hungry. One of those is emotional eating, which includes comfort eating. This is where we reach automatically for certain foods, to give us an emotional hug. Often it’s in relation to something negative (eg bored, lonely, anxious, sad), but often it can be when we’re happy (eg. celebrating, a treat or reward).
Take some time to identify your triggers. Often these are unconscious, so you can ask others to help you realise them. Being aware of them allows us to prepare a different way to react to them.
Believing You’ll Fail
Our underlying beliefs are part of what makes us behave the way we do. We can have beliefs about food (eg. some should be banned), the way we should eat (eg. finish everything on the plate), and why we deserve a treat (eg. having a bad day). But one that will never result in a good lifestyle change, is believing you’ll fail. And as Henry Ford once said “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, either way you are right”. If you believe change isn’t possible or is too difficult, you won’t give yourself the chance.
But change is possible. And a great way of challenging this fear of failure, is to decide to make small improvements daily, and to celebrate every success. Rather than being concerned about the big goals, which can lead to overwhelm and giving up, work out an action plan of smaller steps.
Wanting It, But Not Committing To It
When you’re just “interested” in a healthy lifestyle, you may well come up with excuses for not succeeding, for why you haven’t succeeded or why you can’t. You’ll form general targets, with a few high level steps – and “try”! But if you ‘re fully committed, you’ll do everything in your power to get there.
If you are 100% committed, then Smaller Knickers For Life, the book, will help you to discover how to get there. There are techniques, exercises and practice to do. But we’ve made it fun, engaging, and about discovering your personal strengths to help you succeed this time.
Smaller Knickers For Life, the book is available on Amazon
