5 reasons you're not losing weight. Great article

VegnStrong

Just sharing a link here, most may already know this but its a great reminder. just copy and paste... http://bit.ly/1tT0NRv

Kalikel

That's some ding-dong's blog.

What a waste of a copy and paste.

Liftng4Lis

That's some ding-dong's blog.

What a waste of a copy and paste.

LMFAO Kal!
+1

VegnStrong

Well i think it maybe helpful to some as it was for me.. As i said most may already know this but these are important things to remember. Alot of things play into losing weight, its how we treat our bodies, that give us the results we want.

4legsRbetterthan2

I can agree that getting enough sleep and having less stress in life makes losing weight easier (and is better for your general health). The decreased metabolism due to calorie cuttings is not scientifically sound.

zyxst

No wonder my husband can't lose weight. He only sleep 5-6 hours a night!

BrianSharpe

I think the only thing the author got right was sleep.

TriLifter

5 reasons you're not losing weight

I think one of the biggest lies on the internet and in health magazine is that weight loss is a simple equation.

Calories in versus calories out.

If weight loss was in fact that simple, I'd venture to guess women [and men!] would be a lot less frustrated with the scale. But unfortunately, weight loss is much more than a simple equation.

Simply put, losing weight and even maintaining a healthy weight is a delicate balance of nutrition, exercise, sleep and stress management.

If one of those four is thrown to the curb, long term weight loss or weight maintenance probably isn't going to happen. Even if you're eating super-duper-kale-at-every-meal healthy and exercising as if it's your full time job, but you're only getting 6 hours of sleep every night and relying on a strong cup of coffee to get you going in the morning....you're likely not going to lose weight. Sleep is HUGE in terms of weight maintenance and weight loss. Or let's say you are getting a restful 8 hours every night, eating clean as a whistle, and exercising 6 days a week but you're so stressed 24/7 you snap at the littlest things...the scale probably isn't budging.

You get my point.

The thing is, in addition to stress from our day to day lives, poor nutrition, lack of sleep, or too much or too little exercise is added stress on our body. And stress is the Great Wall of China when it comes to weight loss.

So before you go one more day being frustrated because your hard efforts aren't getting you where you want, let's take a look at the entire picture.

First things first, is your body actually in a place where it would be healthy to lose weight?
That's the big question.
Becuase if we try to fight our bodies natural shape and size, it's going to be a hard, uphill battle that causes more damage to your health than good.

Next, are you eating enough? You cannot continue to cut calories day in and day in out because our bodies are smart and they catch on. Over time your metabolism will slow in order to conserve energy [because you aren't giving the body enough energy!] and your body is then able to subsist off less and less calories which means you have to eat less and less in order to maintain your weight. I like to call this metabolic hibernation and it's really hard, if not impossible, to lose weight in this state. Read more on why low calorie diets are so damaging here and signs you aren't eating enough here. Sometimes it's not whether you're eating too much, but rather...are you eating enough? Over time, cutting calories can actually lead to weight gain. Talk about frustrating!

Are you working out appropriatley for your body? To lose weight in a healthy way, exercising in a healthy way is really important. I say "appropriately" because more is not better- although that is certainly what we are led to believe by the media. Too much exercise without allowing your body to properly recover [meaning enough sleep + adequate nutrition] actually causes your stress hormone called cortisol to rise. And when we have too much cortisol circulating in our body that can cause weight gain because cortisol programs our body to store fat, especially around the abdomen, and it also increases hunger and increases our appetite for high sugar, high fat foods. [studies here and here]

Are you sleeping enough? Sleep is HUGE when it comes to hormonal balance and hormones are a vital part of weight loss and long term weight maintenance. If you're getting less than 7 hours a night, you're not getting enough. Lack of sleep, even one night, causes our appetite hormones ghrelin and leptin to get off balance. Ghrelin tells us we're hungry and leptin tells us we're full, but when we are sleep deprived ghrelin is suppressed which leads us to think we're hungry when we're not. Furthermore, lack of sleep again causes cortisol to be released, and excess cortisol circulating around the body is not a good thing- it can lead to weight gain. [studies here and here]

What about other stress in your life? You can be eating well, exercising appropriately and getting your 7-8 hours of sleep every night, but if the rest of your life feels like a tropical storm, all your hard work and commitment could have zero effect on your waistline. If there's one thing that we know by now, it's that stress = cortisol and cortisol impedes weight loss. In today's society its really, really hard to manage stress and almost impossible to be stress free.

But it's a catch 22 because we don't want to be stressing about stressing right?? And this goes back to stressing about eating something "unhealthy." Not eating it could be more "unhealthy" than just eating it and calling it a day.

So take a look at the big picture and if an area or two has been thrown to the curb, focus on that and listen to your body- it's so smart.

TL;DR