6 Reasons Why You’re Not Losing Weight Anymore
You’re not losing weight anymore? The weight loss plateau is every weight watcher’s nightmare that somehow manages to peep into its head in your weight loss journey. Every person dreams of constantly seeing the numbers on the scale drop while on a weight loss quest. With hard work and consistency, this is achieved, but your weight seems to stagnate somewhere along the way. This is called the plateau stage and is familiar and ordinary for everyone. This is not the time to throw in the towel and walk away from all your hard work and sacrifice.
1. Slowed Down Metabolism
Anyone new to the healthy lifestyle initially has misconceptions that may interfere with their weight loss quest. You’d be forgiven for thinking that eating less and working out more will speed up your weight loss. This will only render your efforts fruitless and frustrate you even more. Think about it this way: denying your body adequate food for energy and expecting it to perform well during workouts is like feeding your car with little gas and expecting it to go for hours. It is impossible and puts too much pressure on your body, which isn’t fair.
In this case, your body will go into starvation mode, going the extra mile to hold onto the fat for energy. Your thyroid and metabolism will slow down because your body will be working towards keeping you alive for longer. This way, the fat burn will be stopped, and you may even gain much more weight than you should.
You should also consider that you may be suffering from hormonal imbalance, which is causing low levels of thyroid hormone and resulting in a slow metabolism, so go to your doctor and enquire on whether this is a possibility.
2. Fat Pockets Equals Muscles
Every good deed deserves a reward. Working out, proper dieting and a few lifestyle changes deserve weight loss, right? It is only fair, anyway. If you have been doing everything right, you deserve the numbers on the scale to descend. Sometimes, the numbers stagnate because good things are happening for you. With the correct workout routine, the layers of fat in your body will be melted and replaced by muscles. So, the numbers on the scale might be a good thing.
3. Too Much of Anything is Poisonous
The one thing that most people struggle with is food control. Giving up on those juicy ribs, pancakes, fries, and burgers is difficult. However, getting your food portions under control is tricky for most folks. In this case, people think that eating large portions of healthy food is acceptable, but that isn’t the case. Nibbling on 8 lbs of carrots may not pile on the weight, but it won’t make it disappear. Feeding your body with more energy than you are using will lead to weight stagnation or even gain.
This may also occur when you make poor food choices, such as skipping breakfast and overeating at lunch, to compensate for the missed meal. The secret to keeping those numbers down is burning more calories than you feed your body.
4. Too Stressed for the Scale
Your body is like a machine that has a mind of its own. This mind makes its own decisions regardless of what you want. Stress is a negative energy that interferes with your body’s natural way of functioning. For starters, stress leads to unconscious overeating, which results in weight gain. This is because your mind isn’t focused on the activity, so before you know it, you’ll be scratching the bottom of that big bucket of wings or buttered popcorn.
Being too crazy about weight loss may stress your body without your knowledge. If you work out too much, leaving your body with little or no time to rest, you will definitely stress it. In this case, the hormone cortisol will be released, and this little monster is known to lead to weight gain. So, you may need to keep cortisol production at its lowest in your body.
5. Banking on Misinformation
There are a lot of ‘know-it-alls’ out there. Everyone feels philanthropic with their opinions on weight loss and concludes what works and what doesn’t. What you don’t know is that not everyone out there has a clue about what weight loss entails. Listening and putting into practice everything that goes in your ear will see your weight chart recordings flying all over the place. The secret behind successful weight loss is consistency. Rely on the professional advice of a qualified nutritionist and fitness instructor. Anything else landing on your ears should be disregarded.
6. The Inadequate Sleep Monster
We understand that life nowadays is too fast, leaving us exhausted. This may see you sleeping through your weekends, off days, and public holidays. However, weight loss demands a healthy lifestyle that will always keep your body alert. If you sleep from dusk to dawn, your body will naturally release hormones that make you feel hungrier than you are, hence prompting you to overeat. Before you know it, you’ll have eaten more than you could have if on your feet out and about.
In this case, you should allow your body enough time for rest to distress it and allow it to rejuvenate after a stressful day. The key, in this case, is to do it only long enough and then need it with an activity that will reboot it and the metabolism as well.
Weight loss is fun as long as all the effort and dedication are paired with low numbers on the scale. If you are on the right track, using a thermogenic fat burner could increase your chances of fat-burning. You can check out this page from bodyshape101.com to learn more about thermogenic fat burners. You could also ask your fitness instructor for advice on the best exercise equipment to help you lose weight in certain areas with stubborn fat, for instance, the belly, thighs, arms, or even back.
If you have trouble with food portion control, ask your nutritionist for help. A private nutritionist will walk with you every step of the way while others even shop and assist with cooking tips to keep the calories at their lowest. It is a worthy investment.