Why won’t the weight come off?

You’re dialed in. You see your trainer 2 x’s a week; run 3 x’s a week; do yoga 2x’s a week. Your waistline is NOT shrinking. Why won’t the weight come off?

What are you doing wrong?

Try Solving the problem at a different level than exercise.

In the words of renowned fitness expert Dan John “You don’t have an exercise problem. You have a recovery, a sleep, or a nutrition problem.”

I’ll add stress to that equation. Recovery, sleep, nutrition, stress: These are major roadblocks to weight loss no one addresses when they decide to get healthy. Let’s have a brief look at two of them.

Are you sleeping enough?

Sleeping an additional hour nightly is linked to consuming 270 fewer calories per day. That’s 8,100 fewer calories (around 2.5 lbs) a month; 30 lbs a year. No need to burn calories you never consume in the first place, am I right?

Also Poor sleep throws off our hormonal balance. According to healthline.com poor sleep effects the hormones (grehlin and leptin) that signal hunger and fullness.

Are you getting the 7 to 8 hours of sleep recommended for adults? It sounds too easy, too simple to be effective but science is repeatedly telling us how important sleep is in weight management. Take your sleep seriously. You won’t regret it.

Moving on. We all equate caloric deprivation with losing weight. This can backfire when you’re working out a ton.

Are you eating enough? 

When it’s time to lose weight our normal inclination is to restrict calories. That is fine; but remember your exercise creates a demand for more calories. You’re restricting calories while burning more and more of them in the gym. This may lead to the starvation response. From wikipedia: “Starvation response in animals (including humans) is a set of adaptive biochemical and physiological changes, triggered by lack of food or extreme weight loss, in which the body seeks to conserve energy by reducing the amount of calories it burns.” 

You’re a primitive body living in a modern world. Human bodies haven’t adapted fully to a world where food is no longer scarce. When you exercise and cut calories your primitive body’s instinct is to conserve body fat bc it thinks you’re starvating. You are wired for survival, not for fat loss.

Eat Whole Foods, minimally processed and aim for a daily caloric deficit (combining diet and exercise) of about 500 calories a day. This tallies to a pound a week of weight loss. It ain’t sexy, but it is sustainable, and it will get you the slimmer waistline that just exercising hasn’t.