Nutrition

In the first part of this series of articles, we looked at the current situation regarding obesity and the first three factors that can promote weight gain. In this second part, we will look at other factors that can lead to weight gain.

Factor #4 - Stress and depression

Even though stress and depression play a role in binge eating, they deserve their own section.

In the animal kingdom, there are only a very limited number of things that cause stress in animals. One of these stressors is hunger. When we feel stressed, it triggers a biomechanical response that puts us into survival mode.

In this state, our metabolism slows down and our body tries to store energy. We will also feel the urge to eat - another self-protection mechanism that is activated in response to stress.

In the modern world, it is almost impossible to escape stress. We are constantly busy and with constant access to news and information and incoming text messages and Facebook updates, we rarely get any rest. Life always finds a way to disrupt us.

Combine this constant hustle and bustle with easy access to any food we could possibly want and you have the perfect recipe for overeating and obesity.

Stress and weight loss

• Keep a stress diary. Write down everything that triggers stress-related eating for you. Try to avoid these situations whenever possible and plan for them if you can't avoid them. Know in advance what you are going to eat when you are stressed.
• When you are stressed, force yourself to do 30 minutes of cardio exercise before you give in to your craving to eat. This period of exercise will help you feel better and will hopefully reduce your stress levels enough that you won't give in to the urge to stress eat.
• Be proactive. Take an hour each day while not watching TV or using any other electronic means of communication. Relax, read something or take a nap. Go for a walk. Do something for yourself.

Factor #5 - Liquid calories

Liquid calories tend to hide well. They can add up quickly and are one of the primary factors that contribute to weight gain and obesity.

Unless you are making your own juices or drinking milk or homemade protein shakes, there are very few forms of liquid calories that have any useful nutritional value. Even pure fruit juice, which appears to be healthy, is actually quite unhealthy. Fruit juice is like fruit that has had all the good nutrients (from the skin, pulp, etc.) removed, leaving a sugar content that is often higher than sugary soft drinks.

Keep a record of all the liquid calories you drink for a week. Next, try to find a suitable calorie-free substitute for these drinks. Choose natural drinks if possible.

You may find it hard to give up your daily syrup-flavored coffee, but look at the numbers. 300 liquid kcal per day adds up to an additional 110,000 kcal per year or a weight gain of 30 pounds. Even if you can cut your liquid calories in half, this will make it much easier for you to maintain your weight or lose weight.

Liquid calories and weight loss

• If the thought of plain water doesn't really appeal to you, try adding some fresh lemon juice or a flavored amino acid powder. Both will add a lot of flavor to your water without adding a lot of calories.
• Love your flavored coffee? Try adding a spoonful of chocolate protein powder to your hot or cold coffee for a creamy mocha-like flavor.

Factor #6 - Excessive, long-term carbohydrate consumption

This might be the most controversial factor in this list. I will present it for informational purposes.

Carbohydrate consumption raises blood glucose levels. To remove this glucose (blood sugar) from the bloodstream, the pancreas secretes insulin. The glucose is then converted into glycogen, which is stored in the liver and muscle tissue. As the body can only store a certain amount of glycogen, excess glucose is stored as fat.

Over time, excessive carbohydrate consumption can lead to insulin resistance. The result of insulin resistance is that excess glucose remains in the bloodstream. This leads to increased blood sugar levels, which the liver then has to deal with. The liver will convert this excess blood sugar into fat, which then re-enters the bloodstream and is distributed throughout the body.

There is a heated debate in the health and fitness industry about which factor is more important when it comes to fat gain: calorie intake vs. calorie expenditure... or excessive carbohydrate consumption. As health-conscious individuals, how should we eat then? It's probably best to not only keep calories within a reasonable range, but also minimize consumption of unhealthy carbohydrates as much as possible. This will cover both cases.

Carbohydrates and weight loss

• Don't be afraid of fat consumption. Your body needs healthy fats. Make sure that at least 20% of your daily calories come from healthy fats.
• Use the 20% rule. Try to minimize your junk food consumption to 20% of your daily calories or less. Since junk food is overloaded with unwanted carbohydrates, this is an excellent way to control insulin resistance in the long run.
• Eat more protein. Not only is protein needed for muscle building and repair - it's also hard to overeat protein.

Factor #7 - Lack of meal planning

On the surface, this may seem like a trivial factor, but meal planning can make a big difference in your life. If you know what you're going to eat for dinner or prepare your secondary meals in advance, then you're much less likely to make a trip to McDonalds or grab sweets from the vending machine.

You can learn a lesson from top fitness models and bodybuilders. These athletes tend to prepare smaller meals in advance. Instead of preparing 5 different lunches or eating processed foods for lunch, they will prepare one large meal and divide it into several Tupperware containers.

It's not uncommon for these athletes to spend part of their Sunday cooking meals for the week.

Meal planning and weight loss

• Make a list of 10 to 20 quick and easy meals that you can prepare in bulk. Make sure these meals are made from wholesome and nutritious foods. This means no processed meals and no ready-made meals.
• Plan your dinner for each week in advance before you go shopping.
• If you have very little time to cook in the evening, get a slow cooker. There are thousands of slow cooker recipes online that require very little prep time.

Fact #8 - Prescription drugs

It is well documented that certain prescription drugs can promote or cause weight gain. A team of scientists from the University of Glasgow analyzed a pool of 25,000 individuals. One of the interesting findings was that individuals taking medications for mental disorders (such as olanzapine and clozapine) gained up to 22 pounds in one year.

This study also found that those who used insulin to treat type 2 diabetes gained up to 13 pounds in one year, while some antidepressants caused a weight gain of up to 8 pounds during the same time period. Medications used to treat heart disease, epilepsy and high blood pressure also caused a small but noticeable weight gain.

The "big 3" when it came to weight gain were olanzapine, beta-blockers and corticosteroids. It should be noted that the degree and amount of weight gain associated with medication varies greatly from person to person.

The use of the contraceptive pill also poses a risk of weight gain. Pills with a higher estrogen content are more likely to increase appetite and also lead to more water retention.

Prescription drugs and weight loss

• Before taking a new prescription medication, you should ask your doctor about possible side effects regarding weight gain - and how you can minimize them.
• If you gain weight while taking a prescription medication, do not stop taking it. Talk to your doctor.
• Be proactive. Clean up your diet and put together a good exercise program.

Factor #9 - Menopause / low testosterone levels

It is estimated that 90% of all women gain weight during menopause. This weight gain typically occurs between the ages of 35 and 55.

Men face similar problems as they age and their testosterone levels drop. The male sex hormone helps maintain proper insulin levels, as well as optimal glucose and fat metabolism. Low levels of this hormone are associated with increased insulin resistance, diabetes, metabolic syndrome and, of course, weight gain.

Even though hormonal changes seem inevitable, there are certain things you can do to mitigate the effects of aging. Eat the right foods, exercise, kick bad habits like drinking and smoking, reduce your stress and find ways to be happy and enjoy your life.

Menopause / low testosterone levels and weight gain

- Diet and exercise play an important role in how we age. Eat right and exercise. This will not only help you prevent weight gain, but will also counteract possible age-related weight gain.
- Live a balanced life. Don't smoke, limit your alcohol consumption, neglect trivial worries and do more things to enjoy your life. All of these things will create a healthier, more hormonally strong and balanced body.

Weight control - a brief summary

While the factors listed above are not an all-inclusive list, they do provide a very useful guide that can show you how to limit weight gain. Here is a simple 9 point program that everyone should remember:

• Step 1 - Move. Exercise. Do something extra every day
• Step 2 - Eat better. You don't have to eat perfectly, but even small changes will make a big difference in the long run.
• Step 3 - Control binge eating through preparation and portion control.
• Step 4 - Take steps to avoid, or at least control, stress in your life.
• Step 5 - Reduce liquid calories as much as possible.
• Step 6 - Avoid excessive carbohydrate consumption and limit your intake of white sugar and white flour products as much as possible.
• Step 7 - Plan your meals. You should know in advance exactly what you are going to eat and when. This will help you to reduce impulsive eating.
• Step 8 - Ask your doctor about your prescription medications and possible side effects.
• Step 9 - Live a balanced life. Take care of yourself, laugh, love, smile and have fun. Take care of yourself mentally and physically.

In the next part of this article series, we will take a closer look at some of the most popular nutrition and diet plans for fat loss at the moment.

Source: https://www.muscleandstrength.com/expert-guides/how-to-lose-weight

In the first part of this article, we have already looked at some of the reasons why you are not losing weight. Now we will look at other reasons why you are not losing weight and then look at how to calculate your calorie needs.

You could be eating more than you think

If you're struggling to lose weight, then I have good news for you: you're probably just eating too much.

Here's how it usually works:

Food intake by feel = sure recipe for failure

Most people are really bad at estimating the actual amount of calories they eat. They underestimate portion sizes, they assume food contains fewer calories than it actually does, they mismeasure their food and in some cases they simply lie to themselves about how much they are actually eating.

This is why so many people fail with diets that focus on rules and bans rather than numbers.

Yes, you can lose weight without counting calories, but it's often a matter of luck. It also gets harder as you get leaner (and eventually you will have to start planning and/or controlling your food intake).

There are right and wrong ways to count calories

There are also plenty of ways to mess up calorie counting.

The calorie counts listed at various restaurants and on packaged foods often turn out to be inaccurate. In fact, food manufacturers can understate the amount of calories by up to 20% and still stay within the legal limit - and it is safe to assume that many are unscrupulous enough to take advantage of this.

However, this only affects people who eat a lot of convenience foods. People who know better and stick to food that they prepare themselves often mess things up by not measuring food correctly. Here's an all-too-common example:

• It's dinnertime and you get out the oatmeal, peanut butter, blueberries, yogurt and measuring spoons.
• You measure out a cup of oatmeal, a tablespoon of peanut butter and half a cup of blueberries and yogurt.
• You mix it all together and eat it without realizing that you've eaten a few hundred calories more than you think you have.

How did this happen? Quite simply:

That (slightly heaping) cup of oatmeal contained 100 grams of oatmeal, which provides 379 kcal. However, the cup indicated on the label only contains 307 kcal, as 81 grams of oatmeal per cup was assumed. So you have eaten 72 kcal more than you think.

The tablespoon of peanut butter? You put 21 grams of peanut butter, which is 123 kcal, on the spoon, but only wrote down 94 kcal, which is the same as the tablespoon in your app, which assumes 16 grams of peanut butter per tablespoon.

Meal after meal you make these mistakes and at the end of the day, when you think you've stuck to your plan, you're not aware of the fact that you've actually eaten several hundred kcal more than you intended.

If you do this day after day, then here is your reason for not losing weight.

The lesson here is simple:

The more accurately you measure your food, the more likely you are to be successful in your weight loss efforts.

Here's what you should do:

• Weigh and calculate all foods raw/dry whenever possible.

Cooked weight can vary too much depending on different factors.

• Weigh and count ALL the food you eat.

Yes, everything counts when it comes to calories: vegetables, fruit, condiments, minimal amounts of oil and butter, and any other food that passes your lips - no matter how small the amounts may be.

• Weigh and calculate all solid foods in grams and all liquid foods in milliliters.

This will ensure maximum accuracy and make sure you don't underestimate your actual calorie intake.

Your cheating keeps you fat

'Cheating' on your diet has nothing to do with eating 'bad' or unhealthy foods - rather, it means that you're wiping out your calorie deficit by eating too much - and here it doesn't matter whether it's cauliflower or sweets (although it's easier to eat too much of the latter, of course). The most common mistakes I see in this area are

Cheating too often

Look at the big picture of calories and weight loss.

If you overeat moderately, and this wipes out your calorie deficit a few days a month, then your overall progress will only be slightly affected.

However, if you do this a few times a week, you will slow down your weight loss significantly.

Using cheat days instead of cheat meals

If you ignore all your restrictions at a meal, then you can only do so much damage. Your stomach will probably beg for mercy after 2000 kcal at the latest.

However, if you spend a whole day eating everything your hungry heart craves, then you can easily consume many thousands of kcal and undo the weight loss progress of several days, if not a whole week.

Eating too many calories or too much fat at cheat meals

I've just said that you can only do a limited amount of damage with one meal, but if you really put your mind to it, even this can be enough to affect your weight loss.

The worst type of cheat meal is a meal that is very high in fat and total calories (which tends to go hand in hand with the high energy density of dietary fats).

Dietary fats are chemically very similar to body fat and therefore require very little energy to convert (between 0 and 2%). This is the reason why scientific research shows that a high fat meal causes faster fat storage than a high carbohydrate meal.

This point is particularly relevant if you are already slim and want to become very slim. In this case, you simply cannot afford many days with a large calorie surplus - especially if the calorie surplus consists primarily of dietary fat.

The consumption of alcohol while cheating

Even though alcohol itself cannot actually be stored as body fat, it blocks fat oxidation, which in turn increases the rate at which your body stores dietary fat as body fat.

In short, it's not the calories that alcohol provides that can make you fat, it's all the other junk you consume along with the alcohol that you find hard to resist once you've had a bit more to drink.

The bottom line is that the high-fat meals combined with alcohol that put you in calorie surplus territory are the ultimate recipe for fat gain.

You may not be burning as many calories as you think you are

Accurately measuring your calorie intake is quite simple. It just requires precision and an eye for detail. Estimating calorie consumption, however, is more complicated. Much more complicated.

Your daily calorie consumption is influenced by several things:

Your basal metabolic rate, or your basal metabolic rate

This is the amount of energy your body burns at rest.

When it comes to determining the right calorie and macronutrient intake, determining your basal metabolic rate is the first step. Most people use the Harris-Benedict formula for this:

Where G is basal metabolic rate, m is body mass in kilograms, l is height and t is age.

However, most people do not realize that this formula is not 100% accurate for everyone. Scientific research shows that the basal metabolic rate is quite variable and is significantly higher for some and significantly lower for others than this formula suggests.

The problem here is obvious: if you think you are burning say 100+ kcal more per day than you actually are, this can reduce your weight loss by up to a pound per month.

Many people also don't realize that losing weight reduces your daily calorie consumption. The longer you keep your body in a deficit, the more it adapts to reduced energy expenditure.

If you don't know how to adjust your energy intake and/or calorie expenditure to deal with this metabolic adjustment, this alone can seriously reduce your calorie deficit and stall your weight loss.

The thermic effect of food (TEF for short)

The thermic effect of food represents the energy cost of processing the food we eat and store.

Scientific research has shown, for example, that it costs the body more energy to process whole foods than it does to process highly processed foods and protein-rich meals. In addition, high-protein meals result in higher energy consumption than high-fat meals.

Thus, 300 kcal in the form of whole foods results in a higher calorie expenditure than 300 kcal in the form of processed foods and high-protein meals result in a higher calorie expenditure than low-protein meals. Repeat this several times a day and the differences can add up to significant amounts.

Even water has a mild thermic effect because the body has to use energy to heat it. This is one of the reasons why increased water consumption is associated with weight loss.

The energy we expend through physical activity

This includes conscious activities such as exercise, as well as spontaneous activities such as walking around when we are on the phone, going to the toilet or drumming our fingers while we read or moving our legs up and down when we think.

The energy we expend during the latter activities is also known as non-exercise induced thermogenesis or NEAT and plays a much larger role in our total daily energy expenditure than most people realize. Scientific research shows that non-exercise-induced thermogenesis can vary by up to 2000 kcal per day between different people.

The same research suggests that people could burn an additional 350 kcal per day if they took simple steps to increase their daily exercise. These include things like taking the stairs whenever possible instead of taking the elevator, walking short distances instead of driving, doing housework instead of watching TV, etc.

To put this in perspective, it should be mentioned that burning an extra 350 kcal 7 days a week would add up to 2/3 pounds of fat loss per week. Not bad for simply moving your body a little more than usual.

Another aspect of energy expenditure that most people don't realize is that some people's bodies burn more calories during activities than other people's bodies.

Just because you are doing the same type and amount of activity as someone else does not necessarily mean that you are using the same amount of energy. The amount of muscle mass you gain significantly affects this, as it increases the energy cost of exercise.

Conclusion on the calculation of calorie requirements

As you can see, accurately determining calorie needs can be complicated. It's like aiming at a moving target. Fortunately, you don't need to know exactly how many calories you burn each day to lose fat effectively.

You can use the amount of calories calculated using the formula above as a starting point and see how your body responds over time.

If necessary, you can adjust your energy intake and/or energy expenditure through exercise and physical activity so that you lose between 0.5 and 2 pounds of weight per week (the leaner you get, the less weight you will be able to lose per week).

Let's put it all together: How you can lose weight steadily and predictably

We've covered a lot of different factors within this article and I thought it might be helpful to end the article with some sort of action plan.

So if you're not losing weight, here's your battle plan:

Are you losing fat but not weight?

As you know, beginners often experience this phenomenon when training with weights. People who really want to get lean are also familiar with this scenario, which often has something to do with water retention.

You can keep water retention under control by keeping your sodium and potassium intake constant and balanced and your cortisol levels under control by regularly taking time to de-stress.

It is also useful to include two measurements in your plan in addition to your weight: your waist circumference at belly button level and your body fat percentage.

This can be extremely helpful because if your waist circumference and skinfold thickness decrease, then you know you are losing fat regardless of what the scales say.

Are you simply eating too much?

This is probably the reason why you are not losing weight.

Are you making any of the aforementioned mistakes with your calorie intake? Are you not controlling or planning your food intake? Are you measuring your food sloppily? Are you "cheating" away all your progress?

Calculate your calorie and macronutrient targets and compare them with your current daily food intake.

If you are eating significantly more than these amounts every day, then you need to address this issue. Stick strictly to your goals for 10 days (no cheating) and see how your body reacts.

If you have 1 to 2 cheat days per week, then we have already found your problem. Reduce your cheating to one cheat meal per week and try to keep your fat intake under control (protein and carbohydrate rich cheat meals are best). This alone could be enough to make the weight on the scales go down.

Are you burning less energy than you think?

The most common reason people make this mistake is that the activity factor used in many formulas to calculate calorie consumption is too high.

For example, according to the Katch McArden formula, you can calculate your average daily calorie expenditure by multiplying your basal metabolic rate by 1.55 if you do 3 to 5 moderate workouts of one hour each per week. 6 to 7 intense workouts per week will result in the use of a factor of 1.725.

Now, I've worked with thousands of people and learned that the results of this formula are simply too high for most of us. I have observed this hundreds of times and the solution is very simple: reduce the activity multiples (reduce the calorie intake) and your weight will go down.

Is it time to move more or eat less?

No matter how perfect your diet and exercise program is, when you lose weight, natural adaptations will take place in your body that will reduce your daily calorie needs.

The only way to compensate for this is to move more and/or eat less. There are guidelines you need to follow to prevent muscle loss and other unwanted side effects.

Is it time to increase your calorie intake?

If you stay in a calorie deficit for too long, your metabolic rate will slow down to the point where further reducing calorie intake and/or further increasing activity is simply no longer feasible.

Fortunately, there is a simple solution: the "reverse diet", which consists of a continuous, systematic increase in calorie intake. If used correctly, this strategy will allow you to eat more and rev up your metabolism while building little or no fat.

Final words

The information and strategies presented in this article are all you need to lose weight.

Trust me.

Your metabolism is not as unique as a snowflake. Your body works the same way mine and everyone else's does. You just need to learn how your body is set up. This article shows you how.

Source: https://www.muscleforlife.com/not-losing-weight/

By Michael Matthews

Not losing weight? Read this article and you'll never again wonder why or what you can do about it.

It's 6am and you're trudging towards the bathroom like it's the gallows. The cold wind howls outside the window. Shadowy fingers clutch your neck. Today you will be judged. Today is the day you have to step on the scales again.

You step onto the scales and wait like a deer staring into the hunter's rifle. The number appears on the display. Not a number, but that number. That same, damn, rotten, sneering number.

This is the definitive guide that tells you why you're not losing weight

Why? Why the fuck aren't you losing weight?

You're doing everything right. You're following all the rules. Your diet is cleaner than an operation. You abstain from all carbohydrates from 7pm sharp. You're eating this cyclically and restricting that...for what?

Well, I have good news for you:

• You are not genetically cursed
• Your metabolism is perfectly fine
• Your hormones are not conspiring to keep you fat
• You are not eating too little of the right foods
• It's not the carbs, nor the dairy, nor the artificial sweeteners

The real reason you're not losing weight is simple. And the solution is probably simple too.

So say goodbye to weight loss secrets, tricks, hacks and all that other nonsense. You're about to learn the real science and physiology of weight loss and trust me - you're going to fall in love.

I know, I know. You don't believe me yet, but give me ten minutes and I'll give you the keys to weight loss.

Let's get started.

Are you losing fat but not weight?

The most common reason people lose fat but not weight is water retention. This is especially true for women who are hormonally predisposed to retaining water and who have to deal with large fluctuations during their menstrual cycle.

What happens is very simple: you lose a pound of fat in a week, but you store an extra pound of water at the same time. Obviously, this ratio is not always 1:1, so when weigh-in day comes, it may look like you've only lost a negligible amount of fat or even gained weight during that week.

If you want to see how much water retention can affect your weight, simply double your sodium or salt intake for a week and watch the scales. You can easily gain 1 or 2 pounds a day for several days.

Fortunately, you can easily eliminate water retention problems. It usually doesn't take much more than a better balance between sodium and potassium intake and adequate daily water intake while keeping your cortisol levels under control.

Once this is done and your electrolytes are in balance, you are adequately hydrated and your cortisol levels are in the normal range... and you are not getting your period, you can rest assured that your water levels are stable.

Another reason why people lose fat but not weight is that they are still beginners in resistance training

This matters because beginners can build muscle and lose fat at the same time, and building muscle naturally means gaining body weight.

In addition, when you are just starting to train intensively, your muscles will store a lot of extra glycogen and water. This also means extra weight.

These beginner gains are so predictable that I often tell beginners who are dieting at the same time that they should not expect to lose weight during the first 3 to 6 weeks.

Certainly you should monitor your weight, but during a diet your waist circumference is a more reliable indicator of fat loss progress. If your waist circumference is decreasing, then you are losing body fat regardless of what your scale is telling you.

Of course, if you want to lose a greater amount of fat, you will eventually have to achieve weight loss. Unfortunately, the rapid initial muscle gains will eventually come to an end and your body simply won't be able to build muscle as fast as it can lose fat (and eventually you'll reach the point where only one or the other is possible).

I've seen people who trained and dieted properly for 2 or 3 months and were only 5 to 6 pounds lighter afterwards, but changed their bodies dramatically during that time. Depending on your genetics and your discipline with your training and diet program, you can gain a good amount of muscle in the beginning while losing a good amount of fat at the same time.

And now that we've got the easy reasons out of the way, let's look at the more likely reasons that you're not losing weight...

You're not losing weight because...

I'm going to start this section like a good story - in media res.

The reason you're not losing weight is because you're eating too much.

Seriously. This is the climax. The big resolution. The way out of the haunted house.

Okay...time for a review. Now I'm going to explain how we got to this point.

The first stop on your journey is the most important, so listen carefully. It's the scientific principle of energy balance and energy equilibrium and this alone determines weight gain and weight loss.

Energy balance is the relationship between the energy you put into your body (through food) and the energy your body uses (through physical activities and processes required for basic bodily functions). Energy balance is often measured in calories.

Think of the energy balance as a bank account:

• If you deposit more energy into this account than you "spend" (consume), then this results in a positive energy balance or energy surplus in your account.

And what does your body do with an energy surplus? It stores some of it in the form of body fat.

• If you put less energy into your account, you overdraw your account and generate a negative energy balance or energy deficit.

And how can your body compensate for this deficit in your account? It can do this by drawing on its fat stores. In fact, the primary purpose of body fat is to serve as a source of energy during times of hunger or energy deficits.

I know that ratings-hungry TV presenters, authors selling diet books and companies hawking diet pills will tell you different stories, but you shouldn't fall for the hype too quickly.

No, Professor Oz hasn't found the only fat loss supplement you'll ever need and Dr. Smith hasn't made a discovery that disproves thousands of scientific studies and the first law of thermodynamics.

Energy balance is not a theory or an outdated view. Rather, it is a scientific fact based on a century of metabolic research.

And this brings us back to why you are not losing weight.

I said you're eating too much, but it's a little more complex than that. It's actually not quite as simple as "you're not in an energy deficit".

What is missing from this well-known statement is the element of time. This means that for significant weight loss to occur, a net energy deficit must be maintained over a given period of time.

Let's say you want to lose 10 pounds of fat.

Each pound of fat contains between 3,000 and 3,500 kcal of energy (exactly how much is a debatable point, but it's not necessary to go into more detail for our purposes).

This means that you need to lose 30,000 to 35,000 kcal worth of fat and the only way to achieve this is to burn that amount of extra calories over whatever period of time.

The average person eats and consumes perhaps 2,000 to 2,500 kcal per day and you should not dramatically reduce your food intake and starve yourself, which means you will need some time to achieve this goal.

Time...that's the real devil in the detail. Here's what I mean:

• Let's say you eat 500 kcal less per day than you consume - every day, every week, without exception.

Let's say that your weekly calorie deficit is 3,500, which means that simple math will tell us that losing 10 pounds of fat will take something in the range of 8 to 10 weeks.

• Let's say you eat 500 kcal less than your body uses 5 days a week and let's say you consider the weekend as "cheat days" and eat 500 kcal more than you use on both Saturday and Sunday.

This will reduce your weekly calorie deficit to 1,500 kcal, which means it will take you about 20 weeks to lose 10 pounds.

• Let's say you eat 500 kcal less than you consume every day for 3 weeks and then go overboard for a week and eat 10,000 kcal more than you consume.

As a result, you have reduced your calorie deficit from 10,500 kcal at the start of the diet to 500 kcal and are more or less back where you started.

In the real world, weight gain and weight loss are not as exactly mathematically predictable as in these examples, as there are other factors such as body composition, genetic and hormonal predispositions and the thermic effect of food, but the bottom line is that it all works more or less as just described.

Weight loss is cumulative in nature. Every calorie you burn in excess of what you eat is a tiny step towards your goal and every calorie you eat in excess of what you consume is a tiny step back.

Now that we understand a good part of weight loss physiology, we can be a little more accurate about why you're not losing weight.

You are not losing weight because you are not adequately controlling your energy balance.

The only reason you haven't lost weight over the last week, month or year is because you haven't generated a large enough energy deficit during that period.

Let's look at an example to make this clearer.

Let's say that despite regular exercise and "dieting" you have not lost any weight. Even though we can never know the exact numbers, let's play God and say that we know you burned 82,000 kcal during that month.

Approximately how much weight would you have lost if you had only eaten around 78,000 kcal? That's right, about a pound. And what about 73,000 kcal? That would have resulted in a weight loss of about 2.5 pounds. 69,000 kcal? 3.5 pounds. Etc.

Why do you think you didn't lose any weight? That's right, your calorie intake was too close to the 82,000 kcal you burned, so you weren't able to produce any noticeable changes in your total fat mass. And what would have happened if you had consumed significantly more than 82,000 kcal? You would have gained weight.

In the real world, we can't predict calorie consumption so perfectly, and calorie intake isn't the only thing when we're talking about fat loss and not just weight loss, but you probably know where I'm going with this. The quantities vary, but the underlying mechanisms do not.

If the inability to lose weight is simply based on an inability to properly control energy balance, then what are the most common ways people screw this up?

In the next part of this article we will look at other reasons why you are not losing weight and then look at how to calculate your calorie needs.

Source: https://www.muscleforlife.com/not-losing-weight/

By Michael Matthews