When you are trying to lose weight, the advice you need to follow sounds simple enough: all you need to do is to eat responsibly and exercise more. However, as you try to live your life to these principles, you will more often than not make disappointing progress. What could you be doing wrong? Here are ten most overlooked reasons you can’t lose weight.
1. You could be sleeping poorly
If you’re unable to sleep well enough to get up feeling rested, your body could begin to find it hard to keep your hunger hormones in balance. You could end up with too much of the hunger hormone ghrelin and too little of the hormone leptin that tells your brain when you’re full.
2. There could be sugars in your diet that you don’t know about
A great many foods contain sugars in ways that aren’t obvious. Peanut butter, for instance, contains sugar. Sometimes, the sugar in a food isn’t even labeled in a recognizable way – instead, it’s labeled fructose, corn syrup or malt. All these ingredients are sugar-rich. You need to learn how to recognize sugars, no matter what they are called.
3. You pay too much attention to calories and not enough to nutrients
You certainly do need to cut down on your calorie intake to lose weight. It’s important, though, to do so while exclusively eating nutritious food. Processed foods that are artificially brought under a calorie level won’t help you lose weight as much as natural foods that may be slightly more calorie rich. For instance, low-calorie crackers are usually around 120 calories each. A handful of unsalted walnuts, on the other hand, come with around 200 calories. Yet, they also offer natural, healthy fats and omega-3 fatty acids to help keep hunger away, in a way that crackers never manage.
4. Synthetic hormones
You could not see that synthetic hormones in your environment are hurting you. Many everyday plastics contain chemicals known as xenoestrogens that mimic the effects of human hormones. When any of these chemicals get into your food or drink, they make you retain fat. There’s very little that you can do about environmental contamination, though, other than to try to avoid contact with plastics where you can.
5. You could have a desk job
If your job has you sitting for hours on end each day, even getting exercise at the end of the day may not help. Your body will have a hard time responding to it. It’s important to remain active through the day – perhaps by scheduling a little walk or a few push-ups once every half hour or so.
If you have a demanding job, you may find yourself often grabbing processed foods or takeaway food. Turning to unhealthy food even once a day can negate any gains that you make with healthy food the rest of the time. It’s important to completely stay away from unhealthy food. You could pack a lunch from home each day, instead.
7. You may have a hormonal problem
Polycystic ovarian syndrome, thyroid disorders, pancreatic disorders and other such hormonal conditions result in uncontrollable weight gain. If you have hormonal complaint, you’ll need to speak with your doctor to have your diet adjusted.
8. Your diet doesn’t have enough healthy fat
Not all fat is bad for you. If you try hard to avoid every food with fat in it, you are likely to keep healthy fats out, just the same as unhealthy ones. Without good fats in your diet, you will never feel the kind of satisfaction that you need after a meal to stop eating. You end up being at greater risk of overeating.
9. Your body may have formed a set level
Researchers studying the effectiveness of different weight loss approaches have suggested that over time, the body gains a familiarity with a certain average weight level. To help your body get past its set weight level, you need to work patiently, exercising and eating responsibly for months. If you try to rush your weight loss, your body will simply try to bounce back.
10. You misread food labels
Many processed food manufacturers try clever psychological tricks on their customers. For instance, while prominently declaring low for fat content on their packaging, they could include plenty of sugar or calories in another form. They hope that once you see an encouraging label on front, you won’t bother to study the nutrition label too closely. It’s important, then, to look past the hype and to know the facts.
It takes time and patience to understand how to lose weight and keep it at a healthy level. Exercise and a healthy diet are the only truly effective ways to avoid weight gain. If you don’t see the effects that you need, it usually only means that you need to give your body more time.