Help! I m Not Losing Any Weight!

Transcription

1 Help! I m Not Losing Any Weight! By: Erin Hughes So you ve found yourself on this page because you ve been tracking your food and exercise, weighing and measuring everything you consume, and you weighed in this morning buck-ass naked, but the scale keeps telling you that your weight ISN T going down! Or worse, it s going up! Scales are jerks, right? WHEN YOUR SCALE IS GOING UP AND YOU RE DOING EVERYTHING RIGHT, KEEP GOING. THE WORST THING YOU CAN DO IS GIVE UP. Scales are the worst kind of liar; They lie by omitting the whole complete truth. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but your scale is guilty! Guilty, I tell you!!! The whole lot of them are seemingly flawed devices, but there s a substantial caveat. Let me explain. Well, scales are sortof jerks, but not totally. They have a bad reputation but they are genuinely trying to be good! Like a stripper with a heart of gold or something like that. Your poor misunderstood bathroom scale has one purpose, and only purpose ONLY ; to measure the total mass of your body plus your clothing/accessories at the time you stand on it. Help! I m Not Losing Any Weight! Page 1

2 Your scale is EXTREMELY good at this job. You can even put a suitcase on it, and it will faithfully tell you that you re taking way too much stuff on your trip! Actually it will just tell you the total mass of the suitcase and everything in it. You can put your cat on it (if she d just sit still for 4 seconds) and the scale will tell you the total mass of your cat. The scale is very good at it s one job. Help! I m Not Losing Any Weight! Page 2

3 But most of us never got the memo on the scale s intended purpose. When WE step on the scale, we want the scale to say, Yay! Your hard work is paying off and you ve burned some of that fat off your body! Hooray! Because when we set out to lose weight, what we really are aiming for is fat loss. This is where the scale starts to lose it s utility in the short-term only. Your total scale-weight includes your muscles, bone, organs, skin, toenails, and even chin hair, not just fat. Weight fluctuates daily due to: food you ve eaten, poop, water, sodium, water retention, glycogen, etc. So your weight is actually more of a weight range. When we faithfully stick to our weight loss plan, logging all calories consumed, faithfully weighing and measuring, and sticking to your desired calorie deficit, we expect to lose weight! After all, the Law of Conservation of Energy tells us that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only converted to from one form to another. So If I m sure I m eating less than I m burning, why won t the scale play ball and get with the program??? Our bodies like to mess with us! That s why it looks like you re not losing weight, when you actually are losing fat! The most likely cause of this is water retention, but it could be poop or sodium-related. WATER RETENTION, that little jerk! When we re operating in a calorie deficit, our bodies WILL make up the difference by burning our reserves of fat from our bodies. Help! I m Not Losing Any Weight! Page 3

4 We are not little unique snowflakes, and our bodies have been honed through millions of years of natural selection! If you re worried you have thyroid problems, PCOS, or something else that is making your metabolism slow, by all means, visit your doctor and have them check it out. If your doctor tells you nothing is wrong with your metabolism, believe them. Help! I m Not Losing Any Weight! Page 4

5 I thought my metabolism was broken for years, but it was working exactly as nature intended, storing the extra few calories I consumed here and there as fat. You know, for when the famine comes or whatever. Help! I m Not Losing Any Weight! Page 5

6 My Weight Loss Graph is shown above. This graph represents five months of DAILY weigh-ins. Look at all of that delicious data! Notice all those ups and downs? Totally normal. If you zoom in on some weeks or months it looks like I wasn t losing anything, then a week later, I drop a bunch of scale-weight. Also totally normal. My calorie deficit in this time period was around calories per day, which averages out to around 5 pounds a month, which is fantastic! Yay me! The point of showing you this is to remind you that bodies are quirky biological systems with complex mechanisms. Water comes and goes in spurts. Fat is burned slowly but consistently when in a calorie deficit. It is. Energy cannot be created from nothing. Trust the science, it is sound. Too many people give up when their scale-weight stalls a little, and it makes me sad to see it happen. They give up because they think it s not working for them. But it is. They just didn t know the scale was a liar! So when you step on the scale and it goes up instead of down, check yourself before you wreck yourself! If you re weighing and measuring accurately and sticking to your calorie deficit, you ARE losing fat and it WILL show up sooner rather than later if you stick to the program. It may take a couple days to a month (at most), but weight loss always catches up. YOU CAN PERSEVERE! IT IS WORKING!!! I BELIEVE IN YOU!!! Help! I m Not Losing Any Weight! Page 6

7 The I m Not Losing Any Weight Checklist By: Erin Hughes Check yourself before you wreck yourself! Follow this checklist to find things that could be interfering with your weight loss. Going through this list will give you the peace-of-mind that you re doing everything right and the scale will catch up soon. START HERE 1. Are you using a food scale to weigh all your solid foods and measuring cups/spoons for all your liquid foods and drinks? a. YES : Move on to Step 2. b. NO : STOP! Start using a food scale for solids and measuring cups/spoons for liquids and check back in 2 weeks. 2. Are you honestly, accurately, and to the best of your ability tracking and logging all food or drinks you consume, including bites, licks, and tastes? a. YES : Move on to Step 3. b. NO : STOP! Start being honest and accurate with the tracking and logging of your calorie intake. Log everything. Check back in 2 weeks. Help! I m Not Losing Any Weight! Page 7

8 3. Are you using an app such as MyFitnessPal or Lose It to estimate your daily calorie target with a pound a week weight loss goal? a. YES : Move on to Step 4. b. NO : STOP! Start using an app to estimate your calorie target, with no more than a 2 pound/week weight loss goal. Set your goal to 1 pound/week of loss if you re not sure. Check back in 2 weeks. 4. Have you been in a calorie deficit of 250+ calories per day for the last 4 weeks? (Average of all days, including higher calorie days) a. YES : Move on to Step 5. b. NO : STOP! With a smaller deficit over a shorter period of time, fluctuations in water weight will often mask fat loss. Increase your deficit to 500 calories/day or check back in 2 weeks. 5. Has your weight loss stalled for 4 weeks or more? a. YES : move on to Step 6. b. NO : STOP! Check back when you ve been stalled for 4 weeks or more. 6. Are you estimating your calories burned from exercise or using a fitness tracker (such as FitBit) to calculate it for you? a. YES : Move on to Step 7. b. NO : STOP! If you re estimating calories burned through exercise machines, you re likely overestimating by a large margin. Either use a fitness tracker (i.e. FitBit, see Tools page on or only count half the calories an exercise machine gives you. Check back in 2 weeks. Help! I m Not Losing Any Weight! Page 8

9 7. Have you experienced trauma or unusually high stress in the last 4 weeks? (i.e. Death/illness of a loved one, changes in employment status, changes in marital status, pregnant or breastfeeding) a. YES : STOP! I am so sorry you re experiencing trauma right now. Stress can cause an increase of Cortisol (a stress hormone) which increases water retention and masks fat loss. Take care of yourself during these stressful times and check back in 2 weeks when your stress levels have come down. b. NO : Move on to Step YOU RE DOING EVERYTHING RIGHT. DO NOT STOP or change what you re doing! The scale will show your progress soon enough. In the meantime: a. Take some new progress photos of yourself and look at how far you ve come. b. Take new measurements and see how many inches you ve lost. c. Take note of how your clothes are fitting better. You can and will do this. The long road to self-improvement is fraught with obstacles, but if you persevere the prize is yours! -Erin Hughes If you enjoyed this Article and Checklist, visit and leave a comment or send a message to HealthyWeightLossClub@gmail.com! As a writer, it means the world! Help! I m Not Losing Any Weight! Page 9