It’s one of the most frustrating and demoralizing things that can happen when you’re trying to lose weight. The weigh scale stops going down, or even goes up, despite all your sacrifices and efforts you aren’t losing weight.
But, as we discovered in 7 Reasons Why You’re Not Losing Weight – Part 1, there can be many reasons for reaching a weight loss plateau. And it doesn’t mean you are doing anything wrong or that you can’t continue to lose weight.
Here are four more reasons why you might hit a bump on the road to a healthier weight. But you shouldn’t let any of them become roadblocks.
1. Over Estimating the Calorie Burn from Exercise
Whether you join a gym and go at a fitness plan ‘The Biggest Loser’ style, or you simply try to get a little more activity in your day, it can all be deceiving.
You slug it out on a treadmill for an extra 5 minutes, or you actually use the stairs instead of the escalator at the mall. You feel really good about yourself.
But the calories you actually burn for almost any activity you do are usually far less that the calories you think you burned. They are also far out of proportion to any extra effort you put in. Five extra minutes of jogging can take a monumental effort, but the extra calorie loss is not monumental.
For a 150 lb person, 15 minutes of jogging at about 10 kilometres per hour burns 195.5 calories. That means an extra 5 minutes of jogging, which will feel like torture, will burn an extra 65 calories. If the jogger treated herself to a honey-glazed donut as a reward for the extra push. Instead of losing weight, she would actually put on 125 calories (190 calories for the donut minus 65 calories for the extra effort).
2. Underestimating the Calorie Intake from Food
In addition to the incredible increase in caloric intake that can happen by not being adamant about portion control, we very often simply don’t realize the number of calories in foods. This is key to loosing weight.
That glazed donut is a good example. It seems relatively harmless. You’ll only have one. But, at 190 calories, that single donut delivers almost 10% of a daily 2,000 calorie diet.
But using a donut as an example is a bit too easy. There are foods that seem to be ‘low-calorie’ – in other words, OK for your weight reduction program – but they can be deceptively worse that you think. Let’s say you stopped drinking whole milk to cut down on the fat it delivers. You opt to switch to low-fat milk and go from 156 calories from the whole milk, to only 124 calories for the low-fat milk. Nice. That’s a almost 25% fewer calories.
Except that low-fat milk contains almost 50% more calories than skim milk. As we’ve mentioned, it’s not about absolutely minimizing calories at the cost of all else. But it’s important to be aware of your calorie intake. One of the best ways to do that, and learn more about the calories and nutrition in foods, is to keep a written diary of the calories and other nutritional information of the foods you eat.
3. Drinking Alcohol
We recently told “Why That One Little Drink May Be Ruining Your Weight Loss”. But we wanted to underline one particular problem for weight loss that comes from beer, wine and cocktails. You will find reports that say an occasional drink or two will not seriously affect your weight. But whether that’s true isn’t the point. The problem is that relatively few of us have just an occasional drink or two.
If you order just one nine-ounce glass of red wine during intermission at the theatre, that’s more than a third of a bottle, and 217 calories worth – more than a honey-glazed donut! (And don’t forget, that ‘one’ glass more easily turns into two as you finish it.)
4. You’re Focused on Weight Loss and Not Your Overall Health
When you hit a weight loss plateau, you feel like you’re not making any improvements and you’re wasting your time.
Except, even if you’re not losing weight, if you’ve made healthy changes to your diet and lifestyle, you’re still becoming healthier. If you happen to do any kind of strength training, or even if you’ve just added a bit of walking to your day, you might be swapping fat cells for muscle cells. But muscle is denser than fat and one pound of muscle takes up less space than one pound of fat. That’s why you might find you’re losing inches on an exercise plan, but not losing weight.
If you would like to learn more about your weight loss plateaus and how to stay on track, call or visit your nearest Herbal One Centre and talk to one of our nutrition consultants.