So you are in a caloric deficit, working out, feel like you’re barely eating a thing, and the scale isn’t budging. Many of us are too familiar with the feeling and it is rather demoralizing, making us feel hopeless and doomed to live in bodies that we are not happy with - as if fate won’t allow it. Maybe you’ve been there one too many times; cried one too many times and given up one too many times because of it. You're hungry, you're consistent, and, according to the numbers, you should be losing two pounds per week. It has you feeling not unlike the guy below. What the h*ll is going on?
I've been there and I’ll let you know right now that it was not genetics, the thing I always managed to pin the blame on. It wasn’t hormones or anything wrong with my thyroid. There was no underlying condition keeping me from my goal. It wasn’t that I wasn’t giving it my all or even that I was slipping up. Now that I’ve told you what it wasn’t, allow me to tell you what it was: a combination of the huge mistakes below that kept me stagnant and dissatisfied, causing me to give up and confirming my belief that my failures were because of my body. Here are five reasons why you are in calorie deficit and not losing weight.
#1 You’re eating more than you think you are.
This one hurts, I know. I hear it all the time. “I barely eat a thing and I swear I eat way less than 1600 calories.” Unless you are weighing out your food, you do not know how much you are consuming. Point blank period. Calories can creep up on you out of nowhere; a little bit of miscalculation here and there and you're over target. Eyeballing high-calorie foods is a slippery slope and one that could cost you a lot of emotional turmoil. A very common culprit are the trendy diet foods like adding nut butter, avocados, and oils to food. That little Acai bowl you’re having, albeit healthy, could be a whopping 600 calories after adding toppings. Just because something is gluten-free, organic, vegan, or dairy-free doesn’t mean it has a low caloric value. It also doesn’t mean it is healthier than the regular thing. Things like nuts, oils, and snacks need to be weighed out - plain and simple. It takes an extra 10 seconds but will save you a lot of time and energy in the future. This is the simplest step you can add to your routine that will make a tremendous difference in your results. According to the research, caloric deficit is the single most important factor for weight loss and, since it's much easier to consume calories than to burn them, it's crucial to get this right.
#2 You’re exercising, but you’re moving less in the day.
Let’s say you get in a great, intense workout and you’re feeling awesome about yourself; however, for the rest of the day, you don’t want to move a muscle. After all, you already worked out and you feel tired. Moving less in your normal day means that you’re NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis) goes down and you’re not expending as many calories as you used to outside of the gym. So, instead of getting up to get yourself some water, you ask your partner to bring it for you. Instead of taking the dog out for a walk, you let it out in the backyard. So, you may think that you are expending an extra 500 calories at the gym, but you’re much more sedentary throughout the rest of your day causing your NEAT to go down by 300 or so calories.
For this particular reason, it is important to have some sort of step tracker so that you can make sure that you are still moving X amount outside of the gym. This one had me in a chokehold about half-way through my weightloss journey. I hit a plateau and I couldn’t figure out what was going on until I was enlightened by a little piece of research that told me I wasn’t expending as many calories as I thought I was. Wish I had figured that out earlier.
#3 You’re in too much of a deficit
If you go too extreme with your deficit, other parts of your metabolism, such as the calories it takes just for your body to function, will decrease as your body tries to accommodate for the lack of calories. This means that your metabolism slows down. On top of that, you will likely be too tired to move around during the day so your NEAT will decrease as well. A 500-750 calorie deficit is optimal according to the research. Anything lower than that is not recommended and low-carb or low-fat diets do not seem to make a difference according to the same research.
#4 You haven’t given it enough time
Unlike popular Youtube videos where they try out a diet for a week to show you the results, our bodies need more time to adjust; it is not recommended to measure your results that quickly. Instead, try it for a month before you weigh yourself or take progress pictures and you can make adjustments from there. If you are new to exercising, muscle mass may account for the number on the scale. Be patient and adjust your caloric intake/expenditure as needed. Don't rush anything, otherwise it might be hard to maintain your new weight.
#5 Weight Fluctuations
If you see drastic weight fluctuations, it is most likely water weight which can be influenced by a very large number of factors such as sodium intake, hours of sleep, muscle soreness, hormone fluctuations, and the like. If you had a particularly salty meal the day before, you are likely to retain more water as sodium causes water retention. If you are a woman, pay attention to how your weight fluctuates along with your menstrual cycle. Women gain water weight at different points in their cycles, some during ovulation and some during menstruation. Every month I would be in a frenzied panic because I felt quite bloated, heavy, and gained 2-3 pounds about two weeks before my upcoming period due to hormones and water retention. Each time I would become desperate because, instead of losing a pound per week, I would gain 3 pounds back. Then, once my period was over, I would ultimately be on track again and feel unbelievably slim. It took me about 4 months to identify and accept this cycle without ensuing chaos.
Conclusion
As we can see, the first three of these have to do with overestimating and underestimating calorie expenditure and intake, respectively. If you combine them, you can see how easily it can cause your weight to be at a standstill. For instance, if your plan is to have a 500 calorie deficit per day yet you underestimate your calorie consumption by 200 and overestimate your expenditure by 200, you would only be in a decifit of 100 calories per day. At this rate, it would take you a whole month to lose less than a single pound.
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