Why Can’t I Lose Weight: 9 Frustrating Reasons You May Be Missing

1. Portion Distortion

Measure and record everything you put in your mouth: the amount, the ingredients, etc.

Try using a free app like My Fitness Pal to give you a breakdown of your daily calories, fat intake, sugar intake, etc. Do this for at least a week and then take a look at your numbers.

I like to divide my plate into fractions:

• 1/4 lean protein
• 1/4 or less complex carbohydrates like sweet potatoes, quinoa, brown rice
• All the rest should greens, and non starchy vegetables

Seeing everything broken down can really be eye-opening. You may be consuming way more than you thought you were.

2. Too Much Restaurant Food

If you eat a lot of your meals out, you have another tricky dieting problem.

It’s very hard to know just what is going into your restaurant meal, what kinds of oils are used for cooking, and how much butter goes into your meal.

Even if you do order a healthy meal, restaurant portion sizes are almost always way more than you need. Make up your mind that you will take half of your meal home to eat the next day. And then do it.

If you really want to lose weight, you should be making the majority of your meals at home in your own kitchen.

3. Sneaky Snacking

Even if you are limiting your snacking to healthy foods, it is possible to overdo it!

There are lots of healthy foods that when eaten to excess, can really throw off your weight loss progress.

Nuts for instance. Nuts can be a healthy addition to any good diet. They’re a source of protein, healthy fat and fiber. But, they are also high in calories and even a handful can really add a ton of calories to your daily intake.A serving of almonds is about a handful, or a 1/4 of a cup. That serving size has about 162 calories, 14 grams of heart-healthy unsaturated fat, and 6 grams of protein.

So when you’re snacking, always measure out a serving. It’s just too easy to mindlessly eat out of a bag. Trust me, I’m guilty of this too.

If you’re trying to lose weight and love fruit, make sure you’re choosing berries or green apples. Both of these are lower in sugar than other fruits and are good choices if you’re trying to keep up your weight loss progress.

4. You Need To Eat More Protein

Research has shown that one of the best ways to kick up your weight loss is to make your first meal of the day protein rich.

In one study, people ate either an egg breakfast or a bagel breakfast with the same amount of calories.

After two months, those who ate the egg breakfast had way better results than the bagel eaters: 65% more weight loss, 34% reduction in waist measurements and a 61% reduction in BMI.

So try trading your usual oatmeal with an egg or some greek yogurt.

5. Is Stress Making You Fat?

Can stress in your life make it really hard for you to lose weight? Yep.

Stress is something that we all have to live with – it’s wired into our systems as humans. It’s the old “fight or flight” response that helped us survive since the dawn of time.

When your body senses an emergency or dangerous situation, your levels of cortisol and adrenaline skyrocket. And once that situation has passed, those hormone levels return to normal.

Chronic stress can be caused by our crazy busy lives (always on the go, trying to get every last thing done), stressful jobs, relationship problems, money problems, you name it.

Multiple studies have shown a link between stress and stubborn weight loss. Chronically elevated cortisol has even been shown to cause weight gain!

So what can you do when you can’t just take off to a tropical island for a relaxing vacation?

The answer is simple but boring: to reduce stress try exercising, meditating or any other self-care that helps you regroup, center and calm down.

6. You’re Not Getting Enough Sleep

I can’t stress enough the importance of getting enough, good-quality sleep when you’re trying to lose weight.