Wellness Wednesday: Why you may not be losing weight

Weight loss is probably one of the hardest things I have had to do, but it has also been the most rewarding. It is an actually way that you can see and experience the compound effect or the results of consistency. Do the “right” thing daily and you will reap what you have sown.

Having just completed my weight loss and knowing that it took me 9 months to lose 45 pounds but 15 of those pounds took me about 6 months to lose. I wanted to go over some reasons as to why you may not be losing weight as fast as you want to but please keep in mind that losing anymore than 2 pounds a week is not healthy weight loss unless it is your first week or two when you are losing that inflammation weight.

Stress- This is probably one of those invisible reasons. You can be eating right and exercising daily but you weight isn’t budging. The problem is when you are stressed your body produces cortisol which is the hormone that is released when you are stressed. A good example of stress would be you seeing a poisonous snake in your yard. It makes you jump and you run away. Your body releases cortisol which suppresses your digestive tract, increases the use of sugar in your body and alters your immune system for the period of time that you are under stress. Your body then goes back to a normal state and things operate on the norm. If you are constantly in a state of stress like being unhappy in your job or marriage you operate under a steady stress level and your body will have an imbalance of blood sugar which will cause weight gain.  

Not enough sleep – If you aren’t sleeping well as I wrote in this blog post you are increasing the cortisol and operating as if you were drinking because your mental clarity is impaired and you make bad food choices typically your carb intake is a lot higher.

Too much or not enough eating – depending on your exercise you could be eating too little and putting your body in starvation mode without knowing it which causes your body to keep everything that you are eating for fear that you aren’t going to feed it again. If you are eating too much you aren’t burning enough for weight loss. I can tell you that a 1200 calorie diet for something like crossfit, P90X or Insanity is TOO LOW and if you are eating 2500 calories and doing yoga than you are probably eating too much.

Not knowing what is in your food – This is probably the biggest reason why I am an advocate of cooking your own meals and eating at home. This way you have more control over what you are eating. I am not a big calorie counter but I looked up the calories of a few slices of pizza and I was shocked that two slices was about 1,000 calories. Who the heck knows what is in there but if I make my own I can shave off a few hundred calories and still get the flavor and textures that I am looking for.

I didn’t want to leave this post with just an educational post so I am leaving you with a DIY salad bar graphic so that you can print and keep with you to keep things healthy along with a few of my favorite dressings so that you would be inspired to eat at home more often.