If you are wondering why you aren’t still losing weight even after putting so much effort; with rigorous exercise and strict dieting, we have found out some weird reasons that might actually surprise you. We all want to be fit and healthy, but sometimes it might seem like an impossible mission to shed weight no matter how much you run on the treadmill or do yoga all day long. Unless you employ the right strategies, you may not be able to get the desired shape or reach the goal weight effortlessly. Read on to find out about 9 unusual reasons you aren’t losing weight and what to do about them.
1. Eating Unwanted Calories Even Without Knowing: A lavish spread of jam on white bread as breakfast, a rich mayonnaise dressing in your healthy salad, a few cans of cola at regular intervals through the day to get quick bursts of energy, or just a few cookies to quell hunger pangs may not seem much, but they are all calorie-dense food and at the end of the day, can prevent you from getting into a calorie deficit. Avoid frequent snacking and also extra calories that make their way into your daily diet through processed and junk food.
2. You Have To Finish Everything on your Plate: Even if it means you are completely full and cannot eat another morsel – then you probably belong to the “clean plate” club. “Clean your plate before you get up” has been a practice that has been ingrained from our childhood to make sure we get adequate nourishment during our growing years and more importantly, to ensure that no food gets wasted. Following such a practice can give way to unhealthy eating habits, disruption of body’s hunger-fullness mechanism, paving the way to weight gain and obesity-related diseases. A tendency to finish up all the food that’s there on the plate even after the hunger has been satiated is called the “clean plate syndrome” can lead to overeating. The solution – Eat Until 80% Full: This one simple rule can boost your weight loss and improve overall health as well –”Hara Hachi Bu” is an eating technique that originated from Okinawa region of Japan where people live a long life, are not obese, and rarely suffer from any metabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, stroke or cardiovascular issues. “Hara Hachi Bu,” translates to “eat until you are 80% full.” This practice promotes putting a stop to eating once a person reaches 80% satiety. Here’s a detailed post on how to practice to eat until you are 80% full.
3. I do Yoga and Walking Every Day But Hardly Budge an Inch: No doubt yoga and walking are good for your overall health, but if you want to burn calories, then you have to do high intensity exercises that burn a lot of calories and reduce calorie intake through diet as well. High-intensity interval training exercises help burn a lot of calories. HIIT workouts are popular to burn fat when compared to cardio exercises such as walking or running on the treadmill. Interestingly, even after you have finished HIIT routine, your body continues to burn calories because of increased oxygen consumption, keeping up the metabolism high all through the day. HIIT also boosts enzymes that are responsible for fat burning and also decrease levels of fat-producing enzymes. Find Fat-Burning HIIT exercise routine on the Rati Beauty app.
4. It Runs in the Family: You have been told that “fat genes” runs in the family and you believe there’s nothing you can do about it. Though genetics does play quite a role in weight gain – clean eating, lifestyle changes, and exercise can easily override this factor.
5. You Only Drink Fruit Juices: Fresh fruit and vegetable juices are replacing whole meals – particularly, for those who hope to slim down really fast. Fruits are an indispensable part of a healthy diet along with vegetables. The major issue with having only fruit juices as part of a diet is that it is extremely restrictive and thus not sustainable beyond a few days. Since fruits are full of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and other nutrients, they are considered “free food” that can be eaten in unlimited amounts and juicing them out seems to be more popular than eating them whole. Some fruits like grapes, dates, pineapple, etc., have a higher glycemic index and when you juice them out (you lose the fiber content), which leads to a huge jump in blood sugar and subsequent insulin release, and all the extra calories would be converted into fat molecules. Fruit juices, even, the freshly-squeezed ones are not nutritionally equal to whole fruits because the juicing process breaks down the fiber content, which is so necessary to keep the digestive system healthy because it helps in active absorption of nutrients, in controlling blood sugar, and in lowering cholesterol. So, whole fruit is the best way to eat your fruit.
6. You Have Eliminated All Forms of Fat From the Diet: To lose weight quickly, a lot of people shun away all forms of fat from their diet, and it’s so wrong! You need healthy fats for absorption of fat-soluble vitamins like A, D, E, to boost metabolism, and above all to stimulate the fat-burning process. You can get your healthy fats from coconut oil, almond oil, olive oil, almonds, Brazil nuts, avocado, banana, egg yolks, cheese, ghee, dark chocolate, chia seeds, etc. Check out the Rati Beauty diet to find out how to use healthy fats to boost weight loss.
7. Only Exercising, Not Eating Healthy to Get into Calorie Deficit: When we engage in strenuous exercise, we tend to eat more to reward ourselves for sweating it out. The common mindset is that one can eat whatever one wants as long as they are exercising, but that’s not how the body works. Each calorie is accounted for and that extra tub of ice cream and two slices of pizza will be counted without any error, and has a high probability of getting converted into fat layers. If losing weight is your top priority right now, you would have to straighten up your diet by switching to weight loss meal plans on the Rati Beauty app, and getting physically active as well, including at least 40 minutes of exercise 5 times a week (even brisk walking would do if the thought of dumbbells and cardio scares you right now). However, the best way to lose weight boils down to dieting and clean eating. Following an awesome weight loss diet such as the Rati Beauty diet would help you achieve weight loss as well as inch loss through calorie deficit without starvation or compromising on nutrition.
8. Not Eating Enough: If you have been thinking about going on a crash diet, abstaining from food as much as possible to be able to squeeze into a dress that’s a size smaller, please don’t! Since crash dieting equates to starving for the major part of the day in order to cut down calories – please do remember that such a diet also leads to sluggish metabolism and the body would cling on to fat more dearly, deciphering it to be a famine situation. Not eating enough food lowers metabolism and pushes body to conserve fat instead of burning it out. Summing up, crash dieting will not result in the kind of weight loss you are expecting, it may prove to be counterproductive, so do not starve to lose weight – do these 10 things instead!
9. Sleep Deprivation: Lack of sleep has been associated with weight gain through various research studies. Not having a sound sleep can prevent you from losing weight – less hours of sleep increases cortisol production, makes metabolism sluggish, lowers fat-burning enzymes, increases level of the hunger hormone “ghrelin. You can stick to the diet and exercise every single day, but if you are not sleeping for 7 hours, the extra flab is not going anywhere. So, sleep for 7 hours or more to shed weight.
With these tips, losing weight will not be a battle anymore.
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