Thursday, December 1, 2011

4 Reasons It's Not Happening

Don't we all hit those places where we don't know what we're doing wrong but for some reason we aren't going in the direction we want. Because of that I've come up with 4 reasons you may not be losing weight.
1. There's no program in place. There might be thoughts of working out and dreams of living a fit lifestyle but no method to the madness. Or there may be occasional workouts but nothing organized as planned, consistent activity.

2. Diet isn't in tune with goals. The problem varies here: it could be not eating enough, not eating the right kind of foods, or not eating at the right times. I find that it often seems that we don't eat often enough throughout the day in order to keep our metabolism up as well as night time hunger at bay.
3. Lack of motivation. Or we have Fat Loss ADD and keep coming off plan to follow another, exciting looking strategy. The key here is to find some accountability. A gym buddy, a coach, a class... whatever it takes to keep you on track.. a study by Nicolai et al (2009), which compared the results of two groups of obese individuals, found that the group who worked out under a coach lost on average 362% more fat than those who were just given advice and access to equipment. 362%!

4. Focus is on body weight and not body composition. Weight (when you are close to your goal weight) is immaterial and can be manipulated dramatically via water intake, which isn't even vaguely representative of progress and only lasts a day or two. It isn't reflective of bodyfat % either, which is what you should ultimately be focused on if you want to be fit.

Lastly, a bonus reason. I think too many of us aren't doing enough HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training). This is interval training for cardio and ultimately fat loss. It's a win-win exercise program because it doesn't take as much time as typical get on the treadmill for x number of miles or minutes and it's burning a ton of calories and fat!

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