Why Am I Not Losing Weight? Discover These 5 Surprising Reasons

If you’ve been on a fat loss diet for some time now and are just not seeing the results you had hoped for, you may wonder, ‘Why am I not losing weight?’

You can feel like you’re doing everything right, but that weight is sticking to your body and showing no signs of leaving.

You haven’t lost a pound for at least a week and feel extremely frustrated.

Many people get stuck in a plateau during the fat loss process, which is often the reason for the question, ‘Why am I not losing weight?’

A plateau is a point where your body has adapted to the diet you’ve been giving it and no longer sees a reason to lose any further body fat.

Fortunately, you can get past this and start losing weight again if you know the right approach.

Let’s review what you need to know to get your fat loss back on track so that you can start losing weight again.

Count Your Calories

The first thing you’ll want to ensure you are doing is counting your calories.

If you’ve been letting yourself slide a little as you go about your diet, not measuring out your food or tracking as carefully, this could be the answer to the question, ‘why am I not losing weight’.

Many people start out following a very strict diet approach, making sure they are taking in the perfect amount of calories each and every day, but then, as time passes, they let things slide, and before they know it, they are no longer seeing success.

Whether it’s half a sandwich your child brought home from school with them or a quarter of a cookie you ate off your co-worker’s desk, these little bits will add up and could entirely remove the deficit you were using with your diet plan.

If you eat 200 or more calories per day than you were supposed to, you can rest assured that this will influence your progress.

Have A High-Calorie Weekend

The second reason you may not be losing weight as you had hoped is that your metabolism is stuck in slow mode.

This occurs when you use a very low-calorie diet, and your body adapts to it. Your body has strong defensive mechanisms built in to prevent starvation, and when you use such a low-calorie intake, the body feels like it’s starving itself.

You should spike your calorie intake for two days to boost your metabolism again and continue fat loss.

Eating far greater than the maintenance level, with the vast majority of the calories coming from carbohydrate sources, will help to ‘reset’ many of the fat-burning hormones in the body, allowing your metabolism to speed up again so that you can continue to see fat loss success.

Once you finish this two-day period and then move right back down to your usual diet plan, you should notice that you immediately begin burning up calories faster than before and start seeing weight loss move along again.

Many people completely avoid taking the diet break they should be taking with their programs simply because they are worried that a higher calorie intake for a few days will set them back.

Get this fear out of your mind.

Two days at a higher calorie intake will not affect your diet progress as long as you get right back on track afterward. In fact, it’s likely to only help the process along.

Check Your Nutrient Ratios

If you find yourself asking the question, ‘Why am I not losing weight?’ the next thing to look at is your current nutrient ratios.

How many grams of proteins, carbs, and fats are you eating – and are they appropriate for the diet plan you are aiming to follow?

Some people are not getting enough protein daily, which is why they aren’t seeing the desired process.

In other cases, you may be consuming too many carbohydrates and too few dietary fats, which is causing you to make much slower progress than you could otherwise.

Assess the structure of your diet and see if you can make some changes there. Sometimes, all it takes to see results again is a little tinkering with your ratios.

Do this, and you should find yourself seeing greater success.

Re-Assess Your Target Calorie Intake

Finally, the last thing you should do if you are stuck and wondering why you aren’t losing weight is to re-assess your calorie intake.

If you’ve lost 10-20 pounds, you may not be losing any further fat because you are now eating at a maintenance level.

You must remember that as you follow your diet and start losing body fat, your calorie requirements will decrease, so your diet needs to be adjusted accordingly.

If you can’t remember the last time you assessed your calorie intake to ensure it was still appropriate for your weight and to produce fat loss, this is likely the reason you aren’t seeing success.

You may need to lower your calorie intake further than before to see progress start to resume.

So there you have the primary answers to the question, ‘why am I not losing weight’.

If you can see yourself in any of these, you can make some simple changes and likely get back on track to seeing the results you’re searching for again.