Why You Might Not be Losing Weight (And What to Do About It)

Are you wondering why you can't lose weight? I'm going to go over a few questions that you can ask yourself to help figure it out.

Why You Might Not Be Losing Weight

The first thing you want to ask yourself is, are you actually in a calorie deficit? It doesn't matter what type of diet you're following—whether it's high carb, low carb, whatever carb. If you're not in a calorie deficit, you will not lose weight.

There are a few things that you need to unpack there as well. Are you tracking everything that you're eating and drinking? Because if you are not sure if you're actually in a calorie deficit, how will you know if you're not actively tracking what you're putting in your mouth on a daily basis?

There are different ways to track it. You can use a tracking app like My Fitness Pal is common. You can use a food diary—any way that you can just track how much you're consuming is going to be super beneficial because that will give you an objective metric of what you're actually putting in your body.

Are you tracking consistently and accurately? If we're not paying attention to how much we're consuming, not just during the week, but also on the weekend, that can throw off a lot as well. And that can take you out of that calorie deficit, which is the first main thing that we talked about.

Are you measuring them? Are you using tablespoons, measuring cups, or using a food scale—there are a lot of different different ways to track. But one of the most common mistakes I see is that we're not tracking accurately. And we may tend to consume a little bit more than we think we are or even a lot more. Tracking accurately is gonna be super important to make sure that you're on track.

Are You Eating Enough Protein?

The next question to ask yourself is are you eating enough protein? Protein is super important, especially when it comes to losing weight. Protein helps keep your hunger in check and keep your cravings low. It's also important to maintain our muscle mass—which is critical when we're trying to lose fat but keep our muscle.

Tracking and making sure that you're consuming enough protein throughout the day is gonna be super important. Typically, a range between .8 to 1.2 grams per pound of bodyweight is a good range to be in for for everybody. And that's a pretty big range.

If you are on like the leaner side, sticking around that one to 1.2 grams per pound of bodyweight is a good place to eat to be per day. We're consuming around one gram per pound of body weight per day and protein. So if you weigh 150 pounds, 150 grams of protein per day is a good place to be.

If you have a lot of body weight to lose, or body fat to lose, bring it back to that like 0.8 grams per pound is a good place to start off. Or you can take your height and centimeters and use that to count how much protein you should kind of start off. If you're 160 centimeters, 160 grams per day is a good place to start with.

If the main goal is to lose body fat, keeping protein on the higher side will be very beneficial.

Are You Moving Enough?

The next question to ask yourself is are you moving? Are you tracking your movements somehow? That could be steps or calories burned. We have a daily step goal throughout the day, typically between eight to 10k steps a day—if you're getting that that's a really good place to be in.

If you've been losing weight, and then you kind of stopped losing for a period of time, it could be that you've kind of down-regulated your movement. This is very normal when it comes to weight loss. The first thing that tends to go so to speak is our movement throughout the day. If we have fewer calories coming out, we tend to move a little bit less like without even knowing it.

Are You Doing Resistance Training?

The next question to ask yourself is are you resistance training or lifting weights? A lot of people think that doing cardio is going to lead to more fat loss or weight loss. And yes, doing cardio exercise can definitely help fat loss—but our bodies are very smart. We tend to adapt to cardio very easily. For example, if you went out and ran a mile today, and then you did that every single day for the next week, you would actually start to burn fewer calories running that same mile.

If you're doing cardio for the goal of fat loss, you actually don't want to become efficient at it—because you're looking to burn more calories. Cardio is not the best route to go in terms of just focusing on fat loss, but you should really be focusing on resistance training and making sure that you're lifting weights. Because when you're losing body fat, you want to see muscle, you want to have muscle.

If you're not resistance training, you're not going to be maintaining that muscle mass as you're losing that body fat.

Are You Sleeping Enough?

The last question to ask yourself is are you sleeping enough? Sleep is super underrated when it comes to fat loss. If we're not sleeping enough, our hunger hormones are going to be all out of whack. If we're getting crap sleep at night, it's just going to make it so much harder to stick within our calorie goals.

If we're in a calorie deficit, we're obviously eating less. It's not that sleep directly correlates with losing body fat. But if you're not sleeping, your hunger hormones are going to be out of whack.

We also know that if you're not sleeping enough, it tends to make you a little bit more anxious—and this tends to increase cravings. Get your sleep dialed into seven to nine hours—that's a good range to be in for optimized sleep. Sleep is one of the most underrated pieces of fat loss that I've seen in my coaching practice.

Want more advice for losing weight and building muscle? Check out the other content we have on the blog and on the podcast.