Why Can’t I Lose Weight?

You think working out to lose weight is easier than cleaning up your eating habits!

Exercise and activity certainly help when you’re on a weight loss journey. But as the old adage goes, “You can’t out-exercise a bad diet.” Exercise burns calories, but depending on the activity, intensity, and duration, it might not result in a big enough caloric deficit to melt the pounds—or it could take much longer than you want. Not to mention, beginning an exercise routine or becoming more active can inadvertently lead to more calories being consumed, because you may experience an increased appetite. If you’re not considering the choices you’re making in the kitchen, simultaneously, you could be sabotaging your efforts!

Making better meal, snack, and beverages choices can easily reduce your overall caloric consumption, which will lead to weight loss. When you combine healthy eating with increased activity, weight loss accelerates.

You think there are “good” foods and “bad” foods!

Instead of labeling foods as good or bad, try better or best. If you are intent on losing weight and keeping it off, thinking in black and white is dangerous, and can leave you craving. Basically, eliminating certain Nutrition foods all-together and being super strict with your eating all the time has the potential to backfire. Rome was not built in a day, and permanent weight loss cannot be achieved by outlawing every sweet you see for the rest of your life!

It’s important to ease into healthy eating by analyzing the food choices you make and then start considering food swaps. Really…eating healthy isn’t half bad! You just need to become more aware about nutritional facts and fiction, and find some great recipes. Eating healthy doesn’t mean denying yourself occasional pleasurable foods or food experiences because you think they are “bad.” Everything in moderation—just don’t indulge in everything all the time.

You think cardio is king!

It makes sense: Cardio workouts burn calories. You see it, right there on the screen. It’s easy to monitor and makes you feel good about your journey. But cardio alone will not help you lose weight or keep it off. It’s important to invest in increasing your lean muscle mass by adding strength training sessions to your workout program.

Every year, you lose a bit of muscle mass. And when muscle mass goes, the number of calories you burn daily will go down too. Muscle tissue burns more calories than fat tissue does whether at rest or when doing cardio. So, the more lean muscle mass you have, the more metabolic (faster burn) you become.

This doesn’t mean eliminate cardio. Your heart needs exercise and cardio is a great way to do it. Plus, it does burn calories! But, cardio alone will not speed up your weight loss progress. Combine cardio and strength training for best results.

[Source: http://blog.anytimefitness.com/cant-lose-weight/]