You are no slacker when it comes to your health – you watch what you eat, cutting back on fat, controlling carbohydrates and use portion control. You can resist sweets and ice cream without a problem and exercise regularly. Yet, the bathroom scale needle still won’t budge. It’s as if those pesky scales are laughing at you. So, you may saying to yourself “Why am I not losing weight?”
If you have tried different diets and they have all failed you, it’s really not your fault. I’m afraid your past efforts were doomed to fail unless they took into account the complex chemicals that are really running the show – your hormones.
Unless you are addressing the fat storing/fat burning hormones that control whether you remain slim and trim or become overweight you will be unable to lose weight. Even with a healthy diet and exercise and you will continue to wonder and say to yourself “Why am I not losing weight?”
Our bodies are wired to send us signals when something is not right with our systems and processes, but often we are simply too busy to hear them. The symptoms of hormonal imbalance are experienced by many every day and recognizing and treating these subtle warnings is essential to losing weight. The problem is though, that so many of us have had a hormone imbalance for so long, we do not even know what normal is anymore.
Help, “Why am I not losing weight?”
Regardless of how a hormonal balance shows itself on the outside of our body, the internal reality of the problem remains the same. These imbalances lead to difficulty losing weight and when present will keep you GAINING weight long term which is how one goes from a few pounds overweight to becoming obese.
Unfortunately, the most common hormonal imbalances cannot be solved by dieting alone. In fact, they can prevent successful fat loss even when great diet plans and exercise programs are in place. If you have not been successful in the past, chances are, one or more the following hormones are ‘out of whack’ and could be the reason why you need to keep asking the question “Why am I not losing weight?”
Too much insulin – This is an essential substance whose main function is to process sugar in the bloodstream and carry it into muscle cells where it will be used as fuel. If we have allowed our muscles to become weak and flabby from not doing enough muscle building and maintaining activity our muscle cells cannot utilize enough sugar from the blood.
But when there are high levels of sugar present, the body has to put it somewhere so it makes more and more insulin to try and force the muscle cells to open up and take it but they can’t as they have no use for it – they are ‘modern’ sedentary muscles with very low energy requirements.
The end result is a combined cocktail of high levels of sugar and insulin that circulate around the body in the blood stream doing huge damage to every tissue it touches as well as making and keeping you FAT. As well as having to say “Why am I not losing weight?” you can also say “hello” to increased risks of heart disease, cancer and diabetes.
Solution – Get working your muscles with proper strength training exercise so the muscle cells can take up and burn excess sugar from the blood. Quit eating too much nutrient-poor carbohydrates found in processed foods, sugary drinks and packaged low fat foods. If you are eating these foods that have insufficient protein, inadequate healthy fats and are deficient in fiber you will continue to need to ask “Why am I not losing weight?”
The wrong foods and too much of them are causing you to ask “Why am I not losing weight?”
Appetite regulation hormones – Ditching as much processed food as possible is the very best thing you can do to rebalance your delicate appetite regulation hormones and stop intense and often uncontrollable foods cravings that the chemicals and additives in these foods cause. They can derail even the most dedicated dieter when they strike causing them to raid the pantry for food barely aware of what they are even doing.
Growth hormone and testosterone – The balance of hormones in your body adapts to the level of the physical activity that you do or do not do. So any decrease in your activity levels means a decrease in fat burning hormones. A good example of this would be if a person (man or woman) becomes less active, there would be a gradual decline in growth hormone and testosterone.
These are the important hormones known to boost the metabolism (the body’s engine) in both genders and lower body fat levels, so a decline in these hormones alone can be the culprit in weight gain. These hormones are only triggered by physical activity and that is why strength training exercise is so important. It is stimulation of the muscle fibers that activate the hormones that will help you break down body fat, build new metabolically active (fat burning) muscle tissue, strengthen bones and make you feel really good.
So, to sum up and to cease having to wonder “Why I am not losing weight?”, it is the combination of proper strengthening exercise supported by a healthy eating plan that means when you work with your body it will work with you to help you lose weight.
Just go back to the home page on this website for a simple plan that will lead you through making these changes so you can lose that fat permanently and reclaim that feel-good body of your dreams. I can help you do that in the last fat loss membership program you will ever need.
Note: If you found the content in this article useful, please check out my home page where you'll find more information about my No Excuses Body Makeover program:
