So you want to lose weight and are in a calorie deficit. Here’s what you can expect…
I’m just going to get straight to the point with this one… If you are truly in a deficit, you are going to be hungry at some point in time. This is something you need to accept if you want to lose weight. If you are hungry, chances are your deficit is working.
Being hungry is a part of the process. Your body is using more energy than it is taking, therefore, you are in a successful deficit.
There are ways around hunger, like being smart with your food choices, e.g. opting for low calorie/high volume foods, prioritising enough daily fibre intake (slow digesting foods = longer satiety), not drinking your calories, etc.
If you are not losing weight and it has been between 2-4 weeks with no weight change, the harsh truth is that you are NOT in a true deficit. Now this can be fixed by decreasing your calories, increasing your energy expenditure, or a combination of both. You have not failed until you give up! You just need to make adjustments to ensure you are in a deficit.
I know what many of you may be thinking “But I’m doing EVERYTHING right and I’m still not losing weight!” My question to you is… are you being 100% honest with yourself? Are you accounting for every single thing you are eating accurately? Are you possibly overestimating how much expenditure you are actually doing? Are you guessing everything with no real plan of attack? If this is the case, the only person you are letting down is yourself. Why put yourself through the mental challenges of losing weight if you are not doing the physical aspects correctly that lead to weight loss?
Tracking Calories:
We need to account for every single bit of food that enters our mouths. That means every lick, every sip, and every bite. Even if you are just licking the spoon here and there, that small portion of food is still adding to your daily calorie intake. These small licks, slips, and bites add up more than you would realise.
Tracking your calorie intake each day will always lead to more accuracy. If you are guesstimating everything you eat, you are more likely to underestimate rather than overestimate. You can definitely successfully lose weight without tracking calories, however, tracking calories is more fool-proof.
If you are tracking your calories, you need to ensure you are doing so accurately.
MyFitnessPal:
MyFitnessPal is a great tool to use, but it is a user-generated database. This means anyone can manually add data for a food and it is saved onto the database for others to also use. The information another person may have added in for a certain food may be incorrect. Therefore, you could be adding incorrect macros/calories into your food diary, leading to inaccurate tracking.
I always recommend double-checking the calorie and macro information of any food you use from the database. Alternatively, adding your foods manually to MyFitnessPal is always an option. Just ensure YOU are adding them incorrectly.
The Excuses:
Trust me I’ve heard them all before! Too many people blame every other aspect of their lives on why they are not losing weight. Too busy, too stressed, too hard.
Take responsibility for your own actions and your own commitment. Unfortunately, some aspects of life do make weight loss more challenging for some than others. But if losing weight is that important to you, you will make it happen.
Hormones and Weight Loss:
Hormones frequently come into the conversion when people discuss not being able to lose weight. Changes in hormones can affect your energy expenditure, appetite, and energy levels. However, this does not mean you cannot still lose weight.
If you truly believe you have a hormone issue or other health-related issue that is causing you to not lose weight. It is always best to see your GP. They will be able to either confirm or rule out this factor for you. Certain medical conditions can definitely affect weight loss, so if you honestly think you are not losing weight and are 100% doing everything right. You should consult with your GP.
Weight loss Plateaus:
Eventually after being in a successful deficit your weight loss will plateau. It is bound to happen at some point. This occurs due to your deficit calories becoming your new maintenance calories. You are now a smaller-sized human than you first were when you began your initial deficit, therefore you need fewer calories to maintain this new body weight.
To continue seeing progress for weight loss - Calories, expenditure or a combination of both will need to be adjusted to ensure you are once again in a deficit.
Protein in a deficit:
A tip while in a deficit - Try to keep your protein high. Ideally around 2-2.2g per kilogram of body weight per day. Higher daily protein intake will help preserve lean muscle mass while losing body fat. Because at the end of the day, the real goal should be ‘fat’ loss not just overall ‘weight’ loss.
Maintaining lean muscle mass while losing body fat is what most people mean when they say they want to lose weight. So it is important to note that just overall weight loss will generally not lead you to your ideal body shape or look. Muscle is the foundation that helps build curves in the right places, fat loss just reveals that shape… As long as you put in the work at the gym to build muscle in the first place then when you lose excess body fat, you will be able to show off all that hard work!
We are all capable of losing weight if the right protocols are in place. You don’t need to feel like you are in a vicious cycle of yo-yo dieting with no long-lasting results.
The bottom line is you need to put in the work to get the results. Weight loss does not need to be complicated! It is actually quite simple - Calories in vs. calories out. Along with this - Try to keep protein high and get into a consistent gym routine to complement your nutrition efforts.