Talk about frustrating. You’ve been sweating, striving and depriving yourself for months, but still that needle on the scale won’t budge. No matter how hard you push yourself, how many chocolate chip cookies you resist or how many times you hit the gym, you just can’t seem to lose the weight. What on earth are you doing wrong?
There are a number of reasons that you may not be losing weight. In this article, we’ll focus on five of the most common causes, and provide you with some sanity-restoring hacks to get your fat loss back on track.
Reason No. 1: Lack of Sleep
Sleep seems like such an easy thing to do. It takes absolutely no effort at all. You simply get comfortable, close you eyes and drift off to slumberland. The sheer simplicity and lack of perceived effort involved in going to sleep is what makes it difficult for most of us to take the idea of sleep seriously as the key to weight loss. After all, we’ve been fed the notion that vigorous activity – the very antithesis of sleep – is the key to shedding those unwanted pounds.
By coupling regular exercise with a controlled, clean eating pattern, we’ve been told over and over again, we will be able to reach our fat loss goals. The problem, of course, is that millions of us have been doing just that – and staying fat. The missing component—the key to unlocking the fat burning mechanism—is very likely to be sleep.
Great sleep, then, is not a substitute for regular exercise and clean eating. While it would be great to be able to stuff ourselves with cream donuts all day and ditch those early morning workouts in favour of a fat-burning sleep in, that route will give you nothing but problems. By combining exercise, sound nutrition and great sleep, however, you will be able to turn on your body’s fat-burning torch to allow you to finally sculpt the body of your dreams.
How, then, can the simple act of sleeping make you fat? What on earth can you be doing while you are out of it that is jeopardizing your weight goals? Well, it’s not so much what you are doing that’s the problem. The issue boils down to two things:
The quality and the quantity of your sleep
These two factors — sleep quality and quantity — regulate the release of certain hormones, which researchers have been taking a lot of interest in lately. They’ve known for a long time that sleep disruption affects our hormones, but new research has honed in on three hormones in particular that affect our appetite: leptin, grehlin and cortisol.
In order to regulate these three vital hormones to maximize fat loss, you simply have to get your sleeping pattern sorted out. Here are 10 quick tips to allow you to do just that.
- Establish a Sleep Routine: Have a wind down period during which you reduce your activity level and mental stimulation as you move closer to bedtime. Go through the same routine every night, including having a set bedtime. Your routine may include switching off your technology, including your phone, at a certain time (well in advance of retiring), having a bath, brushing your teeth, etc. Such habits help you to get ready both physically and psychologically for sleep. Get Up at the Same Time Each Day: Regardless of when you go to bed, maintain a consistent time at which you get up in the morning.
- Limit Daytime Napping: Too much daytime napping can interfere with night-time sleep.
- Control stress and worry by giving yourself downtime and settling differences quickly: Consider setting aside a worry time each night before going to bed. Write down all of your worries and what you are going to do about them. If one of those worries comes into your mind as you are trying to get to sleep, tell yourself, “I’ve already dealt with that and I know exactly what I’m going to do about it tomorrow.”
- Avoid caffeine, alcohol and tobacco. Don’t drink coffee, tea and soft drinks or eat chocolate within 2-3 hours of going to bed. Alcohol before bedtime can result in restlessness and uneven sleep. The nicotine in tobacco is a stimulant, making it harder to get to sleep.
- Make your bedroom as dark as possible, as cool as possible and as quiet as possible. The best temperature is 68 to 72 degrees Fahrenheit. Distracting noises can be drowned out with earplugs, soft music or a white noise machine.
Have a Quality Sleeping Surface: People get much better sleep when they are able to lie comfortably horizontally and when they are not cramped. The quality of your mattress is an important consideration. If you are sleeping (or not sleeping) on a lumpy, 20-year-old sleeping surface that is failing to provide back and neck support, you owe it to yourself to invest in a new one. Research indicates that a mattress that is not too firm generally leads to better sleep. - The same thing applies to your pillow. Choosing the right pillow depends on what your sleeping style is. Are you a back, side or front sleeper? Back sleepers should consider a memory foam pillow that moulds to the curve of the neck. Side sleepers need a medium to firm pillow. They would also benefit from a pillow between their knees as this aids in spinal alignment. Stomach sleepers are advised to try to readjust their position to the side or front, as sleeping on your front puts too much stress on the neck and lower back.
- Unplug Your Technology: Technology has a huge impact on the quality and quantity of our sleep. Most technology screens have a bluish tint to them. This has the effect of restricting the release of melatonin into the body. The bottom line is to make your bedroom a technology free zone. Be strict on yourself, and don’t even allow your smart phone in.
- Eat Smart in the Evening: Avoid consuming a heavy meal right before bedtime. If you are going to eat a snack, make sure that it is low sugar and low carb.
- Don’t Rely on Sleep Inducing Medications: Sleeping pills can quickly become habit forming. What’s more, their effect diminishes as your body becomes accustomed to them. Side effects are also an issue.
Reason No. 2: Muscle Gain
Most people are obsessed with losing weight. Their sole focus is on seeing the number on the scale go down. These people will never reach their ideal physique. Not until they throw away their scales, anyway. In fact, they need to forget about losing weight altogether.
You goal should be never be to lose weight. It should be more specific than that – to lose fat. The scale won’t tell you if you’re doing that. Too many people end up sacrificing vital muscle tissue, water and minerals in a vain quest to bring down their scale weight. Get smart and invest in a body fat monitor and a tape measure. They will let you know just how much fat you are losing around your belly. Then you can set your fat loss goals around body fat percentage and tape measurements rather than scale weight. Remember that it’s not about losing weight – it is only ever about losing stored body fat!
Reason No. 3: Habituation
It doesn’t take the human body long to get used to something. When it does, it no longer sees the thing as a challenge and, as a result, stops responding. This is especially true when it comes to exercise. Unless you are giving your body a damn good reason, it will it not respond to the challenge you place in front of it. That challenge must be greater than what it has previously encountered. That means two things:
- Progressive Workouts
- Varied Workouts
Unless you do something that your body isn’t used to doing, it will not respond. It will simply slip into the same groove that it used last time round to accomplish the task. That’s why you have to add a little bit of resistance, a few extra reps, or a reduced rest period.
You also need to change up your routine completely every six weeks to inject that much needed variety. Within your training sessions, keep your body guessing by switching between aerobic and anaerobic movements. As an example, try the following workout to change it up between plyometric and compound moves to stimulate your body fully – and burn maximum fat stores:
- Dumbbell Bench Press
- Pull Ups
- Skipping
- Push Ups
- Power Jumps
Reason No. 4: Slow Cardio
High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is the fastest way to burn calories known to man. It involves combining short bursts of absolute maximum intensity cardio exercise with even shorter rest periods. 20-second sprints and 10-second rest periods are ideal.
For maximum fat burning, both during and after the workout, do 8 cycles of this routine. The best exercises to choose from are stationery cycling, sprinting and rowing. Here is a sample super-scorching, fat-burning HIIT routine . . .
HIIT Routine – Cardio Sprints
Get yourself to an open field with a stopwatch that is pre-set to go off at intervals of 20 and 10 seconds. After a two-minute warm-up, prepare for your first sprint. You are about to run as fast as you possibly can. Imagine that you are being chased by a rabid dog. Push the button to start the stopwatch and go for it. Pump your arms and drive your legs forward as fast as you possibly can. Keep going until 20 seconds are up. Then slow down to a slow jog for exactly 10 seconds. Now you are ready for the next sprint. Continue going until you have completed eight sprints. This will only take four minutes, but it will seem like an hour.
As you get in the fourth, fifth and sixth round, you’ll start to really feel the effort. Your tendency will be to slow down. You need to resist this temptation. Pushing through to the absolute max on every sprint round is vital to your fat loss endeavors.
Reason No. 5: You’re not Hitting the Weights
Walk into any gym and take a good look around. What are the majority of the women doing? Yep – they’ll either be pounding it out on the cardio equipment or, if they do venture into the weights area, they’ll be doing endless reps of isolation exercises with superlight weights. Go back in six months and you’ll see the same thing – and the women will most probably look exactly the same.
What’s missing?
Heavy weight training.
Why?
Because women still have a fear of building muscle. They think that seriously hitting the weights will morph them into a muscle bound she-hulk. The truth is that women are simply not capable (without the aid of anabolic steroids) of building large amounts of muscle. That’s because they have 16.5 times less testosterone than men. What heavy weight training will actually do is shape, define and sculpt your muscles, while helping you to burn fat. And, believe me, that is a good thing. Shapely, sculpted, streamlined muscle is sexy.
But not only that – your body is your physical curriculum vitae. A toned, sculpted body tells the world all about you before you say a word. It tells us that you are a confident, healthy, goal-oriented go-getter who respects herself and works hard to be the best she can be.
You don’t have to be stuck in a rut when it comes to losing body fat. For most people, the difference between success and failure is not the effort or energy expended but simply the direction of focus. Use the suggestions provided here to ensure that all of your good intentions translate to real results on your body.
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