Why can't I lose weight?

Question

I've cut down portions significantly, I don't eat sweets or junk anymore, and I drink alot of water and no soft drinks yet I still havent lost any weight.

Answer 1

On Yahoo!Answers I find certain questions being asked repeatedly which is simply a reflection of new people participating. A couple of common question amounts to "How do I lose weight," or more specifically, "How do I lose abdominal fat?" I have gotten very positive responses from my answers when I paused to reply (and now beginning to get "It works!" emails that are very gratifying. I like helping people)... so have recently decided to put a good solid answer on my Yahoo!360 Blog (September 10) that I can point people to. These are my thoughts as a physician and athlete.

Don't target losing more than about 2 lbs per week. If you try to lose faster, your body will go into "starvation mode" and get very stingy about burning calories while at the same time very efficient about storing any calories that you do provide. And it will make you feel awful.

There is no site specific way of losing fat... the old myth about working your abs to burn belly fat isn't true. To get rid of love handles, you need to lose overall fat. That happens with exercise and watching your diet. More on that below.

The most effective way to lose fat is aerobic exercise in the "moderate" fat-burning range, ideally first thing in the morning before you eat. When you wake your body is ready to burn fat and your levels of growth hormone are highest at that time. Later in the day it can take up to 30 minutes just to put your body into a fat-burning mode.

Another overlooked way to burn fat is by lifting weights. Skeletal muscle has very high caloric needs... almost twice that of adipose (fat) tissue. Put on a little muscle and you will burn calories all day even at rest. Be aware that skeletal muscle weighs more, so with this approach you may see your weight increasing while your body fat is melting away. Not realizing this often stresses folks who think they should be losing weight as a measure of fitness. Forget the scale, look in the mirror and you will be happy.

To lose a pound of fat, you need to eliminate about 3500 calories. You can do this by burning more with exercise or by modifying your diet to reduce intake. If you do a Google search on say, "swimming calories" you will quickly find a website with tables of calories burned for a given exercise. You can use such lists to estimate how many calories you are burning up with your routine.

For diet, keep a diary for a couple of weeks counting calories, grams of protein, and grams of fat intake. It is easy with online sources of nutritional information (type the name of the food and calories into the Google search engine) and packaging labels. That will let you quickly figure out where the fat is coming from in your diet.

Fat gives you 9 calories per gram. So take the number of grams of fat, multiply by 9, then calculate what percentage the fat calories are of your total daily calories. Restricting the calories from fat to about 20% of your total intake is ideal for a maintenance diet... that isn't overly restrictive. Of note, you need some fat in your diet. For instance, the body uses fat to produce hormones. Once you have a picture of how to modify your diet, you can drop the diary and just go back to it occasionally if you are wanting to tweek things further.

There is a subset of questions that goes further and asks about "How to get a six-pack?" The answer is the same. Six-packs are 20% abdominal exercise and 80% diet. There is one caveat... abdominal muscles will form in the position that you work them, so be certain to pull them tightly toward your spine while doing crunches, etc. Also, during most lifting, the "core is active" which means that you should be stabilizing with contracted abs then too. Fail to do this and the abs will form, but bulging outward and the result is not attractive.

If you are trying to build muscle as a way to lose fat, then you may need to increase total calories and specifically your protein intake. I target about 0.8 g of protein per pound of body weight each day when actively building. That is far more protein than most people need in their diets.


Aloha

Answer 2

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Answer 3

How long have you been "dieting"?

Don't give up, and still eat SOME things you enjoy just in moderation. If you take our your favorite food completely, you'll break down and just overeat it. Then you'll feel guilt.

Also, what's your exercise schedule like?

Don't expect results immediately and learn to measure or weigh yourself each week. Also, what would you rather be--120 pounds or a size 10? Muscle weighs more than fat, so going by inches instead of pounds will produce greater results.

Answer 4

This is what worked for me. I did 200 minutes of cardio every week. I did planks and other abs exercises on alternate days. On training days, I did 5-10 minutes of cardio to warm up, then weight training, followed by more cardio.

Don't look at your scale as the be all and end all, but get a measuring tape to check your progress, and that will show more tangible results.

Good luck!

Answer 5

Are you exercising? If so, you may be building muscle which weighs more than fat. The best way to figure out if you're losing weight is by your clothes, they will start to feel looser if you are losing the fat. If you're not working out, all I can think of is it may be water weight or you may need to think about your food intake again? Make sure you're eating enough throughout the day so your metabolism stays steady too. Good luck.

Answer 6

How long has it been? Usually when I go on a diet nothing happens for like three weeks. Also you need to do some exercise as well to keep your metabolism up. Even walking makes a big difference. Dieting without exercise slows your metabolism down and makes it even harder to lose weight.

Answer 7

The only thing that I can see that is missing is exercise. Can you fit in a walk every day at some time? Try walking for at least 30 minutes 6 days a week and you'll see it come off quickly.
Limit these foods to just several days a week, pick the days you'll eat them: cheeses, sodas, chips, fast foods, fried foods, sweet treats, creamy dressings. Are you eating fruits and veggies, yogurts? Watch your night time eating.

Answer 8

Occasionally it can be a medical reason. Most of the time it is because people will not change their habits.

People train their bodies to feel hungry when they do not need food. Eating at the same time each day gets to be a habit. Twice a day is all you actually need to eat. You can train yourself to feel hungry only when you actually need food. Very active people and the young do need to eat more often than adults need to.

Answer 9

You are definitely on the right path in staying away from sweets, watch your carbs also as they raise your glycemic index as well.Make sure to include alot of fiber in your diet, and greens.
South Beach is an excellent diet. Weight comes off really fast.

Answer 10

i would try cutting down on carbohydrates as well such as bread, pasta, oatmeal, cereal, potatoes, matzo, pastry and rice. Are you drinking alot of alcohol? if so cut back or cut out of your diet completely.

Make sure you are walking at least 30 minutes a day, 6 days a week.

As far as the water, try ice water instead, it cools your body temperature down so your body has to work to warm its temperature back up again...which helps burn calories.

Try checking out the south beach diet:

http://www.southbeachdiet.com/public/default.asp

Answer 11

keep up what your doing but add 45 min of moderate to intense exercise. Walk after dinner with a friend or play a game in the park dont give up you'll see results soon