The Most Common Phrases from people who struggle to lose excess weight
Updated: Jul 14, 2022
I've been working with clients for the past 7 years to help them manage their health and weight permanently. Here are the most common things they say when struggling to lose excess weight:
1. I don’t eat breakfast. If anything, I’ll just have a banana.
2. I try not to eat meat.
3. I usually eat a salad for lunch.
4. I skip snacks and meals even when I’m hungry.
5. I run for an hour on the treadmill every day.
6. I tried diets such as weight watchers in the past, and I just end up gaining everything back and then some.
7. I do juice cleanses every month and cannot lose weight.
Explanation of why each of these do not work:
Skipping meals can leave you hungrier, causing you to over eat later in the day. Your body requires a certain amount of calories per day at rest based on your basal metabolic rate, which is influenced by your age, gender and weight. A high activity level would increase your caloric needs. If you end up skipping out on a meal like breakfast, you will likely eat more later in the day to compensate. Sometimes this translates to anything that is accessible instead of a planned balanced meal. On the other hand, if you only eat a piece of fruit for breakfast without any fat and protein, your blood sugar can spike and then drop, leaving you hungrier.
Grass-finished meat provides a high quality source of protein. One ounce of animal protein is about 7 grams of protein, so even if you only have 4 ounces at a time, you rack in 28 grams of protein. Meat also provides all essential amino acids that your body needs to build its own proteins. Your body uses protein to build lean body mass (bones, muscle, tissues and skin for example) and to synthesize hormones (insulin and leptin for example), antibodies and neurotransmitters. Protein is also satiating and because it supports muscle, it helps with long term weight management, since muscle is more metabolically active than fat.
While lettuce is very low in calories, it doesn't provide healthy fats or protein. Therefore, what you are adding to the salad makes most of the impact. Salad dressings contain added sugar, pro-inflammatory seed oils and many other additive ingredients that don't offer much nutrition. Salads can also be very irritating to some people with gut issues and can cause bloating. If you are someone who has stomach issues or IBS, it is always better to eat food that is cooked.
You don't want to get in the habit of ignoring your body's physiological signals. The hormone, ghrelin is released when you are physiologically hungry and leptin is the hormone that signals satiety in your body so that you stop eating. It is good to be in tune with these hormones in order to not overeat.
While it is great to engage in exercise, you cannot rely only on exercise, as you cannot outrun a bad diet. Additionally, strength training leads to more fat burning post workout than does cardio. There is also such thing as overtraining, which can lead to elevated levels of the stress hormone, cortisol which can cause weight gain in the abdominal area and breakdown of muscle.
Trendy diets are not sustainable long term. The key is to find something that is suitable and sustainable for you while also providing your body with nourishment. Having a solid foundation of habits such as meal prep and keeping healthy foods more accessible lead to more weight loss in the long run.
Juice cleanses only provide carbs, but no protein or healthy fats. While you may lose weight due to a caloric deficit, the weight loss is likely to be muscle/water weight. As soon as you reintroduce food, you will likely regain the weight. You don't need to go on a juice cleanse to detox. Our body is equipped with its own detoxing mechanisms such as glutathione which can be activated by eating certain foods. Our kidneys and liver also work hard to rid the body of toxins daily. The best way to detox is to avoid eating foods that overload your body with toxins and provide it with nourishing foods so it can function more optimally. Additionally, liquid calories do not provide the same satiety as when chew your foods.
