Why Are You Not Losing Weight While Working Out?

It is not uncommon to diet and exercise without seeing weight loss results, but it is frustrating. Weight loss plateaus occur for many reasons relating to lifestyle, diet and exercise habits, and metabolism. These plateaus can be overcome by understanding how diet and exercise routines affect the body's metabolism and making a few slight adjustments to continue dropping pounds.

Identification

Weight loss is stalled when the body reaches a balance between the caloric intake and energy expenditure. Your body adapts to exercise and the calorie reduction that accompanies dieting and your metabolism adjusts itself accordingly by slowing down. In order to continue losing weight, it is necessary to maintain a high metabolism.

Significance

Metabolism is a pivotal factor in weight loss. The higher the body's metabolism, the faster it converts calories to energy. Some factors affecting metabolism, such as age and genetics, are ingrained, but metabolic speed is also influenced by diet, exercise and lifestyle.

Facts

There are many lifestyle factors that can cause your metabolism to slow down, making it difficult to lose weight. A common habit hampering weight loss is consuming too few calories to keep the body energized. This not only causes the metabolism to slow down but also alerts the body to store excess fat. Other factors that contribute to a sluggish metabolic rate and may inhibit weight loss are psychological issues, such as stress and lack of sleep. Stress releases cortisol, which slows metabolism and facilitates weight gain in the abdominal area. According to Women's Fitness, sleep deprivation leads to metabolic changes and imposes stress on the body, also triggering the release of cortisol.

Prevention/Solution

Practicing healthy dietary and fitness habits to keep metabolism high will help you achieve weight loss and maintain a healthy weight.

The body adapts to exercise, so it's necessary to consistently vary exercise routines and increase the intensity of workouts to keep the muscles challenged. Strength training is an aspect of exercise that many people forget when they want to lose weight. Lifting weights builds muscle, which burns more calories than fat, and keeps the body's metabolic rate high for hours after exercising. On the flip side, it is also crucial to let the body rest between workouts to avoid overexerting the muscles. Even though this sounds counterproductive, exercise wears down muscle fibers and makes them weaker. Taking a day or two between working out a particular muscle group gives it time to recover and repair.

Consistent exercise goes hand in hand with a healthy diet. Many people have difficulty losing weight because they do not monitor their calorie intake and consume too few or too many calories. The body requires a deficit of 3,500 calories to lose one pound of fat. A healthy weight loss of one to two pounds per week can be achieved by cutting out 500 calories per day and consistently exercising. Keeping a daily food journal is a good way to keep track of calorie consumption.

Considerations

People who are already in a healthy weight range have more difficulty losing weight because their bodies do not have excess body fat to shed. Body mass index is a calculation of a healthy body fat percentage based on weight and height. It is important to factor BMI into weight loss plans for healthy results.