The Simple Truth About Why You’re Not Losing Fat
The Answer Everyone Knows But No One Wants to Accept
Every day millions of people fail to lose weight.
They give into temptation.
Declare themselves failures.
Then tell themselves the body they want is a luxury reserved for someone other than them.
That they’re destined to be the fat one.
They resign themselves to their fate.
But here’s the absolutely mindboggling thing about this…These people often know exactly what it takes to lose weight.
They know how to reach their goals.
A lot of the time they’ve seen some progress.
Which means they know what they need to do, yet they still can’t do it.
So, what’s going wrong?
Ultimately, it comes down to the refusal to believe (really truly believe) that a calorie deficit is the driver of weight loss.
Which means that weight loss is not a result of:
- Meal timing
- ‘Clean’ foods
- Superfoods
- Organic foods
- Exercise (although it can certainly help)
- Supplements
- ‘Superior’ diets
Yet so many people are unwilling or unable to believe it and as such continue to struggle with losing weight.
It’s not because they can’t do it.
It’s not because they’re destined to be the fat one of the family.
But because they cannot or will not accept a calorie deficit as the determinant of weight loss.
Instead, they look for the next hack, quick fix, secret or shortcut that will ‘guarantee’ them the results they want.
All the time ignoring the one thing that will actually get them there.
As I see it there are a few reasons people refuse to accept the calorie model of weight loss:
#1: It’s too simple
It sounds funny but something I’ve seen in myself, and with friends and clients over the years is the refusal to believe that it could be that simple.
I believe this comes back to the idea that if it was that simple everyone would do it and succeed, but this is to confuse the terms simple and easy.
A calorie deficit is a simple concept, but for reasons, we’ll look at soon it’s not always easy.
We have to realise that we are beings of ego which means to accept that we’re failing to do something that is simple is a much bigger pill to swallow than pretending we just haven’t found the right diet, hack, secret or shortcut that works yet.
#2: Impatience
We live in a world where everything and everyone is always on. A world where we can get what we want when we want it:
- We can stream shows and movies in an instant
- Order things for same-day delivery on Amazon
- Know the answer to a question in seconds with Google
This has led to a situation where many people expect the same thing with fitness…instant results for very little effort.
But this isn’t possible and anyone telling you anything different is lying and most likely just trying to make a quick buck.
After all, if this was the way fitness really worked then we wouldn’t have an obesity problem.
#3: Noise
The fitness industry is a noisy place and with so many people saying so many different things all at the same time it can near impossible to parse the truth from the bullshit.
Which means if you’re not careful this noise will distract you from the reality of the situation and distort your expectation of what’s possible.
This is a fundamental problem as the busier and more saturated the fitness industry has become the more people feel like they need to find the next gimmick to stand out.
So, like a snake-oil salesman, they sell you an impossible dream and then disappear before you realise all you’ve lost is your money and time.
Leaving your weight intact.
#4: Causation
An important distinction is just because you don’t count calories and still lose weight doesn’t mean it’s not the calories that make the weight loss occur.
A strong association is not proof of causation.
Which means just because a diet or way of eating results in weight loss it doesn’t mean it’s the reason it’s happening.
For example, it’s exceedingly common for someone to say that their diet is the best for losing weight, when in fact all diets work the same way.
Yes, the different foods you eat can have an impact on how healthy you are, how energetic you feel and whether you need to supplement with multivitamins. But it’s the total amount of food you eat that determines weight loss or gain, not the foods themselves.
This fact is backed by numerous research studies and real-life case studies (here, here, here, here, here, and here…you get the point) and is also evident in every single diet…
- Intermittent fasting: creates a calorie deficit by skipping breakfast and reducing the time you have to eat all your meals
- The Ketogenic diet: creates a calorie deficit by removing carbohydrate from your diet and increase the consumption of the 2 most filling macros, protein and fat
- Paleo diet: creates a calorie deficit by removing all grains, legumes, dairy and more from your diet
- Low-fat diet: creates a calorie deficit by restricting the amount of fat you can eat, therefore removing the most calorie-dense macro from your diet
- Weight watchers: creates a calorie deficit by controlling your portion size to reduce the total amount of food you eat
It’s important not to confuse a diet or way of eating that reduces your calorie intake with the reason you’re losing weight.
It’s not the diet.
It’s the calorie deficit.
When you see that every one of the usual reasons you’re not losing weight comes back to calories and energy balance, this paves the way for smoother consistent weight loss.
—
A quick primer on energy balance.
The energy balance equation is the relationship between the energy you consume through calories and the energy you expend through life and activity.
There are 3 possible outcomes:
- Weight loss — occurs when the energy you expend is greater than the energy you consume
- Weight maintenance — occurs when the energy you expend is equal to the energy you consume
- Weight gain — occurs when the energy you expend is lesser than the energy you consume
The important thing to know is that you will always be in one of these states.
The Simple Truth About Why You’re Not Losing Fat
I said earlier how every reason you’re not losing fat always comes back to the management of your calorie deficit.
Now I want to show you how.
To do this we’ll explore 4 of the most common reasons for not losing weight, why it happens and how to fix it.
It’s my hope that this will give some additional context to everything I’ve been saying so far.
Reason #1: You’re Eating Hidden Calories
Not so much hidden as unaccounted for, these are the calories that sneak into your daily intake without you noticing and common offenders include:
- The oil you cook with
- The milk in your tea or coffee
- The bits you eat when preparing food
- The handful of your friend's crisps
I admit that each thing on its own doesn’t seem like a big deal but it all adds up and quickly becomes enough to take you out of a calorie deficit.
This has nothing to do with the type of food you eat, the person you are or exercise you do. This is purely an issue of calorie balance.
The Solution
Start keeping a food diary (I recommend using MyFitnessPal) and log your food for the day before you eat it.
If you’re already keeping a food diary then get strict with yourself and make sure you’re measuring food and drink portions accurately.
This will give a crystal clear picture of what's going on and where you might be getting extra calories from. You can then adjust your intake as necessary to ensure you stay in a calorie deficit.
Reason #2: You’re Estimating Your Calorie Intake
Humans are horrible at estimating calorie intake and portion size.
Worse yet, if you’re trying to keep a food diary at the end of each day you’re almost certainly going to be forgetting things.
Both of these things lead to inaccurate calorie counting.
This is backed by research (1) which shows that whilst those actively trying to change their weight tend to be more accurate than overweight individuals not trying to change their weight, everyone struggles to get it right.
What really drives this point home is the fact that current research shows that individuals regularly underestimate the calorie content of their meals by up to 25%, with the results being worse the larger the meal is (2).
The Solution
Again it comes back to knowing the calorie content of your food and how this fits with your calorie goal for the day.
This means you need to keep an accurate food diary and plan your meals ahead of time. A great tip is to embrace a level of boredom and eat the same meals for a week at a time.
This helps reduce the mental stress of creating a menu that fits within your calorie and macros each day, makes it easier to prep weekly meals in advance and improve your adherence to your diet.
Reason #3: You’re Overestimating the Calories You Burn Through Exercise
Research (4) shows that when estimating the number of calories burnt through exercise individuals overestimated the total by as much as 72%.
This means if you ran for 30 minutes and burnt 300 calories most people would estimate they actually burnt closer to 500.
On top of this research (5) shows that in addition to drastically overestimating the amount of calorie burnt in exercise, trained and sedentary individuals also overestimated their calorie burn during rest days.
Is it any wonder that people routinely overeat, all the while mistakenly thinking they are still in a calorie deficit.
In fact, this exact phenomenon is documented in the research (6) with one study concluding that,
“normal-weight individuals overestimate EE [energy expenditure] during exercise by 3–4 folds [and], when asked to precisely compensate for exercise EE with food intake, the resulting energy intake is still 2 to 3 folds greater than the measured EE of exercise.”
The Solution
Again it comes back to calories.
Specifically knowing how many you’re burning through exercise using a smartwatch, step counter, heart rate monitor or another method.
The key is to start collecting data and building a clearer picture of how many calories you burn on an average day.
Even so, I’d still recommend you err on the side of caution when eating in a calorie deficit to avoid unnecessary weight gain.
Reason #4: You’ve Been Dieting For Too Long
There is a sneaky process that happens in the body when you’ve been dieting for too long. It’s called adaptive thermogenesis.
This is the (7) “disproportional or greater than expected reduction of resting metabolic rate (RMR).”
It happens independently of changes you would expect to see from dieting i.e. a change in total body weight and body composition.
Additionally, the longer you’re in a calorie deficit and the bigger your deficit is the worse the effect.
This means over time your calorie deficit will become smaller and smaller to the point where it’s no longer a calorie deficit at all and you begin to maintain or even gain weight.
The Solution
You need to manage your calorie deficit by not using anything too aggressive.
You then also need to incorporate diet breaks or refeed days to help manage hormonal and physiological changes in the body in response to dieting.
Parting Thoughts
I know some people will still prefer to tell me that weight loss is actually the result of [insert diet of the moment here], insulin or any one of a number of other reasons (excuses) people reach for instead of admitting the truth…
That they know what it takes.
But they don’t, won’t or can’t do it.
So, I’m not going to sit here and continue trying to convince you.
What I will tell you is that there will always be a reason not to do something.
There will always be a reason to wait.
A reason to doubt.
A reason not to try.
But at the end of the day, you need to realise that everyone has their own shit going on and the reason some people succeed regardless is not that they’re lucky or better than you but simply because they decided to get on with it.
And then kept doing it.
In the face of doubt, struggle and fear they kept going.
So, what will you do…?
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