Working Out and Still Not Losing Weight? How can this be – I keep exercising but can’t lose the weight and have seen to results in months!
I often get these or similar types of letters, so I decided to write this article, in which I will try to explain why it is sometimes possible to not get any results when following an exercise plan.
You exercise but haven’t changes your dietary habits (the unhealthy ones). It is false to believe that you can actually lose weight simply by exercising but not changing your diet. Unfortunately that will not happen because exercise alone cannot make you lose weight the same as diet can, by the way. If you only switch to a healthy, balanced diet, you will lose weight even without exercising.
Make sure you talk about your diet with a trainer (if you do not have a personal trainer, ask a trainer at your gym)! It might seem to you that your diet is fairly healthy, but by taking it over with a trainer you might find several flaws that you were not aware of. For instance, you only eat salad – tomatoes and cucumber, but add fattening sour cream; or you may have salad for lunch at your local bistro, but it turns out that it is only rich in low-quality vegetable oil and salt. Yet another typical diet mistake is the wrong interpretation of the term ‘light dinner’. It definitely shouldn’t include fruit – 2 apples and a watermelon half – do not have fruit for dinner because during sleep, our body burns fat, but the consumed carbohydrates, simply put, just turn into fat overnight.
The duration of training. Power training should not exceed 45-55 minutes. If you extend it longer, your cortisol (stress hormone) levels start increasing with every minute, why can in turn stress out your body and cause the deposition of fat. The exercise plan could be the following: 5-minute aerobic warm-up, then power training, then finish up with abdominal exercise and stretching the exercised muscle groups. On average it should take up 60 minutes. Remember to not take long breaks – that should help you fit in the timeframe!
Constant, unchanging exercise load. The human body is extremely smart and can adapt to various kinds of load – both endurance and strength-related, etc. One solution is to change the weight training program every once in a while. Also try to reach the maximum result without a margin during each training – if an exercise has fifteen sets, make sure to complete the 14th and 15th set without a margin. If there is still a power margin left, try using heavier lifts.
In addition to weight training, make sure to do some cardio exercises. Here you must also try to change up the load – the elliptical trainer, running, cycling, etc. I also recommend changing up the intervals of interval training.
It often happens that women only attend aerobics but cannot seem to lose any weight, and it has a perfectly valid reason. By attending group training, you will keep yourself in shape, but remember about the exercise diversity. For instance, take aerobics once a week, and weight training at the gym twice per week. It is precisely weight training that shapes the body, helping to achieve, for instance, a rounder butt, wider back or tighter legs.
If you have any questions, make sure to leave them in the comments below!
You are welcome to visit my Plant-Based Fitness website for more info!
