Continued from last week, here are five more reasons you are struggling to lose body fat:
6. You are eating too many processed foods. Eating highly refined grains like white bread, chips, cookies and sweetened drinks like fruit juices and soda pop spike insulin and cause inflammation in your body. Inflammation is highly correlated to body fat. Eating too many processed foods limits your ability to lose weight. Try getting the majority of your snack foods from fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. They are all high in antioxidants and eating them will actually help you lose body fat. Nobody ever got fat on apples and almonds.
7. If you really want to lose fat, you need to train short and intensely. If you are spending more than an hour in the gym, then you are making friends. Study after study has shown that people who participated in high intensity regimens lost more fat than their low intensity counterparts. The harder you train, the more calories you will burn both during and after your workout. My advice is to get into the gym (or wherever you train) and work as hard as you can for an hour, stretch and then get on with your day.
8. You are not performing the right exercises. It is impossible to spot reduce–doing 100 triceps kickbacks followed by 100 biceps curls every morning will not make your arms any slimmer. They may inflame your elbow joints, but they won’t do much else. You need to choose exercises that activate the most amount of muscle as possible. Multi-joint, compound movements. Squats, lunges, presses, rows and plank variations are a must. These exercises will give you the most bang for your buck. If you still want to perform some isolation exercises that work the smaller muscles, save those for the end of your workout when you are running on fumes.
9. You are constantly stressed out. Too many family commitments, deadlines, bills and jobs can take their toll on everyone after a while. A little stress is healthy–it motivates us to get up in the morning and accomplish what we need to in order to be happy and productive. But when we get overstressed, we tend to reach for comfort foods that are higher in fat and overall calories. That is just a small part of the equation though. Just as with a lack of sleep, our bodies produce excess cortisol (stress hormone) when our stress levels are high, making it much more difficult to lose fat. Cortisol increases the amount of fat your body clings to and enlarges the fat cells that you already have. You need to find healthier outlets for stress. Going for a long walk, reading a book, turning on some music that you enjoy. Meditation is another healthy form of relaxation you can try that has made a real comeback in recent years. Many people swear by it.
10. You are not drinking enough water. Numerous studies have shown that not drinking enough water can derail your weight loss efforts. I recommend that all my clients have a full glass of water before every meal and another at the end. Besides keeping you hydrated, it is a great litmus test for hunger. Often we think we are hungry when we are actually dehydrated. So if after a meal you still feel hungry, try the pre and post glasses of water and chances are you won’t be hungry any longer. Drinking cooler water can actually speed up your metabolism because your body has to work a little harder to bring that water up to its core temperature.
Hope that helps !