Ep. #226: Why You’re Not Losing Weight and What to Do About It

[00:00:00] This episode is brought to you by me. Seriously, though, I’m not big on promoting stuff that I don’t personally use and believe in. So instead, I’m going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my workout app stacked. It has tens of thousands of users and close to 400 reviews on the Apple store with a free Four star average, and it helps you get more out of your training in several ways.

It helps you quickly and easily plan out your workout routines. It gives you quick access to useful tools like plate math and one rep max calculation. It allows you to visually track your progression in your workouts, as well as your body measurements and much, much more. It’s free to download too, so if you want to check it out, then head over to www.

getstackedapp. com or just hit the iOS App store [00:01:00] and search for stacked workout and you will find it. All righty. That is enough shameless plugging for now. At least let’s get to the show.

Hey, this is Mike Matthews from muscleful life and Legion athletics. And in this video slash podcast. We’re going to talk about why you’re not losing weight. Why you stop losing weight for no good reason. And let’s start with some good news. The reason why you are not losing weight is not that you are genetically cursed.

It’s not that your metabolism is broken. It’s not that your hormones are screwed up. It’s not that you are eating the wrong foods or eating too little of the right foods. It’s not the carbs. It’s not the sugars. It’s not insulins. It is actually pretty simple. The reason why you’re not losing weight is pretty simple and the solution is pretty simple as well.

So the first [00:02:00] thing to consider is are you losing fat? But not wait, and that’s very common, especially with women and especially when people are starting out on a diet or are dieting very aggressively. So what can happen is, let’s say you are in a large calorie deficit and you’re doing a lot of exercise.

So stress levels are pretty high on the body. Cortisol levels are going to be higher than normal. And let’s say you lose a pound of fat. In one week from, everything that you’re doing, but because of various factors, you hold on to a pound of extra water. Therefore it looks like, Oh, nothing has changed if you’re just looking at the scale, but something has changed.

Your body composition actually has improved assuming you haven’t lost any muscle, you’ve lost fat, but you’re not seeing it in your weight. And an easy way to help prevent being tricked by this, by the water retention that can obscure fat loss is to pay attention to your weight, but also [00:03:00] pay attention to your waist size.

So measure your waist every week or so, just take a measuring tape and wrap it around your body, measure your waist at your navel. And if you see that measurement going down, you can know for a fact that you are losing fat regardless of what is happening with your weight. And if you are struggling with water retention especially when you’re cutting, and again, some people have to deal with it more than others.

There are definitely genetic factors that come into play, lifestyle factors. But if it is an issue, then the easiest ways to address it are one, to look at your sodium and potassium intake. Many people don’t really pay attention to these things and tend to have way too much sodium and way too little potassium in their diets.

So what you want to do is track your sodium and your potassium intake for a week or so. Or if you work off of a meal plan, a pre planned meal plan, then factor sodium and potassium into that meal plan. And I would recommend shooting for the Institute of Medicine’s guidelines. [00:04:00] which is about two and a half grams of sodium per day and about five grams of potassium per day.

And those numbers can actually go up if you are sweating a lot. So if you do exercise a lot and you sweat a lot, you may need to have a bit more of both, but that’s a good place to start. Another easy way to help get water retention under control is to make sure that you’re getting enough water through your diet and through what you are eating.

drinking. Now on the dietary side of things, some foods actually provide a fair amount of water, like vegetables. For example, there’s a fair amount of water in vegetables. If I remember correctly about 20 percent of the fluids that most people get just, this is just the average person, average diet. It actually comes from their food, but in terms of total fluid intake, I, again, I recommend the Institute of medicines guideline here, and that comes down to about three quarters to a gallon of water intake per day for most people.

So if you are eating a relatively nutritious diet, you can probably get about [00:05:00] 20 percent of that through just the foods that you eat. But then that means that you have to be drinking water or just drinking beverages. Doesn’t have to be water. So for example, coffee. Works just fine. Like the water and coffee is not the hydrating content of the water and the coffee is not offset by the caffeine.

Some people think yes, caffeine is a very slight diuretic, but the effects are very minimal. So shoot for again, what I do is I drink about, I’d say three quarters of a gallon to a gallon of water per day, just so I know that I’m getting enough. And the last little tip for reducing water retention is to take actions to reduce stress in your life because the more stressed you are, whether it’s through just, hard workouts or other things in your life that are stressing you, the higher your cortisol levels are going to be and the higher your cortisol levels are going to be.

the more water you are going to retain. And chronically elevated cortisol levels also can cause other unwanted side effects. And if it goes on for too long, [00:06:00] health conditions. And if you want some tips on how to reduce cortisol levels and how to reduce stress in general, head over to musclefullife.

com and search for relax. I don’t remember the exact name of the article, but it will come up first thing. And it’s going to give you a number of Science based ways to help you relax and help reduce cortisol levels. Okay. So another scenario where people can lose fat but not lose weight and therefore become confused is when you are new to weightlifting because what happens is when you’re new to weightlifting or just resistance training of any kind, your body is hyper responsive.

So you are going to build muscle very quickly. In the beginning, and also your muscles are going to be soaking up water and soaking up glycogen, which is a form of carbohydrate at a, at an accelerated rate in the beginning. And that means of course, that you can be losing fat while all the muscle related stuff is happening, but the muscle weight that you’re [00:07:00] gaining, both in terms of, increased muscle size and increased muscle weight, because now they’re holding more water and they’re holding more glycogen, all that can offset.

The weight loss that is occurring from the fat that you are losing so much so that the muscle related weight can actually be greater than. I’ve heard from many women over the years in particular who start resistance training for the first time and are either dismayed or just slightly confused because, maybe they noticed that their genes are fitting a bit better and they actually look a bit leaner in the mirror.

And let’s say this is their first, four to six weeks, but they’ve gained three pounds and that kind of freaks them out. But then I just explain what’s going on and they get it and are no longer worried and they just keep going. And for those of, I’d say both men and women, for the people that have a lot of fat to lose, eventually their weight does start coming down.

But the general rule of thumb is for your first Let’s say three to six weight, three to six weeks of resistance training. [00:08:00] If you’re new to resistance training, don’t expect much in the way of weight loss, regardless of what you’re doing with your diet. You can start losing fat right away, of course, but don’t necessarily expect weight loss.

In fact, you may want to expect some weight gain if you are new to resistance training over the first three to six weeks, at which point you’ll lose weight. You’ll probably see your weight start to stabilize and then drop if you are still in a calorie deficit, if you’re still looking to lose fat.

Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it, it really helps me.

And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say Thank you. You can find me on Instagram at [00:09:00] Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life, and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness. Okay. So let’s say that those are not the reasons why you’re not losing weight.

It’s not because you are holding too much water or because you are gaining muscle or because your muscles are now storing more water and glycogen. Let’s say you are not losing weight simply because you are not losing fat. Why? Now the long story short here is you are not losing weight Because you are not managing your energy balance properly.

And what I mean by that is you are not managing the relationship between the amount of energy that you are eating and the amount of energy that you are burning properly. That relationship is known as energy balance. And a good analogy for energy balance is a checking account. So if you think of it that way, then if you put more energy into the account than you spend, so if you eat more calories, you eat more energy than you burn, [00:10:00] you have a positive balance in that account, right?

You have a positive energy balance or a Calorie surplus. And in that case, what your body does with at least a portion of the excess energy that it is fed is it stores some of it as body fat. So for example, if you ate 2, 500 calories in a 24 hour period, but you only burned 2, 500 2000 calories, then a portion of that 500 calorie surplus will be stored as body fat.

Now, on the flip side, if you were to spend more energy than you have put into the account, if you overdraft your account, so to speak, then you are in a state of negative energy balance, or you are in a calorie deficit. So if you ate 2000 calories, In a 24 hour period and you burned 2, 500 calories, then you have a 500 calorie [00:11:00] deficit, meaning that you were 500 calories short in terms of how much you ate versus how much you burned.

And what happens there is your body is going to get most of that 500 calorie deficit. It’s going to get most of the 500 calories that it needed to get from somewhere just to stay alive. You didn’t give it. Enough energy through the food that you ate. So where did it get that extra 500 calories?

Most of it will be obtained from body fat. And what that means then, of course, is you are a little bit less fat after that 24 hour period of burning 500 calories more than you ate because your body had to go to its body fat stores. to get that energy that it needed so it whittled away a little bit at its body fat stores leaving you a little bit leaner at the end of that 24 hour period and in the other scenario where you ate 500 calories more than you burned of course you ended that [00:12:00] 24 hour period a little bit fatter.

Because again, a portion of those 500 calories that were in excess of what you burned were stored as body fat. Now, in both cases, the changes are going to be very slight. You’re not going to see them in the mirror. You can see them on the scale, but you’ll probably just think they’re a natural, little slight fluctuation of body weight.

But regardless of, whether you can detect them or not, that’s what happens now because the changes are slight in both directions, regardless of how aggressive you’re being with your diet. So regardless of how aggressively you’re overeating or under eating, the changes are still going to be relatively slight.

They add up a little bit. over time. Now let’s focus in on weight loss. We’ll stop talking about weight gain because that would be a, that’d be a different video. Now, in the terms of, in the case of weight loss, let’s say you need to lose 10 pounds of fat. That’s your goal. Now, research shows that a pound of fat contains approximately 3, 500 calories, and you actually have to burn quite a bit more.

You may have to burn upwards of [00:13:00] 7, 000 calories. To actually lose a pound of fat, let’s say five to 7, 000 is probably a fair guess because of various physiological mechanisms in play. It’s not as simple as burn one calorie and that’s one calorie off of, some body fat. That’s not exactly how it works.

But with that 10 pounds of fat loss, if that’s the goal, what that means then is that you are going to have to strip off about 35, 000 calories worth of body fat off your body. That’s what you’re going to have to lose. And to do that, you’re going to have to burn. 50 to 70, 000 calories more than you are eating.

Now, that’s over whatever period of time, if you’re going to lose that 10 pounds of fat, in four weeks, eight weeks, 10 weeks, 12 weeks, whatever, it means that over that period of time, you’re going to have to ultimately burn 50 to 70, 000 calories more than you are eating. Now, let’s look at a few common scenarios and approaches.

So one approach. Let’s say that you plan on feeding your body about 500 [00:14:00] calories less than it’s burning every day. So you’re going to, you’re going to maintain a 500 calorie deficit. seven days per week. Therefore, a 3, 500 calorie deficit per week. Now, because not all of that is going to come from your body fat, that means that you’re probably looking at, let’s say about 12 weeks to lose the 10 pounds of fat.

If you were to do that every day without fail, that’s a sensible plan. That’s a good plan. But let’s say that how it actually goes is you are in a 500 calorie deficit Monday through Friday. So you’ve done a good job sticking to your diet, but then the weekend comes and you eat 500 more calories than you burn on both Saturday and Sunday.

What you’ve done then is you’ve shrunk your weekly calorie deficit to about 1, 500 calories, right? Because you come into the weekend with a 2, 500 calorie deficit. You then eat 1000 more calories than you burn over the weekend, which then of course turns [00:15:00] that into a 1500 calorie deficit. And you’ve now more than doubled the amount of time that it’s going to take to lose the 10 pounds of fat.

So now you’re looking at probably 26 weeks to lose that 10 pounds of fat. If you were to repeat that each and every week. And of course, even worse is eating even more than that, eating way too much on the weekends so as to completely erase your week’s deficit or even turn it into a surplus. And unfortunately you can do that.

You can be good all week, Monday through Friday, and just two days of overeating, you can gain back all the fat that you have lost in five days of dieting. Sucks, but it is the way it is. Now, of course, real world weight loss and weight gain. Aren’t that mathematically reliable. They aren’t that linear.

There are other factors consider, but that is how it works at bottom. Every calorie that you eat over expenditure is a tiny step toward getting fatter and every calorie that you burn in excess of what you’re eating [00:16:00] is a tiny step toward getting leaner. And so how well you manage your energy balance ultimately determines how well you can lose weight.

Okay. So now that we have the basics under our belts, we have the basic, that’s where the basic physiology of fat loss and fat gain. Let’s look at a few practical tips on how to better manage your energy balance so you can lose weight effectively. So the first mistake that many people make is they try to eat on feel.

They don’t really know how many calories they are eating and they don’t really even know how many calories they’re burning. They just try to eat clean or not have certain types of foods or only eat certain types of foods. And while this can work sometimes depending on how restrictive the diet is and how active the person is, It usually doesn’t work very well because your body does not want to be in a calorie deficit.

Really what we’re talking about is mild starvation. That’s what it takes to lose weight and to lose fat. You have to mildly starve your body and your body doesn’t like that. And your [00:17:00] body also has various countermeasures that it can deploy to try to erase that deficit to try to get you to eat more or try to get you to move less.

It has various hormones it can use to influence your appetite and influence how full you feel from the foods that you eat and also the types of foods that you naturally want to eat. It also can. Do certain things to reduce the amount of activity that you just spontaneously engage in and other things.

So the point is, if you just leave it up to your body is going to try to just maintain its current state. That’s what it wants to do. Maintain its current body composition. It doesn’t particularly want to gain weight or gain fat, and it doesn’t particularly want to lose weight or lose fat. You have to force it.

To do either of those things, whether you’re trying to lose fat or even gain muscle, on the lose fat side of things, you have to force it by purposely eating less food than your body wants. And if you want to gain muscle, the most effective way to do it is [00:18:00] to force your body into an anabolic state by forcing down more food than it wants.

Another common mistake that screws up people’s energy balance is when you’re trying to count calories, you’re trying to plan calories, not knowing that, for example, restaurants usually underreport their calories. So if you’re eating at restaurants and they say that a meal contains a certain amount of calories it’s fair to assume that meal probably has 20 to 25 percent more calories than they’re saying.

And even food labels like pre packaged food labels, those calories listed on the food labels do not need to be 100 percent accurate. They can be actually underreported by as much as 20 percent and be in compliance with FDA regulations. Another very common mistake that people make, which leads to accidental overeating is measuring food incorrectly.

So let’s say that you are going to have some oatmeal, you’re going to have some peanut butter blueberries and yogurt, right? And so you get out your measuring cups, you’re measuring spoons, you [00:19:00] measure your cup of oatmeal and then you measure a tablespoon of peanut butter. And a half a cup of blueberries and a half a cup of yogurt.

You eat it all and you note it down in your my fitness pal or it’s just on your meal plan. You’re like, okay, great. And you think that you just ate however many calories that might be. Or if you track macros, whatever those macros might be. Now, what you don’t realize though is you may have just actually eaten a couple hundred more calories than you thought or than you planned.

And how you did that is actually pretty simple. So let’s say that oatmeal, let’s say it’s a slightly heaping cup of oatmeal measured dry. Of course you’re measuring properly. But ultimately it was a hundred grams of oatmeal, let’s say. And that contains about 379 calories. The cup that you counted though, the cup on the label.

It says 307 calories, which is what you put on your plan and what you put into your app because that assumes that it is 81 grams of dry oats. There’s a, 72 more calories than you thought. And let’s say the [00:20:00] tablespoon of peanut butter, you packed in 21 grams of peanut butter into that tablespoon for 123 calories, but you only recorded 94 calories.

Because that’s what maybe the app says a tablespoon of peanut butter is because it assumes that you are only putting 16 grams into that tablespoon. So as you can see, if you repeat this mistake meal after meal, day after day, you can dramatically I’ve worked with people that because of this alone, because of miss measuring, they were almost completely eliminating their calorie deficit every day, which of course completely stalled their weight loss and was very puzzling to them because, and also just very frustrating because they felt like they were on their diet.

They were sticking to everything. They were doing their workouts. Nothing’s changing. What the hell? That’s all it was. They were simply eating quite a bit more than they realized. So to avoid those problems, you only need to do a few things. One, you [00:21:00] should weigh and calculate all foods raw and dry whenever possible, because that will give you the most accurate estimate of the calories and macros because the cooked weights can vary meal to meal depending on different factors.

First and foremost, just the amount of moisture that becomes trapped in the food can vary. So again, Weigh raw and weigh dry for your calories, and then you can weigh cooked for portioning out. So if you’re making a big meal, a big one pot meal, that’s going to be, let’s say you’re going to turn it into four lunches, weigh everything raw and dry to figure out the calories and macros, cook it all.

And then weigh it and portion it out accordingly. So then you just, let’s just say for simple numbers, it comes out to 800 grams of food. Cool. You have four, 200 gram portions. Now it’s also very important to account for in your meal plan or track everything that you’re eating. All your vegetables, all your fruits, all your condiments, everything.

Some people say you don’t need to track this or that, and that can cause problems. Take vegetables. I have [00:22:00] worked with a lot of people that were told they didn’t have to track the calories. And you have to even think about the calories that they have or that they’re getting through vegetables.

And because They ate good diets. They actually ate quite a bit of vegetables every day. They were basically not tracking 2 to 300 calories per day. That’s a lot, especially take for women, take a woman, for example, who maybe she only burns 16, 17, 1800 calories per day. And then now she’s not tracking 200 calories a day of her intake that really gets in the way.

That’s a lot. And another little tip is for maximum accuracy, weigh and calculate all of your non liquid foods in grams and weigh and calculate all of your liquid foods in either ounces or milliliters. And again, this ensures maximum accuracy in your calorie and macro planning or tracking. And it ensures that you don’t accidentally and dramatically underestimate your intake.

And another little [00:23:00] tip is keep your cheating or your overeating to a minimum. Don’t have cheat days where you can just eat whatever you want, because as we discussed earlier, you can undo quite a bit of the week’s progress in one day. It’s hard to say exactly how much fat you can gain in a day of excessive overeating.

But if we look at studies on overfeeding. I think it’s fair to say that you can gain anywhere from a quarter to a half a pound of fat in a single day. If you eat too much and from again, working with a lot of people and getting the rundown on a lot of cheat days that can absolutely be done. If you combine a bunch of food, especially a bunch of fatty food and you add an alcohol, you better believe that you can maximize fat gain in a day, a quarter to a half a pound in one day.

So instead, what I recommend is just give yourself a cheat meal or a free meal, a normal meal, however you want to, call it, but basically one meal a week where you are going to [00:24:00] eat a bit more than usual and where your day’s intake is going to be a bit higher than usual. Now, my general recommendation is try to keep that to like, Let’s say 30 to 40 percent above your current normal daily intake.

So let’s say you’re a, probably a guy. If your ex doesn’t say, let’s say your calorie intake is 2000 calories a day. You’re cutting. So you’re probably a guy. If you’re a woman, then you are probably very active, but let’s, for simple numbers, you’re eating 2000 calories a day for cutting, and this is going to be your cheat.

You’re going to have day. You’re going to have a cheat meal. You’re going to go to a restaurant and you’re going to enjoy yourself. You’re not going to blow yourself up, but you’re going to have an appetizer and an entree and a little bit of dessert. So ideally for that day that you ideally you keep your calories, let’s just say under 3000 for the day, anywhere from 2, 500 to 2, 800 for the day.

And you can do that however you want. For example, what I like to do when I’m cutting is if I’m going to have a cheat meal that day. I basically just eat my protein, earlier in the day and [00:25:00] I’m saving up all of my carbs and fat. So I just modify my meal plan for the day to mainly just eat protein throughout the day.

This is assuming of course, I’m going to a restaurant at night. That’s gonna be my cheat meal. So then when I. Get there. Let’s say I have a pretty significant buffer that I have a lot of calories I can eat to stay in that 30 to 40% surplus range. So let’s just say again I might show up to the restaurant with 2000 calories that I can eat while still, keeping my calories in a decent range.

That’s a very good way. To both enjoy yourself and not blow yourself up. Another little tip is to make sure you have a decently accurate estimate of how many calories you’re burning every week. Because let’s say your goal is a pound of fat loss a week, which is a good goal for everybody. If you’re very overweight, you could be more aggressive in that goal.

You could Namaste. Maybe it’s a bit more realistic to shoot for a half pound, but let’s just say you’re going for a pound of fat loss per week. You know that [00:26:00] you’re probably gonna have to be in a, let’s say a five to 7, 000 calorie deficit. it for the week. So you’re going to have burned five to 7, 000 calories more than you ate by the end of that week.

And therefore understanding how many calories you’re burning, which you can estimate with a fair amount of accuracy is very helpful. And if you want to learn more about that, if you’re not sure how to do that, head over to legionathletics. com and search for calorie burn. And you’ll see an article I wrote called how many calories do you really burn every day?

Day. And that will break it down for you. All right. I think I’m going to stop here because while there is a bit more that I could get into I’ve touched on the main points in this video has already gone quite a bit longer than I anticipated, or then I wanted it to go. These are supposed to be short videos, but that didn’t quite work out here.

However, I hope you found it helpful. And I just want to quickly summarize here. If you are not losing weight, And you don’t understand why, here’s your little checklist. So one, are you losing fat but not weight? That’s the first thing [00:27:00] to check out. Two, are you just eating too much? And it can be accidentally.

Are you mismeasuring your food? Or are you just going off feel? And ultimately when you look at it, you’re just eating too many calories. Three, are you burning less energy than you think? It’s very important to understand approximately how much energy you are burning every week. And some formulas out there have activity multipliers that don’t quite apply to the average person.

And again, check out that article over at legion athletics and you will learn all about that. But the point is, if you are overestimating your Calorie expenditure, how many calories you’re burning, then of course you are going to be eating too many calories. Your calorie deficit is just going to be too small.

If you think you’re burning 2, 800 calories a day and you’re like, all right, I’ll eat 2, 300 calories a day. But then you find out you’re actually only burning 2, 500 calories a day. A 200 calorie deficit of course is yes, it will result in some fat loss, but it’s [00:28:00] going to be very slow. And the last little tip here is ultimately it may just be time to move more or eat less.

And this is especially true if you’ve been dieting for a long time. And if you are trying to get particularly lean, there is a point where the calories are. That you started with and the exercise routine that you started with probably is not enough to get you to where you want to be. And I personally like to first work my energy expenditure up before I start dropping my calories.

So again, I’m in my case, that means four to six hours of weightlifting per week and one to one and a half max, two hours of high intensity interval cardio, or maybe three to four hours of very low intensity cardio, like walking. That’s the ceiling for me in terms of energy expenditure. I don’t push beyond that because it can be come a bit too much on the body, but once my energy expenditure is maxed out.

And, eventually [00:29:00] weight loss slows, especially when you’re lean, wanting to get really lean. They won’t be enough anymore. You have to drop your calories. So again, in my case the last time I went on a longer cut, about a 12 week cut was I started at that. I started that cut around 2, calories because at the time my energy expenditure averaged about three, 3000 calories, 3, 100 calories a day.

But by the end of that cut. By the end of that 12 week period, I was eating about 2, 100 calories a day because I had to gradually just reduce my calories to keep that weight loss going. Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and don’t mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick comment.

review of it on iTunes or wherever you’re listening from. This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility and thus helps more people find their [00:30:00] way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just podcast and you won’t miss out on any of the new goodies.

Lastly, if you’d If you didn’t like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife. com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself, and I’m always looking for constructive feedback, so please do reach out. Alright, that’s it.

Thanks again for listening to this episode, and I hope to hear from you soon. soon. And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously, though, I’m not big on promoting stuff that I don’t personally use and believe in. So instead, I’m going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my workout app stacked.

It has tens of thousands of users and close to 400 reviews on the Apple store with a four star average. And it helps you get more out of your training in [00:31:00] several ways. It helps you quickly and easily plan out your workout routines. It gives you quick access to useful tools like plate math and one rep max calculation.

It allows you to visually track your progression in your workouts as well as your body measurements and much, much more. It’s free to download too. So if you want to check it out, then head over to www. getstackedapp. com or just hit the iOS app store and search for stacked workout and you will find it.