Reena Rosales

6 Common Reasons Why You Can’t Lose Weight Eight out of ten people I know often talk about diet and losing weight. And you know what? I only see results on two out of those eight. What could have happened to the daily diet dialogues of the other six? As I evaluate different instances, I already know most of their strategies and alibis. Some of them seem very eager at start, but after months, weeks or even just days of their weight loss program, you’ll see them back to their old eating habits. There are those who talk all about these healthy eats, all organic restaurants and calorie levels of every food they see - but that’s it. They actually just talk and never really started eating healthy even if they know exactly what they should do. They could just brag all day about their diet and controlled eating but again, don’t be surprised one day if you see them sneaking out at a hidden corner of a restaurant with pizza, burger, pasta, ice cream and soda on their table. Don’t laugh because, yes, they do that. I might be lucky enough not to be one of them but it still makes me wonder, what makes it hard for them to do it when they really wanted to trim down? https://pixabay.com/en/diet-calorie-counter-weight-loss-695723/ Do you want to know the why based on my observations? Let us talk about the six most common reasons. 1. Lack of Self Discipline Yes, this is the main reason and the root cause why many people can’t lose weight. You just can’t resist temptations and your weight loss program fails. When you are tempted to eat food that is out of your meal plan, you tend to forget your goal. Not being able to overcome your need when you crave for something brings you back to square one. 2. Taking Advantage of “Cheat Day” Your most awaited day when you are on a diet, cheat day! It is contradicting but you can’t agree more that this is the truth. A night before your cheat day, you get so excited you might already have a list in mind on what you will consume the next morning. Starting with breakfast, buffet lunch, snacks, dinner then add the midnight snack and many other snacks in between. You can’t lose weight when everything felt so right and you ended up not pushing through with your diet anymore. https://www.pexels.com/photo/food-salad-restaurant-person-5317/ 3. Unstable Mindset At the start of the day, you look at your daily meal plan, and you keep telling yourself: “This is what I am going to eat today!” a great way to establish the right mindset. Looking for something to satisfy your taste buds for your afternoon snack, you walk in a cafeteria and saw the enticing desserts lined up. Suddenly, a photo of your meal plan appeared at the back of your mind, you convince yourself that you have to stick on it and minutes later, you find yourself sitting at the cafeteria taking little bites of that caramel chocolate chip cake slice. 4. Lack of Sleep Lack of sleep slows down metabolism and you can’t lose weight if you suffer from this. When you need to work on a thesis and finish it overnight, what do you do to keep yourself awake the whole night? Eat, right? Instead of sleeping the night away, you eat till you are ready to sleep. Doing this keeps you out of your goal and messes up your attempt to a healthy living. 5. Emotional Instability One of our ways to fight depression is eating. While it is just right to divert your attention to avoid being depressed, over eating is not an option. We have this habit of eating while we cry as if food can absorb our tears and hurt. There are a lot of ways to prevent depression, find other ways instead of inviting friends over and opening up to them over a big pack of chips. 6. Lack of Support Friends, family and anyone close to people who are trying to lose weight are making the biggest mistake of teasing the person instead of supporting them. I am sure you have these friends who tease you by acting like they accidentally placed their order or burger and fries in front of you during lunch. They’ll hand you a chocolate bar and when you give them your: “What do you want me to do with this?” look, they’ll ask you to pass it on to their other teasing buddy. People can’t lose weight without the utmost support from people they trust. Don’t make them feel embarrassed but instead, make them feel that they are doing the right thing. https://pixabay.com/en/dinner-table-eating-food-meal-601576/ The first step to change is to know what needs to be changed. Now that we’ve identified the top 6 reasons, I guess you know what you need to do.