“Why am I not losing weight?”: Problems and Solutions

Are you constantly asking yourself “Why am I not losing weight?” and always looking for ways to help with that? You need to know that your body requires important factors to achieve balance. Don’t just look at the number on your scale: achieve important steps by learning and maintaining healthy habits. That is the key to losing weight and, more importantly, being healthier.

Here are 5 important tips to lose weight:

1. Get enough sleep and repair your body

Did you know that not sleeping well increases your appetite and causes your weight to increase? Bad habits and poor sleep hygiene contribute to disorders in your biological and circadian rhythms, causing metabolic alterations that mainly affect blood and lipid homeostasis.

Sleep disturbances also affect the hunger hormones leptin and ghrelin, altering your appetite and causing you to feel hungry without your body needing it and to continue eating despite being satisfied.

Leptin, a hormone produced in adipose tissue, works on the sensation of satiety, that is to say, it rises to inhibit the desire to eat, while ghrelin is a protein synthesized in the intestine and stomach that awakens the sensation of appetite.

2. Organize your work and study schedules and balance your life

Longer working hours will surely tempt you to indulge in snacks, sweets or too much coffee. Balance your life, learn to manage your stress level, as it causes cortisol levels to rise, which affects your emotional health and increase appetite.

So, avoid staying long hours in front of your computer at night, because you’ll deregulate your appetite leading to higher stress levels and snacking on unhealthy foods.

3. Improve your muscle mass

Do you do aerobic exercise and don’t care about improving your muscle mass? When talking about muscle you may often think only of a more toned or muscular body, but this is not the case.

Muscle is an important part of body mass and is essential for locomotion, metabolic health and brings with it benefits such as: prevention of diabetes, osteoporosis, colon cancer and others.

It is advised that you exercise continuously and combine aerobic or cardio exercise with strength training. Working out and building muscle mass accelerates basal metabolism, increasing energy consumption and promoting fat loss, since adipose tissue stores energy.

For better muscle building, you can incorporate protein supplements into your workouts to increase your muscle mass. For best results, we recommend whey protein isolate.

4. Drink water daily and avoid high-calorie drinks in excess

A healthy diet requires water to meet your body’s fluid needs. Many times hunger can be mistaken for a lack of proper fluid in your body.

The intake of high-calorie beverages such as artificial juices, sports drinks, or soft drinks, increase the risk of weight gain. Many of them need to be used at appropriate times, such as sports drinks, which are recommended to be consumed in the case of more than 2 hours of intense exercise.

For your daily fluids, in addition to water, prefer natural and healthy drinks. If you want to spice up your drinks you can do it with  Z-Fresh, a quick solution for those who want something more sophisticated and tasty than simple water, but don’t want unnecessary calories.

At last, tea and coffee are one of the most widely consumed beverages in the world and they’re also avaiable. Tea provides a variety of flavonoids and antioxidants with great benefits. Try, for example, Ice Tea Bolero, ideal for a hot summer day.

5. Don’t reward yourself with all the food available after exercise

You put a lot of effort into exercising and training, but you boycott yourself saying by eating anything without distinguishing whether it is healthy or not? You are making a mistake.

To have balance in your life you must combine an active lifestyle with cutting down on processed foods, junk food or inapropriate portions.

Bibliography

Chamorro R, Farias R, Peirano P, Chamorro R, Farias R, Peirano P. Regulación circadiana, patrón horario de alimentación y sueño: Enfoque en el problema de obesidad. Rev Chil Nutr [Internet]. 2018 Sep 1 [cited 2021 Nov 1];45(3):285–92. You can read the full article here.

Padilla Colón CJ, Sánchez Collado P, Cuevas MJ. Beneficios del entrenamiento de fuerza para la prevención y tratamiento de la sarcopenia. Nutr Hosp [Internet]. 2014 [cited 2021 Nov 1];29(5):979–88. You can read the full article here.

Rivera JA, Muñoz-Hernández O, Rosas-Peralta M, Aguilar-Salinas CA, Popkin BM, Willett WC. Consumo de bebidas para una vida saludable: Recomendaciones para la población mexicana. Gac Med Mex. 2008;144(5):369–88.

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