I’m doing everything right, why can’t I lose weight?

So, you’re doing all the right things: exercising, eating healthy, watching your sugar intake, but you still can’t fit into your skinny jeans? Maybe you’re not doing the right kind of exercise or eating the healthy foods you thought you were.

“Everyone’s health is different,” says personal trainer Ashley Besse, “Everyone’s body requires different levels of macronutrients – the good fats, carbs and proteins, what works for one person might not work for the next person.”

It’s exactly why you can go on a diet with a friend and she loses weight but you don’t.

Know what you’re eating
You might think you’re on top of your food, but have you counted the handful of grapes you nibbled while standing in front of the fridge this morning? The biscuits you grabbed in that afternoon meeting? The quick gobble of cheese and crackers when you got home?

“A food diary is the best way to keep track of your food intake,” says Besse, “without putting too much focus on heavy on calorie counting, you still need to see how much energy you’re expending versus how much you’re taking in. You could have the healthiest diet but if you’re eating too much food, you won’t lose weight.”

Are you exercising all wrong?
Let’s get one thing straight: there’s no such thing as “wrong” exercise, but you can shake up your training, according to Besse, by having the right balance between weights and cardio.

“A lot of people, especially women, just do cardio because they don’t want to ‘bulk up’ and think cardio is the fast track to weight loss, but that has been disproven,” says Besse. “We now know that a combination of resistance training with cardio is what leads to better health for men and women. Ideally, go for two to three resistance training sessions and two to three cardio. Working out four times a week as a minimum is a good target, for 30-40 minutes, and get a good puff up each time. The F45 training is an all round program to give you that lean athletic look.”

Are you eating enough?
If you’ve dramatically cut down your food intake, you’ll lose weight, sure, but you’ll also lose muscle mass, which puts things out of balance and the weight will be harder to keep off – because you have less muscle, and so burn less energy while resting.

“You need to have balance between weights and cardio in your workouts, but if you’re not eating to complement the muscle growth, you’ll lose muscle and it will be harder in the long term, so balance is key,” says Besse.

Are you eating at the right time?
We’ve been hammered with advice that we should eat our carbs in the daytime in recent years, but Besse stresses that you should eat carbs at night as well.

“It’s more about spreading out your macros [macronutrients] throughout the day. So you’re not slogging carbs just in the morning, you need to eat them out throughout the day to sustain your energy. You can’t go from high in the morning to nothing at night – you’ll find that you’ll be wrecked in the morning. It’s all about a healthy balance.”

People who eat this way find they can sustain healthy eating for longer, rather than slipping into deprivation and binge cycles.

Article sourced from The Juice Daily.