10 Reasons Your Diet Isn’t Working
You know when you’re feeling so frustrated and maybe even feeling angry that your diet isn’t working? You want to lose weight but no matter what you do, the scale isn’t going down and your jeans aren’t getting any looser, in fact…. they’re only getting tighter!
How can it be that you end up going backwards in your weight loss and the scale keeps going up? What’s the problem, right?!
I Know How It Feels
I know how it feels to feel so extremely frustrated when you want what you want and it’s just not working. This is a very tough problem to deal with when it comes to weight loss though, when you’re an emotional eater and/or a binge eater.
Why?
Because the way you cope is with food and when you’re feeling frustrated, what’s your first reaction?
To eat to try to feel better.
But since you’re eating for the purpose of feeling better rather than eating high quality food to fuel your body when you’re physically hungry, what happens is you get caught up in a cycle which only ends up feeding more of your frustration. Ack!
It goes like this:
You want to lose weight but your diet isn’t working, which makes you feel extremely frustrated and the way you deal with your emotions is by eating more food (rather than eating for physical hunger) which stops your weight loss or causes you to gain more weight, which makes you feel even more frustrated, and then you eat more food to try to feel better and the cycle goes on…..
See how that works?
The Cycle of Eating to Feel Better Is A Big Problem
This ongoing cycle of eating to feel better is a big problem because it will never lead you to the weight loss you deeply, desperately desire. As long as you use food to cope, you’re going to have a problem losing weight, which brings us to today’s top of 10 reasons your diet isn’t working.
What if it’s not your diet that’s the problem, but something else?
Or maybe your diet IS the problem, this is possible too!
Now that we’ve looked at the ongoing cycle that feeds more frustration and stops your weight loss, let’s take a look at 10 reasons your diet isn’t working. Maybe there’s more going on than just that your food diet is faulty.
10 Reasons Your Diet Isn’t Working
Let’s take a look at 10 reasons your diet isn’t working. I bet at least 3 of these will be a surprise to you and one of them will be weird. And then another one may downright irritate you because you know it’s true, but you don’t want to admit it.
The thing is though… do you really want to lose weight?
If the answer is Yes then you need to be willing to get real with yourself. Getting real is all about being honest with yourself. Without brutal self-honesty you don’t now where you’re starting from and if you don’t know where you’re starting from, how can you ever expect to get to where you want to go, which is your goal weight?
That would be like wanting to take a trip to the Bahamas but you don’t know which airport you’re flying out of. You can call up the airline to purchase a ticket but if you can’t tell them where you’re starting from (the airport name and location) then they cannot assist you in getting to your destination.
When it comes to successful weight loss, you must know where you’re starting from in order to chart a plan of action to get to your destination of your healthiest, fittest, goal weight and size. In order to truly know where you’re starting from requires getting real with yourself about how you got in the state you’re in now.
Taking stock of where you’re honest with yourself and where you’re not will help you to begin making a decision on exactly how you’re going to make all of the changes you need to make to not only get the weight off, but also keep the weight off (unless you are Ok with the agony and frustration of gaining all the weight back plus an extra 10 pounds each time you yo-yo diet).
So let’s check out 10 Reasons Your Diet Isn’t Working:
1.) It’s an unhealthy fad diet.
This one is simple: if the diet you’re trying to follow is unhealthy, a fad diet, a wacky weight loss plan, then maybe you’ll see the scale go down temporarily but your diet isn’t working because it’s not sane and healthy. Not only this but it’s impossible to stick with a fad diet long term simply because it’s not something you can live with.
2.) It’s a healthy lifestyle plan but you’re not doing it.
The thing is… you can have all of the healthy diets in the world, you can even have a PhD in nutrition (one of my coaching clients is a great example!) but still be stuck. You see, if you don’t take consistent action with the healthy eating plan you already possess, then what kind of results can you get from it?
Information is not enough, you must take action and the action you take must be consistent, meal after meal, day after day. So then the problem really is…. Why aren’t you taking consistent action with the healthy eating plan you already have in front of you? Could it be that how you think and feel about weight loss is contrary to the goals you say you want to reach with your weight?
The Mind leads the Body, always. Get your mind right and your body will follow with ease. In other words, it’s easy to live a healthy lifestyle once you have a weight loss mindset.
3.) You haven’t given it enough time.
In this world of immediate answers you can look up online, instant text messaging and instant fast food at the drive-through, this expectation of “instant results” will sabotage you when it comes to weight loss.
Why? Because you can only lose weight over time and if you aren’t staying consistent with healthy eating habits (without emotional eating or binge eating) for at least 12 weeks. So, your diet cannot work even if it’s healthy if you don’t stick with it consistently meal after meal for 12 full weeks. If you do stick with it however, you should see results if it’s a healthy sane lifestyle plan that works for your body.
4.) You’re weighing yourself too soon.
Just like in reason #3, weight loss takes time. It doesn’t happen instantly and since it doesn’t happen instantly, you cannot measure it instantly. Something you could measure instantly would be the action of washing all of the dirty dishes in your sink.
You could get the results of a clean sink pretty fast so you could measure your progress with a short time measurement, such as a 30 minute timer. But when the project takes longer you must measure it with a measuring tool that matches. Weighing yourself once a week is the best thing you can do for yourself since weight loss takes time.
Daily weigh-ins will drive you crazy – that’s like constantly watching the stock market, which also takes time to yield results. And because you are weighing yourself too soon, you think that your diet isn’t working when possibly, it is working if you were to only look at your weigh-in and measurement results once a week.
5.) You’re not drinking enough water.
Another reason your diet isn’t working is because you’re not drinking enough water, provided that your diet really is a healthy eating plan, meaning that drinking 100 oz of clean clear water daily isn’t going to be enough to help you lose weight if you’re still overeating, binge eating, emotional eating, or following an unhealthy fad diet. But if you’re sticking with a super healthy, clean eating lifestyle plan but drinking Diet Soda all day long, that soda is going to sabotage your weight loss efforts.
6.) You’re not getting enough sleep.
This is the most overlooked reason so many struggle to lose weight and it’s one of my Top 9 weight loss tips of all time you can get right here as a celebration of the 9th year anniversary of The JoLynn Braley Show. If you’re not getting enough sleep and if your sleep is not deep and restful then your body remains stressed and will hang on to your fat stores instead of releasing them, which will sabotage your diet even if it’s a healthy eating plan.
7.) You’re working out too much (surprise!)
Yes, you could be working out too much and by doing so, you’re unknowingly sabotaging your weight loss.
When you work out too much your body can start storing fat instead of releasing it. Your goal is to release fat, so you want to move enough to burn the fat, but not over-exercise so that your body thinks you’re in a survival mode which will turn on the warning lights to slow down your metabolism so that you stay alive.
Even though you’re fine, you’re just over-exercising because you think this will make you lose weight faster… your body doesn’t know this. Your body thinks you’re in some kind of danger because you’re moving so much and slows down your fat furnace (your metabolism) to hang on to fat so that you’ll have extra fat to burn for fuel in your furnace later, to keep you alive.
This will look like your dieting isn’t working when what’s really going on is that you’re working out too much. This is an easy fix, just cut back to basic cardio like walking for 20-30 minutes a day in your target heart rate zone and strength training twice a week, upper and lower body. This might sound simple and “not enough” compared to working out 3 hours a day but it’s better for fat burning over time.
8.) You’re saying YES to everyone, except yourself.
It takes time, effort, and focus to live a healthy lifestyle. It doesn’t really take more time to live healthy as opposed to living unhealthy because when you live unhealthy you lose a ton of time due to the drain of negative emotions and negative thinking. All of that baggage slows you down.
Even though time isn’t the problem, when you’re making the switch to new lifestyle habits it will feel like it’s taking more time because you’ll have to stay conscious to learn new things such as new ways of cooking (or cooking at all if you’ve only been eating processed foods), pre-planning your meals, going for a daily walk, and more. Taking conscious action and choosing new ways of life will require your focus.
A common problem I’ve seen with my coaching clients since 2009 is that 99.9% of them have had the problem of saying YES to everyone else in their life 24/7 without any boundaries for their own self-care. If you give all of your time away to everyone else so that you have no time at all to address your lifestyle actions and you end up at the end of the night in the corner of the kitchen binge eating a whole box of cookies… this will definitely sabotage your healthy diet and will be another reason your diet isn’t working.
You don’t need to live alone to live a healthy lifestyle, you just need to Be Ok with addressing your daily self-care without guilt so that you put your own oxygen mask on before helping others. If you remember what the flight attendants tell you in their pre-flight demonstration you’ll know what I mean. It’s a great analogy for the fact that you need to take care of your mind-body health first so that you’ll be able to be there for your loved ones.
But if you don’t take care of YOU first, what will happen? Do you feel good being overweight, or obese? When you feel good in your own skin don’t you have soooo much more to give to your loved ones?
9.) You’re taking weekends “off”
If you’re a weekend binge eater that can completely erase any progress you might have made throughout the week.
Over the past 15 years of coaching, I’ve had a few clients who had this problem, which they did get to the other side of. But when they were struggling with it they could get through M-F just fine, all the way up until Friday night. Once they got off work on Friday they’d get themselves set up for their weekend binge blowout that would start Friday night. Then on Monday they’d get back to their regular, healthy eating schedule.
If you continue like this you might not gain weight but you won’t lose weight either because that weekend binge cancels out your healthy eating during the week. You’ll want to heal your weekend binge eating behavior in order to reach your end goal with your weight.
Healing your eating will allow you to maintain your ideal weight, too.
10.) Your diet hasn’t stopped your emotional eating and/or binge eating.
Since 2009 I’ve been coaching smart, successful women to help then end their emotional eating, binge eating, and yo-yo dieting, along with other unhealthy overeating behaviors like mindless eating, late-night cheat eating, and compulsive overeating.
What’s interesting is that my clients don’t have a problem with know what to eat to lose weight. Many of them were successful with losing weight in the past, but they always gained the weight back and they were still dealing with a lifetime of struggle with their unhealthy overeating behaviors.
It’s a problem though, that dieting doesn’t solve the real problems that caused you to gain weight in the first place. More than a typical diet is needed in order to move past your food and weight struggles. It’s imperative to go to the root of the problem in order to stop emotional eating or stop binge eating and keep the weight off once you lose it.
It’s a mental and emotional game that must be won, therefore your mindset and emotional state related to the whole topic of weight loss and eating must be addressed. These are things that a mainstream diet cannot help you with. This is why I do the work that I do to help my coaching clients.
Heal the Root of Your Overeating to Set Yourself Free
After reviewing each of the 10 reasons your diet isn’t working, you can take action immediately with the information I’ve given you. If you want more though, if you want to heal the root of what drives your overeating so that you can stop emotional eating, stop binge eating, and break free of yo-yo dieting, I help my coaching clients break free in eight weeks or less.
This is about healing the root of your overeating behaviors so that you can break free into struggle-free weight loss. Struggle-free weight loss is the place where you don’t feel restricted, you don’t get in your own way, and living a healthy lifestyle feels natural to you, it feels like “no big deal”.
If you’d love to stop struggling with your eating and your weight then take the first step now: apply for a complimentary weight loss discovery session with me. Just click here and follow the instructions. The complimentary weight loss discovery session is your first step towards freedom from the struggle!
Don’t you deserve to break free now? If you’re serious about releasing the battle so that you can lose weight for good then click here and get started now.
