FIVE reasons why you’re not hitting your fat loss goals!

Feel like you haven’t been making enough progress towards your fat loss goals recently? Here’s five reasons why that might be!

1) You’re not tracking calories

Don’t get me wrong, it’s entirely possible to reach fitness goals without tracking calories, I know of many people including my own clients who have seen fantastic results just by being smart about their food. However, if you’re not seeing the results you feel you should be getting, then it may be time to start tracking your calories to find out exactly how much you’re consuming on a daily basis. Think of it this way, calorie counting is like tracking your bank balance, if you didn’t budget you’d probably end up spending way more than you’d like too – calories work in the same way, you have a budget for each day, and you need to stick to it otherwise you’ll overspend!

2) You’re choosing the wrong foods

A lot of dieting success comes down to willpower and what goes on in the mind. The feeling of hunger comes from the stomach, which means if its always full you won’t be hungry, right? The best thing YOU can do to suppress the feeling of hunger by eating calorie sparse foods that fill you up and take longer to digest (leafy greens, fibre rich foods) and avoid calorie dense foods that are digested quickly (Peanut butter, fatty foods) as much as possible!

3) You’re not drinking enough water

Following on from point 2, drinking lots of water will help massively with satiety levels (Feeling of fullness). Thirst is also commonly mistaken for hunger, meaning sometimes when you have a feeling of hunger it may just be that you’re in need of some good ol’ H20. Ever eaten when you’re hungry, and still felt like you’re craving something else afterwards, but you can’t think what? It was probably just water that you needed!

4) You’re being too strict

Way too often do I see people go cold turkey and completely cut out ‘bad’ foods from their diet in order to lose weight. Theres absolutely no harm in having these ‘bad’ foods (Pizza, chocolate) IN MODERATION every now and again. By completely removing them from your diet you’ll crave them even more, and eventually give in to temptation and consume way more than you would have done, if you’d curbed the craving by having small amounts once or twice a week.

5) You’re simply not active enough

To put it bluntly, one or two exercise sessions a week on their own aren’t going to be enough to achieve anything substantial. You need to be doing more exercise weekly, (4+ moderate to high intensity sessions) or generally just moving more to help burn off those extra calories, in order to ensure you’re in a calorie deficit at the end of each day! If you have half an hour free at home, instead of catching up on the latest soap, go for a walk! Other small daily improvements such as taking the stairs instead of the lift, will make big difference overall.

Oliver Portch

Exercise Specialist

Better Body Group