Do you find yourself checking labels ferociously, swearing off any and every food additive known to man, and driving your grocery bill through the roof with organic fare and still struggling to lose more than a few pounds?
You are not alone and I am going to help you stop the madness today.
Let’s first talk about how you ended up here so that you can take back your power, get your weight loss results rolling, and never find yourself in this place again.
How did I end up eating healthy with no weight loss results to show for it?
With the abundance of coaches, gurus, and experts (including myself here) out there pumping out their message to the masses, it is extremely hard to know who’s advice you should take.
So what happens in most cases?
You take a little bit of advice from everyone and hope for the best. However…
Every coach has their system (well every good coach) that works best when implemented together. Think of it like a line of hair products formulated to work together. If your shampoo, conditioner, and styler are all from different lines, how do you REALLY know what was responsible for the frizzy halo that sits on top of your head? You don’t! The same goes with nutrition and weight loss advice.
The first things you want to consider before acting on someone’s nutrition advice are what is the goal of the eating style being recommended and what other lifestyle factors have to be true for the eating style to accomplish the intended goal.
Does the goal match yours? Are you also lining up your other lifestyle factors to match the ones that make the eating style work? If not, don’t implement the advice.
In so many cases your plan isn’t working because it wasn’t designed to do what you want under the circumstances that you have. This is just the tip of the iceberg of why your healthy meals aren’t helping you lose weight.
Now that you understand how you may have ended up following nutrition advice that wasn’t really meant for your goals and your circumstance, I will explain the FIVE most common underlying reasons why meals that are considered healthy aren’t helping you lose weight.
Reason #1: You aren’t eating enough protein.
Before you roll your eyes and scream “here we go talking about protein AGAIN”, I want you to understand why protein intake is so important. All foods fall into one of three categories- protein, carbohydrates, and fat (we will just ignore alcohol for the sake of this post).
When you are skimping on protein intake you are doing one of two things… either undereating overall or overeating on carbohydrates, fats, or both. Neither option is good for your weight loss.
The other thing that you need to know about protein is that getting enough of it helps with fullness and that means you don’t have to consciously try to eat less. This is one of the key reasons that I was able to lose 63 pounds without counting calories. Eating protein (and fiber from veggies) kept me fuller longer and eliminated the need to track and count to keep my intake under control. Isn’t that what you want too?
Since protein helps you with overall consumption and cravings, I recommend fixing this first.
Your Homework: Record what you eat for 3-5 days in a meal tracking app like My Fitness Pal. Trust me I don’t expect you to do this forever. Look at your meals to see if you are including a protein source with each meal. If not, fix that first. Next look to see how many grams of protein you are getting each day. You may be shocked to see a really low number (30-40 grams each day). If that is what you find, you have your first step right in front of you. For more on how much protein you need and how to ramp up to that amount, check out my blog post here: INSERT LINK TO THE PROTEIN BLOG.
Reason #2: You are eating too much.
Have you ever eaten more of something because it was whole wheat, whole grain, low sodium or organic? Me too and let me just tell you that this is one of the most common reasons that eating healthy isn’t producing weight loss results for you. While replacing certain foods with their healthier alternatives may result in lower blood pressure or cholesterol, it doesn’t mean that they can be enjoyed without limit and still produce weight loss. Low sodium deli meat isn’t calorie free so you can’t just eat more of it and still expect weight loss. The good news is if you take action on my first point and get your protein consumption optimized, you won’t miss the super-sized portions of the other stuff that is standing in the way of your weight loss.
Your Homework: Pay attention to your portions. A meat portion is the size of your palm. A starch or fruit portion is the size of your first. A fat portion is the size of the tip of your thumb. Keep your portions in check even with healthy foods.
Reason #3: You are eating too much sugar.
Sugar by any other name is still SUGAR. So whether you are feasting on high fructose corn syrup, table sugar, honey, molasses, or organic brown rice syrup the results as related to weight loss are the same.
Of course there are vitamins and minerals present in honey and molasses that are absent from high fructose corn syrup but that doesn’t give you a license to use them without reserve. So whether you are eating a candy bar, a cereal bar, or an organic granola bar, you are still consuming sugar and lots of it.
This could be the reason while your grocery bill is going up but your pants size isn’t going down.
Too much sugar even the fancy “organic brown rice syrup” kind is one reason that your healthy meals aren’t helping you lose weight.
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Your Homework: Do an audit of the foods you eat on a regular basis to see how many of them have sugar in the first 5 ingredients. Look for words that end in “ose” of include the words syrup as well as the word sugar to identify sugar sources. Also check the label to see how many grams of sugar are in each serving.
That’s enough to process for now. I will be back with Part II explaining the final two reasons that your healthy meals are not helping you lose weight.
In the meantime do your homework, and click to Tweet this last line to let me know you are taking action on what I have shared with you here.
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