Why Can’t I Lose Weight?

This is an excellent article from "The Boot Camp Girls", Alicia & Carrie. I couldn't have said it better myself so I won't. ;-) They even include one of my major pet peeves about people hanging onto the treadmill! If you want to know more about that, there's a great article here ==> Stop Holding On When On The Treadmill.



Why Can’t I Lose Weight?

Losing weight and burning fat DOES NOT have to be a losing battle! You have more control over it than you think.

Small tweaks can make a BIG difference.

Here are a few reasons why you’re not seeing the results you’d like:

You’re not strength training. Often, people who are not losing weight don’t do strength training. The more lean, sleek muscle you have, the faster your resting metabolism is because muscle is the body’s most metabolically active tissue.


You’re not exercising in a way that forces your body to adapt. The adaptive response requires energy; it raises your body’s energy needs. The body will then dig into stored fat for this energy.

They may not be pink but they're WAY too light.

If you’ve been strength training and the weight hasn’t been coming off, it may be because you’re not doing much more than merely going through the motions.

There’s the story of a heavy-set woman who was doing body weight squats. A trainer waltzed over, knelt beside her, said “Hi” with a smile, then handed her two 10 pound dumbbells (one for each hand).

The woman’s mouth fell open, but the trainer said, “You’re going to do eight reps of your squats but this time you’re going to hold a 10 lb dumbbell on each side.”

“I can’t do it with that weight!”

“Oh yes you can. Trust me. You’re going to complete all eight reps.”

The woman said her goal was to lose weight, but nothing was happening despite regular workouts. She began her squats, and it wasn’t easy. She had to fight her way to the eighth rep, but she completed eight full repetitions.

The trainer said, “Now that’s the way every set should feel. Apply this effort level to all of your sets for every exercise. You won’t lose weight if you keep doing something your body is efficient at. You must do something that forces you to struggle. Struggling begets weight loss.”

A month later the woman reported having dropped an entire dress size.

Moral of this true story: Exercises that require you to push harder will burn fat and spark weight loss, especially when paired with sensible eating.

No, a couple won't kill you but they do add up.

You eat mindlessly. Every little sample and nugget counts. One tablespoon of gravy is 100 calories. A “little bit here and there” adds up. Avoid eating when you’re focused on other things, such as watching TV or you’re on the computer.




You drink diet sodas. Artificial sweeteners often trigger hunger.


Too many processed foods. These trigger hunger, and too much white sugar and high fructose corn syrup will get stored as fat.


You skip breakfast. Breakfast, even if it’s only a cup of yogurt, tends to tame later-day appetite. Skipping it can make you feel entitled to overeat later on.


You hold onto the treadmill. This has got to be one of the most weight-loss-sabotaging habits out there. The body has absolutely no reason to burn more fat in response to make-believe walking.

Instead, pump the arms and get winded to force your body to adapt. Remember, the body won’t adapt to something that it’s very efficient at doing (e.g., walking while holding onto something for support).

If you're trying to burn lots of fat, this won't do it.

You don’t do HIIT: high intensity interval training. This form of cardio blasts fat.






Inconsistent exercise habits. Regular exercise means the difference between success and failure. Even if you’re doing everything right in the gym, consistency is the MOST important thing.


Poor sleeping habits. Research shows that under six hours of sleep and over nine are strongly linked to excess body fat.

Too much daytime napping. Excessive inertia means a slowed metabolism to accommodate it.






Before you blame your parents and grandparents for having “the wrong genes,” review your lifestyle habits to find out what can be modified to promote fat loss.

For more information about how to get the best fat loss results from your nutrition and exercise programs, call Mickey at (717) 509-7777.

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Dear Mr. Cloud

I read your recent article in Time magazine entitled Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin. Although you made a few valid points, unfortunately, your article was full of incorrect information.

I won't debate specific research studies; Tom Venuto did that far better than I ever could but I will address some of your other comments. (A link to Tom's rebuttal is at the end of the post.)

First of all, I find it incredibly irresponsible of Time magazine to allow someone who believes that exercise turns fat into muscle to write an article on exercise. It is impossible to convert fat to muscle or vice versa. Muscle and fat are two completely different tissues. You can't turn bone into artery, you can't turn wood into metal, you can't turn water into oil, and you can't turn fat into muscle.

After listing all the exercise you perform weekly, you wrote, "I still have gut fat that hangs over my belt when I sit. Why isn't all the exercise wiping it out?"

You can't out-train a bad diet.

You also wrote, "Friday will bring a 5.5-mile run, the extra half-mile my grueling expiation of any gastronomical indulgences during the week."

Do you realize that extra half-mile will burn just 50-70 calories? How would that in any way make up for overindulging during the week? Was 3/4 of a cheese stick your entire "gastronomical indulgences" for the week? It appears that you are one of the many people who wildly overestimate how many calories they burn during exercise.

Mr. Cloud, you admit to often consuming more on the days you exercise than on the days you don't. What exactly are you eating? Do you reward yourself with things like fried food, ice cream, pizza etc. Do you stop for a few beers on workout days?

Fitness pro, Mike Geary, purposely overate for 6 weeks but limited himself to "unprocessed natural foods." He trained the same as he always does (no longer or harder) and after stuffing himself "with as much healthy food as possible" for 6 weeks, his weight stayed exactly the same. You can read the entire article here ==> The Weird Results Of Mike Geary's 6 Week Overeating Experiment

I realize that most people do not eat as strictly as Mr. Geary but the point remains that the quality of the food you eat makes a huge difference in whether or not you lose weight. If you do feel hungrier on days you exercise, reach for whole, natural, non-processed food. Focus on fruits, vegetables, healthy fats, lean meats and fish. If you eat this way at least 90% of the time you will shed fat.

What kind of exercise are you doing?

You also mention working with a trainer. What type of workouts do you do? Are you spending the majority of your time on machines or using free weights? Do most of your exercises isolate muscles or is your routine focused on compound movements? How many times a week do you strength train? How challenging are the weights you use? Contrary to popular misconception, cardio is not the most important type of exercise for slimming down.

As far as cardio, I think it's a good guess that your 5.5 mile run and 30 minutes on the step mill are done at a steady pace. Steady state cardio is not the most effective way to lose weight. Cardio intervals, metabolic bodyweight circuits, etc. will help you drop pounds better than steady state cardio.

All of this makes a difference. Exercise for the sake of exercising definitely has health benefits but the right exercise done at the right intensity for the right amount of time will be far more beneficial for weight loss.

Click here to read Tom Venuto's ==> Why Time Magazine Owes the Fitness Industry a Big Fat Apology.

Edited to add another good rebuttal ==> Is Exercise Derailing Your Efforts to Lose Weight by Brad Schoenfeld

Here's one more good one from John Berardi at Precision Nutrition ==> Why Exercise STILL Doesn’t Work

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What You Can Learn From Kirstie Alley

Kirstie Alley was on Oprah recently discussing how she fell off the wagon and regained the weight she had lost. I won't go into all the details here but I want to address a couple of aspects of Kirstie's desired comeback.

The former Cheers star admitted that one of the main reasons for her backslide was that the Jenny Craig folks stopped coming to weigh her every week when she stopped being their spokesperson. She wasn't blaming them; she was simply explaining that she lost her forced accountability.

If you really want to drop some excess baggage and know that you have a hard time doing it on your own, make yourself accountable to someone else.

Join a group or transformation contest, locally or online. (There's a new Turbulence Training Transformation Contest starting today today. There are cash prizes and social support. You can check it out here ==> TT Transformation Contest.).

You can also have a friend or relative weigh you every week, just make sure it's not someone who will make excuses for you. Sign up for a bootcamp class or personal training. (If you're in Lancaster, you can contact me about either.)

Once you've met your goal, if you're concerned about falling off the wagon, continue to be accountable to someone for a certain period of time. Then, if you've maintained your weight loss, you can go it on your own or cut back to every other week or monthly weigh-ins with your accountability partner.

Besides the fact that she let her nutrition slide and stopped weighing in, Kirstie had all of her exercise equipment moved into the garage for storage. It was bad enough that her equipment looked like a machine circuit with lots of isolation exercises and no adjustable resistance but she wasn't even using what she had.

Listen, folks, as far as exercise and weight loss goes, there's good news and bad news. The good news is that you don't need to spend hours exercising. The "bad" news is that you have to exert yourself for best results.

Sweating is good. Breathing hard is good. Challenging yourself is good- mentally and physically.

So many people sell themselves short as far as what they're capable of doing. The Biggest Loser is a perfect example. I am absolutely not advocating those types of workouts but every season contestants talk about how they never believed they were capable of the things they end up doing on the show. Like the old Phillies tag line said, "You Gotta Believe!"

Here's the bottom line for Kirstie or anyone else looking to dump fat...

Concentrate of eating more whole, natural foods and less processed crap. Get moving about 30 minutes a day; break it up if you have to. Complete 2-3 total body strength training workouts per week on non-consecutive days and focus on compound movements (Squats, Lunges, Pulldowns, Pushups, Presses, Rows, etc.) Forget traditional cardio and incorporate cardio intervals and/or bodyweight circuits into your routine.

Kirstie, if you're serious about the strength training, call me. You'll get much better results in less time if you get your butt off those machines and work out the way I just described.

Forget The !@#$% Scale!

Prepare for a rant.

This morning, on a private forum I belong to, I saw a post from a woman upset by the fact that she's only lost 2 1/2 pounds a month even though she's been been faithfully following the exercise and nutrition program she's on.

It's understandable that someone who is only eating 1500 calories of healthy food and regularly engaging in challenging workouts would be frustrated at those results, if that were the whole story.

But it's not.

The poster also reported that...

* she's gone down 2 dress sizes

* her body shape has changed and she's lost lots of inches

* loads of people are commenting on her new body

She used the words frustrated, despair, fed up, and despondent to describe her feelings about the number on the scale. She went on to say that she was sure that she could have lost the same amount of weight by sitting on her butt and just dieting.

She probably could have lost 2 1/2 pounds in a month just through eating right. I'm the first person to remind members, clients and anyone else who will listen that you can't out-train a bad diet but there's no way her body would look as good as it currently does had she skipped the exercise. (And that's not even going into the other mental, physical and emotional benefits of regular workouts.)

I honestly don't understand why women insist on getting hung up on the scale.

If you're overweight, isn't your bottom line goal to get smaller? To improve your body composition (less fat, more muscle)? To fit into clothes you haven't worn in a while? To take pressure off your joints and internal organs? To comfortably sit in theater and airplane seats, etc.

If that's happening, why obsess over the number on the scale?

This woman is doing great.

She's down 2 sizes and lots of inches!

Loads of people are noticing her improvements!

Why would she possibly be "despondent"?

Although it may sound like it, I'm writing this not just to beat up on this forum member. I hear the same thing from people far too often and it frustrates and confuses me.

When you get down to it, would you rather be a size 18 and weigh 125 lbs. or a size 6 and weigh 140?

Forget the scale.

Top 4 Tips For Keeping the Weight Off

Many people drop excess pounds only to regain them (and oftentimes more).

Researchers for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed data from a survey mailed to U.S. adults and found 4 behaviors that will dramatically increase your chances of maintaining your weight loss.

1. Eat 5 or more servings of fruits and vegetables per day.

2. Engage in 150 minutes or more of physical activity per week - that's just 21.5 minutes a day or 50 minutes 3 times a week.

3. Restrict your visits to fast food restaurants - eating fast food, even as little as twice a week, was associated with significant less success in maintaining weight loss.

4. Believe that you can successfully follow a healthy lifestyle - it may sound insignificant but a negative outlook on your ability to maintain healthy behaviors will sabotage your efforts.

So, just eat your veggies and fruits, move regularly, stay out of fast food joints and believe in yourself. Nothing extreme; doable for anyone.

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