Why Am I Not Losing Weight in a Calorie Deficit? 17 Reasons and Solutions

Sometimes, weight loss seems simple: Eat less. Move more. But what happens when you hit a wall and no longer see progress toward your weight loss goals? You may feel confused and frustrated if you’ve been tracking your calories, exercise, and weight and no longer see a downward trend (even when you are in a calorie deficit). Why am I not losing weight in a calorie deficit? If this describes your current situation, you can find relief knowing you are not alone. This article will help you identify why your weight loss has stalled and learn practical, effective steps to restart progress toward your goals. We will also touch upon how are calories measured?

Calorie tracking can be a valuable tool to help you identify why your weight loss has stalled. Goldi AI’s calorie tracker makes it easy to find the answers you need to restart progress toward your weight loss goals.

What’s a Calorie Deficit and How It Works

A calorie deficit is a weight management strategy many experts recommend. It’s based on the calories-in, calories-out theory, which is that you can lose weight if you burn more calories than you consume. The number of calories you burn is based on a few factors:

• How much does your body burn at rest (resting energy expenditure)?
• How many calories do you burn through exercise and daily activities?

Simply put, a calorie deficit means merely consuming fewer calories than your body burns through:

• Daily activities
• Exercise
• Other bodily functions

Fat Burning and Weight Loss

This forces your body to tap into fat stores to compensate for the energy shortfall, leading to weight loss over time. How much weight you lose will depend on the size of your calorie deficit and your activity level.

There are two ways to create a calorie deficit:

• Eat fewer calories: This can be done by eating smaller portions, choosing lower-calorie foods, or cutting out processed foods and sugary drinks.
• Burn more calories: This can be done through exercise, such as swimming, increasing your activity level, or building muscle.

The best way to create a calorie deficit is to combine eating less and exercising more. This will help you to lose weight more quickly and sustainably.

Your Minimum Calorie Intake

It is important to note that you should eat a minimum number of calories each day. This number varies depending on your needs, but it is typically between 1,200 calories and 1,500 calories for adults. Eating fewer calories than this can lead to nutrient deficiencies and other health problems.

Precision is Key

When aiming for a calorie deficit, precision is crucial. Miscalculating your daily calorie needs can lead to an insufficient or overly aggressive calorie deficit, affecting weight loss progress.

• Insufficient Deficit: If your calorie deficit is too small, you may not create a significant enough gap between the calories you consume and those you burn. This can result in slow, negligible, or even no weight loss.
• Overly Aggressive Deficit: Conversely, if your calorie deficit is excessively aggressive, it can stress your body. In response, your metabolism may slow down to conserve energy, hindering weight loss and even leading to muscle loss.

Why Am I Not Losing Weight in a Calorie Deficit?

Even when you stick to a calorie deficit, weight loss can stall. Here’s why:

1. Your Calorie Count May Be a Little Off

No one wants to admit it, but math matters regarding weight loss. A calorie-deficit diet consumes fewer calories than your total daily energy expenditure. While this seems easy enough, as anyone who has ever tried to lose weight knows, the reality can be a little more challenging.

The Importance of Accurate Calorie Tracking

If you’ve reduced your calorie intake without seeing any results, a few common culprits may be at work. First, many people don’t track their calorie counts accurately. When trying to lose weight, many people monitor their calorie intake using a calorie-tracking app to guide their food choices and portion sizes.

Challenges to Accurate Calorie Tracking

Nevertheless, estimating the calorie content of meals you prepare from scratch or at a local restaurant can be difficult. It’s also common for people to underestimate their portion sizes. In addition, calorie-tracking apps often have inaccurate information in their food databases entered by users.

While calorie tracking can be a helpful self-monitoring tool, research shows it does not improve diet quality. Focusing on your food choices and overall calorie intake is essential rather than relying on data from calorie-tracking apps.

2. Your Calorie Deficit is Imbalanced

In some cases, your calorie deficit could be imbalanced, which might mean you’re not eating enough to have energy in your everyday life or you’re eating too many calories for weight loss to occur. How can you figure out your calorie intake?

Let’s start by looking at energy balance. This is the difference between your energy input (number of calories consumed) and energy output (number of calories burned). Remember, an imbalanced or negative energy balance is needed to lose weight.

Calculating Energy Expenditure

It can be hard to count calories accurately; we often underestimate our food intake, focusing on our healthier meals and discounting ‘cheat meals.’ Starting a journal or using a calorie tracker can help get a more accurate reading of daily caloric intake. To calculate energy expenditure, start by calculating your basal metabolic rate (BMR), the rate at which your body burns calories while resting. This accounts for 60-75% of the total calories burned daily.

3. You’ve Hit a Weight Loss Plateau

Has your weight loss stalled? Don’t worry; this happens to everyone. But what causes this weight loss plateau? This occurs when the calories you burn equal the number you eat. Losing fat also means muscle loss, which can reduce your BMR, meaning as you lose weight, your metabolism slows and you burn fewer calories.

Adjusting Your Approach

Even if your diet and exercise stay the same, your weight loss progress will stall, and you’ll need to increase your physical activity or consume fewer calories. If you’re already eating fewer calories, you can increase the intensity of your workouts, which will help you break through the plateau.

4. Water Retention May Be Masking Your Weight Loss

Water retention can also result in a weight loss plateau. There are temporary causes for water retention that can occur while trying to lose weight, including hormonal fluctuations, menopause, the time of day, and changes in diet, such as salt intake.

Addressing Underlying Causes

Thankfully, these causes are temporary, but if it is a persistent issue, it’s a good idea to see your GP to check for chronic causes of water retention and certain medications like:

• The pill
• HRT
• Anti-inflammatories
• Blood pressure

Alongside a visit to your doctor, you can also try jumping into the sauna or working up a sweat with some HIIT exercises, which can prove helpful, but remember to stay hydrated as this has also been shown to help overall fat loss.

5. Poor Sleeping Habits

Poor sleep habits are linked to higher rates of excess weight, but why? Sleep deprivation can lead to increased appetite and a higher daily food intake and can alter the brain’s reward center. This affects self-control and can leave us reaching for chocolates and sweets.

Jumping into bed a little earlier may help avoid those late-night snacks, and getting more sleep will provide the mental clarity needed to make the best food choices during the day.

6. You Have an Underlying Health Condition

Certain medical conditions and medications can make it difficult to lose weight. These conditions may impact your metabolism or increase your appetite. Examples include:

• Hypothyroidism
• Polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS)
• Sleep apnea

Talk to your doctor if you’re not losing weight despite your calorie deficit. You may need medical treatment and specific dietary interventions for some health conditions.

7. You’re Working Out Too Much

Increased your workouts but still having trouble losing weight? It might be down to the type of exercise you’re doing, specifically cardio-based exercise, and how much of it. Muscle loss is inevitable in circumstances of calorie deficit (dietary or cardio-driven). It usually happens in muscle groups that are not being trained, such as the upper body in runners.

Prioritizing Sustainability and Well-Being

Engaging in weight lifting while maintaining sufficient protein is essential to help counter this and continue your weight loss journey. That’s not to say you should cut cardio out completely, but striking the right balance is essential here. Your weight loss journey should be about sustainable weight loss and improved mental health. Giving yourself time for some R&R and practicing slower movements like yoga and Pilates is essential.

8. It Takes Time, Don’t Focus on a Specific Number

While we’re all about setting goals and going for them, sometimes it’s best to take a step back and appreciate your progress so far, big or small, and remember that our bodies make changes that can’t always be seen on a scale.

While your main objective may be trying to lose weight, your weight loss journey should focus on overall improved well-being, and letting the number on the scale get you down is counterintuitive to feeling good. Good things take time!

9. Increased Stress Levels

We all experience stress sometimes; unfortunately, increased stress levels can affect more than just our mental well-being. Increased stress can make it challenging to lose weight by increasing cortisol levels, an appetite stimulant. That’s why you might eat emotionally and reach for comfort food during stressful times.

To make things worse, our metabolic rates slow during times of stress. If stress is causing you to gain weight, it might be time to slow down and practice more mindful movements like yoga.

10. You Weigh Yourself at Different Times Each Day

It can be disheartening to see the scales change daily, but it’s normal for body weight to fluctuate throughout the day, and the culprit is usually food or water. If you aren’t consistently weighing yourself simultaneously, expect to see a different number on the scale.

Consuming any food or beverage adds weight, even the healthiest options, but foods high in sodium and carbs mainly cause weight spikes. What’s most important is consistency, particularly time and condition.

11. You’re Thinking About Quantity, But Not Quality

There’s no point in thinking about the number of calories you consume if you do not consider their quality. For example, you may eat within your calorie budget but rely heavily on processed foods and sugary carbs. This won’t do much for your health and can impact how your body stores fat.

Foods like these are also less likely to give you the energy to stay on track with your fitness routine and get your daily steps in, two crucial components of the weight loss equation. Instead, reach for whole foods rich in:

• Vitamins
• Minerals
• Protein
• Fiber

These will make you feel good and can be just as delicious as the processed alternatives—if you know how to prepare them right.

12. You’re Drinking Too Much Alcohol

Alcohol is packed full of empty calories—calories that don’t offer any nutritional value or benefits. It’s easy to overlook liquid calories, but they count and can add up.

So, if you have the habit of drinking a glass of wine or two at the end of the day or going for cocktails with your friends every weekend, that might just be why you’re struggling to lose fat and weight. Not only can it prevent weight loss, but excessive alcohol consumption can also lead to weight gain, particularly to what is referred to as an ‘alcohol belly.‘

13. Eating Too Many Processed Carbs

An important dietary factor to consider when losing weight is the types of carbohydrates you eat. Processed carbs, made from refined sugar and white flour, can increase the risk of weight gain as well as heart disease and diabetes.

On average, adults in the United States eat 15% of their calories from added sugars (the World Health Organization recommends less than 5% of total calories from added sugars).

Limiting Sugar-Sweetened Beverages

A big part of this is sugar-sweetened beverages like soda. Experts recommend focusing on minimally processed high-fiber carbohydrates like whole grains, legumes, fruits, and vegetables while limiting the intake of added sugars and refined grains like:

• White bread
• Soda
• Fast food

14. You’re Eating Back the Calories You Burn Through Exercise

One common mistake when entering a calorie deficit is consuming the calories they burn through exercise. This might happen for several reasons. For example, you may track your workouts through an app to see how many calories you burn in each session. The problem is that some fitness trackers overestimate energy expenditure, telling you you have burned X calories when the number is lower.

Another possibility is that your daily calorie allotment already accounts for exercise calories. If you eat them back, you’ve eaten them twice, which might put you in a calorie surplus (where you eat over your maintenance).

15. Not Eating Enough Protein

You may want to look at your total protein intake if you aren’t losing weight in a calorie deficit. Research shows that a high-protein diet can aid in weight management while minimizing weight regain. Adequate protein intake can also help maintain your muscle mass while you lose weight, which helps metabolism. Your body burns more energy when digesting protein than other macronutrients.

16. Not Drinking Enough Water

Drinking a lot of water is commonly recommended as a weight management strategy, and there are a few reasons behind this. First, prioritizing water intake over caloric beverages like juice and soda can improve weight loss results. Drinking water before meals may help with weight loss. This may be due to the thermogenic effect of water, which means that drinking water can temporarily increase the metabolic rate.

Experts recommend at least 64 ounces of water daily for weight management, though individual goals may vary based on your medical history and activity level.

17. You’re Simply Getting Older

One of the many changes that happen to our bodies as we get older is that it’s harder to lose weight. In your 20s, weight loss might be as simple as cutting back on a few treats, but losing muscle mass as we age means putting in more effort to burn fat. For women, hormonal changes throughout perimenopause and menopause, like a lack of estrogen, also increase the amount of fat stored in the body.

If you’re finding weight loss harder than you used to, put more emphasis on strength training. Use weights or resistance bands to increase muscle mass and burn fat more efficiently.

7 Strategies to Overcome Weight Loss Plateaus

When you lose weight, your caloric needs change. What was once a deficit may no longer be sufficient. Regularly reassessing and adjusting your calorie intake can help you stay on track. Consulting a nutritionist can help.

1. Incorporate Strength Training: Why You Shouldn’t Just Focus on Cardio

As you lose weight, your body adapts to the changes. Incorporating strength training into your routine can help overcome metabolic adaptation and enhance overall weight loss efforts.

2. Prioritize Protein Intake: Why Eating Enough Protein Can Help You Lose Weight

Protein is crucial for muscle maintenance and satiety. Including adequate protein in your diet can help preserve muscle mass during weight loss and keep you feeling full, reducing the likelihood of overeating.

3. Stay Hydrated: Why Water Intake Matters For Weight Loss

Proper hydration is essential for overall health and can aid in weight loss. Drinking water before meals can also help you feel fuller, potentially reducing your calorie intake.

4. Get Enough Sleep: Why Sleep Matters for Weight Loss

Lack of sleep can disrupt hormones that regulate hunger and metabolism, making weight loss more difficult. Aim for 7-9 hours of quality sleep per night to support your weight loss efforts.

5. Manage Stress: Why Stress Can Hinder Weight Loss

Chronic stress can lead to hormonal imbalances and emotional eating. Incorporating stress management techniques such as meditation, yoga, or deep breathing exercises can support your weight loss journey.

6. Seek Professional Help: When You Should Consider Speaking to an Expert

Professional guidance can make a significant difference if you struggle despite your best efforts. Experts can offer weight management medications and personalized plans to help you achieve your goals.

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