Why You Can’t Lose Weight

Are you trying every diet out there and still struggling to lose the weight? In this episode, I reveal the real reasons why they’re not working – and spoiler alert, it’s probably not what you think.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that our lack of weight loss is a reflection of our own inadequacies. But the truth is there are a variety of factors that play a much bigger role in our ability to lose and maintain our weight. In this episode, I help you take an honest look at what’s really going on and show you some of the gaps that might be preventing you from losing the weight for the last time.

Join me this week to learn the key reasons that are holding you back from achieving the weight loss you desire.

Ever wish you could have someone look at your weight loss attempts and tell you why it’s not working for you and give you a personalized plan for what will? Now you can. If you are trying to lose weight, feel like you’re doing all the things, and you’re wondering why it isn’t working, then signup for a Lose The Weight For The Last Time Joy Makeover.  

WHAT YOU WILL DISCOVER

• 5 reasons you think you can’t lose weight and why they aren’t true
• The real reasons the weight is not coming off and staying off
• Why weight loss feels so hard
• Habit Science – how long it actually takes to make a habit.
• The root cause of weight and what you need to lose it for the last time

FEATURED ON THE SHOW

• Lose The Weight For the Last Time Joy Makeover
• Would you do me a favor? Please leave a review on your preferred podcast platform — it helps me reach more and more people. Thank you!
• I’d love to hear from you with any questions or breakthroughs or topics you’d like me to cover. Send me a direct message on Instagram @ajoyfulyou or email me at rachael@ajoyfulyou.com
• Follow me on Instagram for more
• Website

TRANSCRIPT:

This is The Joyful You Podcast, episode 98, Why You Can’t Lose Weight.

welcome to The Joyful You Podcast.

On this show, I talk all about the tools you need to cultivate a healthy relationship with food, your mind, and your life.

I’m your host, Rachael Collins.

As an eating psychology practitioner, a certified life coach, and a weight loss expert, it is my mission to show you how to work with your body, manage your mind, process your emotions, and create supportive habits so you can live well, feel well, and become your strongest, healthiest, happiest, most amazing self, a joyful you.

What’s happening, friends?

I hope you are having a great week.

My kids started school this week.

My baby started high school, which for us starts in 10th grade.

And then her older sister started cosmetology school, which I am really excited about.

I cannot wait until she’s to the point where I can literally just come and sit in her chair, and she can do my hair.

It’s going to be so much fun.

This week’s podcast review comes from Spence G, and it says life changing.

This podcast is the best to help build up yourself in all aspects of life.

It’s for all genders, ages, and for everyone in all stages of life.

And then in all caps, it says, I love this podcast.

Thank you, Spence, for the review.

All right, today on the podcast, I want to talk about the real reason you can’t lose weight.

I want you to know why so that you can do something about it.

I’m going to share with you several common reasons, kind of an overall theme.

But if you would like specific help figuring out what the exact reasons are for you, sign up for Lose The Weight For The Last Time Joy Makeover.

Where I will be able to look at what’s really going on specifically for you that is preventing you from losing the weight and keeping it off.

I will be able to find insights into things that you probably have never thought about before.

And definitely into things that the diet industry is not teaching you that are playing a role in your body holding on to weight.

If you would like one, I will put a link in the show notes.

You can also find it on my website, ajoyfulyou.com/lose the weight.

As I have been doing these makeovers for clients, I have started noticing a few themes.

And that is what I want to share with you today.

Did you know that the average woman tries to lose weight 140 times by the age of 40?

So why is it that it’s not working?

Think about that for a second.

If all the diets, supplements, shakes, exercise plans, pills, counting and cutting out food were truly effective, wouldn’t we all be walking around slim, healthy, and happy, never having to try to lose the weight ever again by now?

Did you know that the odds of regaining the weight that you lose using a traditional diet is 98%?

That means only 2% of people actually keep it off.

And I bet if we were to look at the data, that that 2% is probably mostly men.

And that is because weight loss for women is different than weight loss for men.

We are not men.

Our bodies were built differently.

And so, we lose weight differently as well.

Now, before we jump into why you are not losing weight, I want to begin by explaining to you what are not the reasons.

Because these are the reasons that you think that you are not losing weight.

And I promise you, these are not the reasons.

So, not reason number one is that there is something wrong with you.

That you are broken or just not good enough in some way.

And I hear clients all the time say, I failed too many times in the past.

I’m just not good at losing weight.

I’m just not able to do it.

Something is wrong with me.

I am broken.

And I can say with 100% certainty, that the reason why your past attempts didn’t work had nothing to do with you.

There is nothing wrong with you.

You are not a failure.

This is not the reason you haven’t lost the weight or that you lose weight and then gain it back.

It’s not about you.

I promise you.

You are more than capable of losing the weight for the last time.

I have no doubt about that.

Number two reason is you are looking for a holy grail of diets.

Or in other words, you are looking for a perfect diet and you’re super confused.

There is just so much information out there about how to lose weight and a lot of it is contradictory, right?

And everything promises to work.

And now you’re just left confused and feeling overwhelmed and probably lost.

You don’t know what to do anymore.

And it might feel like you’ve tried them all and you just could not make them work or you couldn’t stay on them.

Sometimes they’re so hard to do, they go against everything in our brain and in our body and in our life that we just can’t stay on them.

And here’s the truth.

There is no perfect diet.

There is no perfect supplement.

Why these things didn’t work was because they didn’t address the real reasons your body is holding on to weight.

The number three reason you think that you’re not losing weight is that you just love food too much.

I just love sugar too much.

I just love sweets.

I just love nachos too much.

I just love chips too much.

I just love ice cream too much.

I just love whatever food it is for you too much.

I can’t stop eating it.

I’ve tried.

I really have tried and I just can’t do it.

You think a certain food is what is preventing you from losing the weight.

And that is not the reason either.

You don’t have to get rid of your favorite foods in order to lose weight.

Did you know that?

You don’t.

You just have to make them work for you instead of against you.

And that is what I’m all about.

Non reason number four is I’m too busy.

I don’t have time to lose weight.

I have work or I have kids or I’m in school.

Maybe it’s all three.

I don’t have time.

I don’t have time to work out.

I don’t have time to meal prep.

I don’t have time to cook.

I don’t have time to dot dot dot.

Fill in the blank with whatever it is for you.

But here’s the thing.

Weight loss should work with your life.

If you are doing the right program, it will work with your life.

It will work with your schedule.

It should be something that happens in the background of your life.

It shouldn’t be your entire life.

You don’t have to spend hours in the kitchen or in the gym.

And you should be free of worrying about every little bite that you eat.

It should not be your entire focus that you try to fit your life around.

The right weight loss program fits with your life because that’s the only way that it’s going to work.

If it doesn’t fit with your life, it’s not going to work.

And then that leads us to the last reason number five, or should I say non reason number five, that I hear people say all the time, that I promise you is not the reason that you can’t lose weight, is because you lack willpower.

Listen, I know it feels this way, but I promise you, you actually have lots of willpower.

Think about it, it takes willpower to hold your bladder until you can get to the bathroom.

It takes willpower to stop at a stop sign that you really don’t think is necessary.

It takes willpower to not yell at the old lady in front of you in the checkout line at the grocery store, who is taking so day long putting up her groceries one at a time, chatting with the cashier because she’s lonely, and now to top it all off, she’s writing a dang check.

Who the heck writes checks anymore?

That’s what I want to know.

So you see, we use willpower every day and you are good at it.

You’re not wetting your pants just because you can’t get to the bathroom right away, right?

You’re not running the stop sign or running red lights.

You are using willpower.

So that is not the reason either.

So let’s talk about what are the reasons then that you can’t lose the weight.

The number one reason is you are trying to use an old school weight loss diet to lose the weight.

A diet that has you using traditional calories in, calories out method.

It has you fasting and or it has you cutting out your favorite foods.

I know for me, I tried to lose weight for years.

I would do 90 day kick the sugar challenges.

I did paleo.

I did vegan.

I did Atkins.

I did Weight Watcher several times, several different forms of Weight Watchers.

It’s always changing.

I counted calories.

One time I was eating less than a thousand calories a day.

Can I just tell you it was terrible?

I also tried going the exercise route.

I ran five miles a day, six days a week, which for me was a lot.

My body did not like running.

It hated it.

It screamed at me every time I tried to do it, and my joints really did not like it.

I tried no flour, no sugar.

I tried fasting.

I tried macro counting.

Some of these I lost weight on.

Most of them I didn’t.

The weight never budged.

It was super frustrating.

The ones that I did lose weight on, I always seemed to gain the weight back, plus some once the diet was over.

It was so frustrating.

I felt like my body was broken.

I felt like I was broken.

So I get that reason.

I felt like I was failing at weight loss in every possible way.

And what I came to find out was that I wasn’t the one that was broken.

The diets were broken.

And so were the old school methods and sciences that I was trying to implement to lose weight.

Right now, one of our dryers is broken.

It won’t turn on.

I don’t know what’s wrong with it.

It just won’t turn on.

So using these old school weight loss methods is like me putting clothes in the dryer that’s broken and then getting mad at myself because I think it’s my fault that my dryer won’t dry my clothes.

I’m not the problem.

You aren’t the problem either.

The problem is that the diets are broken.

Just like my dryer.

They don’t address what’s really going on.

They’re stuck in the past and they are still using outdated science.

Losing weight these days has dramatically changed.

Especially for women, we are trying to use weight loss methods for men.

So many men are teaching women how to lose weight in the way that’s worked for them.

And we are drastically different.

So I want you to think about this.

The diet industry basically tells us to lose weight by one, using a calories in, calories out method.

We do this by keeping track of our calories, only eating a certain amount or if you’re weight watchers, it’s points.

The problem with this is that it usually leaves us starving.

And science today tells us that the number of calories that we need daily fluctuates.

So when we only eat a set number a day, we might be eating too much or some days we might be eating too little.

And it’s working against our metabolism, our hormones.

And the other thing is it throws up cravings.

Our biology is throwing up cravings like crazy to try to get us to eat.

So we’re really having to fight to the nail to use all the willpower that we can muster up to try to stick to our diet, to try to stay under that certain amount of calories or points.

And our biology will end up winning.

And that usually looks like us binge eating or overeating on all the things trying to quote unquote get it out of our system so that we can then start again tomorrow or on Monday.

The second thing is the diet industry also tells us that we need to fast or use other tricks that are pretty much doing the same thing.

They are starving our body.

I saw a post by a big weight loss influencer who was sharing that if you feel hungry, just eat a spoonful of coconut oil and drink two glasses of water and then chew a piece of gum.

Starving your body is actually traumatizing to your body.

And this is why when you think about hopping back on a diet, you start to dread it.

You start to feel anxious, right?

Who wants to be starving and miserable?

Nobody does.

And when we are ignoring our body’s hunger cues, it’s also putting a lot of stress on the body, and our body will go into a stress response, also known as a sympathetic dominance response, or fight or flight.

And when we are in this state, our body slows down our digestion.

It slows down our metabolism.

It doesn’t absorb nutrients as well.

And it holds on to weight.

Once we get hungry enough, again, our biology will kick in by making us think about food all the time, by making us want food all the time.

We will have all these cravings to eat.

And that is when we tend to have uncontrolled eating in the afternoon, or the evenings, or sometimes it’s on the weekends.

This totally sets us up for disordered eating and binge eating.

Now, this was me.

I was doing a no sugar during the week challenge with a friend several, several years ago.

And by the time the weekend came, I would literally have a free for all.

I was eating all the things that I deprived myself of during the week.

And by the time the challenge was over, I gained five pounds and it’s literally only been like a month because all I thought about was sugar all week long.

All I could think about was sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar.

I can’t wait until the weekend when I can eat sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar.

And even when the challenge was over and I stopped the no eating sugar during the week, it took a while for my eating to return back to my old normal.

Now, another thing that the diet industry tells us to do to lose weight is by taking away your favorite foods.

They will say, well, if she’s overeating carbs, then let’s take away all the carbs.

If she’s overeating fat, let’s take away all the fat.

Same with sugar, right?

And some diets even include fruit as sugar.

When we take away our favorite foods, we are also taking away our coping mechanisms.

And sometimes, we are even taking away vital nutrients that are required for hormone stabilization and a well-functioning metabolism as well as brain power, which we kind of need.

So no wonder so many of us that are trying to lose weight this way are complaining about not having any energy.

One of the diets that I tried during my weight loss days was a plant-based diet.

Now, I had heard everywhere that plants are medicine.

And the Word of Wisdom says to eat mostly plants, right?

So I implemented a plant-based diet.

I hardly ate any meat at all.

In fact, for eight straight months, I didn’t have one bit of meat.

It was all plant-based.

And here’s what I noticed.

My hair started falling out.

I had no energy and I had cravings like crazy.

I also found it really hard to exercise.

I would work out and then I would literally have to lay down and take a three-hour nap.

My body was screaming for protein.

It needed protein.

And once I listened to it and I added more protein back in, all of my symptoms went away and I started to feel so much better.

Now, the last thing that I’m going to mention is that the diet industry fails to teach us how to actually change a habit.

Diets just want us to make a drastic 180 degree change in how we eat and live come Monday morning.

They want us to do this dead stop and change everything.

And this is so hard for us.

It is so hard on our brain because it actually works against how our brain is set up.

And there we go.

We try to use willpower to fight against it.

And we claim we don’t have enough willpower.

Well, actually, the reason why it’s not working is because it’s totally working against everything in us.

And diets, they will claim that if we can just hold on for 30 days or 90 days or 75 days or however long their program is, then we will form a new habit.

And it will all be worth it.

But this simply isn’t the case.

The science today is telling us we need plenty of calories.

This looks like eating when we’re hungry, not starving.

We don’t have to wait till we’re starving to eat.

We just wait until we’re a little bit hungry.

And then we eat.

And then we eat until enough.

Again, not full.

We’re not topping the tank here.

We just eat until we are no longer hungry anymore.

That’s what enough looks like.

Enough looks like you’re no longer hungry and you don’t get hungry for about three to four hours later.

The second thing that the science is telling us is that we need our basic human needs met.

Our body won’t release weight until it feels safe and supported to do so.

And when it’s starving, it doesn’t feel safe.

When it’s in a stress response, it doesn’t feel safe.

When we’re beating up on ourselves, it doesn’t feel safe.

It needs to be getting enough calories.

It needs comfort.

It needs love.

It needs rest.

And it needs hydration and pleasure.

If you are not getting these basic human needs met, you are going to turn to food to supply them.

The third thing that science today is telling us is that foods need to satisfy us.

If it is not tasty, if it is not pleasurable, if it is not giving us the nutrients that we need, our brain will be screaming for food, and it will start setting us up to break our diets and to massively overeat.

That is our biology outplay right there.

This is why just eating plain chicken breast and green beans or plain salad just doesn’t work.

Our food needs to be tasty.

It needs to satisfy us.

It needs to bring us some pleasure.

And then the last thing, the fourth thing the science today is telling us that all the other diets are missing, is that it takes over 200 days to actually form a new habit and have it become automatic.

Habits aren’t formed in 30 days or 90 day or 75 day streaks.

They aren’t.

Habits are actually formed better when mistakes are made and we recover and learn from them.

We don’t have to do it perfectly.

We don’t have to have the streaks.

Can you now see why weight loss feels so dang hard and why it isn’t working?

It’s going against our biology.

It’s going against our brain and it’s putting us into a stress response that’s leaving us traumatized and our body doesn’t feel safe and supported to lose weight.

These traditional ways through a traditional dieting method, diets are the problem, not you.

Your body and brain are functioning perfectly exactly the way they were created to.

It’s the diet that has failed.

It’s the diet that has made weight loss filled, time consuming, confusing as heck that you’re broken, that you lack willpower and that you’re bad for wanting to eat your favorite foods.

They never address the root cause.

They don’t address why you are eating.

They don’t address how to meet your own emotional needs.

They don’t address how to meet your basic needs.

They never taught you how to get your hormones in on the game or how to deal with life stress and how to calm your nervous system.

They only want to talk about the food.

What you’re eating, what you shouldn’t be eating, when you should be eating, and how to burn off what you did eat.

They don’t look away holistically from all the angles.

It is more than the food, I promise.

So listen, to sum it all up here, you are not the problem.

There is nothing wrong with you.

I don’t care how many diets you’ve been on in the past.

You are capable of losing the weight for the last time.

What’s happening under the surface is what is creating the excess weight for you.

And we can get to the root of what this is for you.

If you want help knowing specifically what’s getting in the way of you being able to lose the weight for the last time, grab a Joy Makeover and I would love to show you exactly what’s going on for you.

Otherwise, thank you so much for joining me today.

Please go leave a review if you haven’t yet.

And if you have loved this episode and found it valuable, please pass it along to any of your family or friends who you think might benefit from it as well.

Alright, I hope you have a great week and I’ll see you next time.

Thank you for listening to The Joyful You Podcast.

If you’d like additional support, click the link in the show notes and let’s chat about how we can work together to get you to your goal.

If this episode was helpful to you, make sure to subscribe and please share it.

The most helpful thing you can do in return is to go leave a review.

If you want to hang out on social media, you can find me on Instagram, at A Joyful You or on my website, ajoyfulyou.com.

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