Why isn’t my exercise routine resulting in weight loss?”
When you’re putting in the effort at the gym but the scale refuses to budge, it can be incredibly disheartening.
Contrary to common belief, simply exercising doesn’t guarantee shedding pounds.
Here are a few crucial questions to consider:
- Are you truly in a calorie deficit?
Weight loss hinges on consistently maintaining a calorie deficit over time. Essentially, you need to burn more calories than you consume for a sustained period to see results.
Exercise burns calories, so it should naturally lead to weight loss, right? Not necessarily!
Unless you’re consistently achieving that crucial deficit in your energy balance. This is why keeping track of your meals in a food journal and monitoring your daily activity levels through step counts can serve as valuable tools to pinpoint any obstacles hindering your progress.
3. Are you less active outside of the gym?
A significant factor in weight loss is NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis), which refers to the energy expended in activities other than formal exercise—such as walking the dog, playing with kids, washing the car, or fidgeting at your desk.
NEAT can contribute up to 50% of your daily energy expenditure if you remain active throughout the day.
Research indicates that when individuals begin an exercise regimen, their NEAT can decline, leading to a reduction in energy expenditure and potentially negating the calorie deficit.
That’s why we recommend that all clients strive for a minimum of 10,000 steps per day consistently to maintain a high NEAT level. You can easily track this using a pedometer, fitness watch, or smartphone app to monitor your daily step count.
4. Are you eating more without know?
Most people will over-estimate their calorie burn from exercise, while underestimating the amount of calories they eat day to day.
It’s common for people to think ‘I am exercising and burning more calories, so I should be able to eat more or treat myself’. But the extra calories can often outstrip the extra calories burned.
Sometimes it can be imperceptible. Slight increases in hunger may mean an extra biscuit here and there, or a slightly larger portion at the dinner table. Again, extra calories add up and can negate your weight loss attempts.
This is why we advise clients to track their food intake. Whether that is logging their calorie intake or monitoring portion sizes, having an honest and objective view can prevent unconscious overeating.
5. Final Message
Exercise is an important component of weight loss. Progressive weight training and increasing your daily energy expenditure is a big part of what we do at Ultimate Performance to help people achieve transformation results.
But exercise isn’t the magic bullet for weight loss on its own.
Combining effective diet and training strategies together is going to be the most effective and sustainable way of losing the weight you want.