A lot of people can relate to the picture on the right where you see an overweight couple, tired after working out with little to show for it. The despair is evident on their faces and you can actually feel the pain that’s emanating from that image.
If you too feel like you can’t lose weight no matter what you do, then this article is super-important for you. In this article I’ll reveal some reasons why you simply can’t lose weight and what you can do to change all that. If your motivation is down and you need something to bring it up again, do yourself and your body a favor and read this article all the way through…
Here are some of the “reasons” why you can’t lose weight:
1. You think that doing sit-ups or crunches is the way to lose weight
Just like the couple in the photo, millions of people think that the fastest way to lose belly fat and shed pounds is to do a ton of stomach exercises. If you go into a gym, you’re likely to see a big section devoted to stomach workouts with people lying on mats and trying to crunch their fat to oblivion.
While abs training is better than no training, the truth is that the overall effect of belly exercises on weight loss is small. To really burn more calories and shed weight faster, you need to work on your bigger muscle groups first and foremost, legs, back, and chest and to train your entire body. Only when your entire body is fit will you find that they pounds and fat melt away easily as your metabolism will be running faster.
Make your abs workout a small part of your entire workout and train your bigger muscle groups more.
2. You’re working out with a fitness product you saw on TV
Infomercials make losing weight seem so easy, right? You see a beautiful model training with the latest abs machine or other gadget and you see simulations of how a fat belly is turned into a flat one in an instant and you think: “I can do that too”. So, you spend a bunch of money and get the machine to your home and you begin training with it enthusiastically but the results just don’t come. You get depressed thinking “why am I fat? What’s wrong with me?”
The answer is nothing. Most of the fitness products sold on TV offer new advantage over regular exercises whether it’s to pick up some dumbbells and do curls or to get down on the floor and do some abs workouts. You’re getting the same effect if not less. Some machines are good but most are simply scams in disguise.
If you’re hoping to get lean and fit by using some fitness machine you’re likely to end up disappointed and blaming yourself. Don’t fall into that trap unless you do your own research about this fitness product before hand to make sure it’s one of the rare good products.
3. You do too much slow-medium cardio
Doing steady paced cardio for 40 – 60 minutes still seems to be the most common weight loss method that people do. In every gym I’ve ever been to, you see people huffing and puffing on the treadmill or the elliptical but neglecting to do anything else (expect for crunches).
I love cardio myself and I think it’s important to do it regularly. However, doing slow-medium paced cardio for a long time is not the most efficient way to lose some pounds. A good fat loss method should include strength training and high intensity interval cardio workouts. This is also a more time efficient way to train.
4. Trying to out train a bad diet
I love to workout and I love how it makes me feel. However, I know that even if I workout hard and burn a ton of calories that I don’t have a license to start eating bad food. Too many people think that because they go to the gym a few times a week they have some sort of immunity against fattening food. This is the wrong approach and you won’t get any results from it. In fact, you’re likely to end up fatter than before even though you’re working out.
The truth is that it’s very hard to out-train a bad diet. It’s nearly impossible. The reason is that it’s much easier to consume calories than it is to burn them off. You can’t lose weight without following a good eating plan. What you eat has the most dramatic effect on your body so there’s really no way to drop pounds if you don’t make sure to eat proper food that is good for fat loss.
If you want to learn more about eating food that helps you lose fat check out the 7 Day Belly Blast Diet.
5. You’re following the wrong diet plans
Every so often, some sort of bizarre diet plan will get some publicity and thousands of people will be tempted to follow it. Usually, these are strange fat diet such as the GM diet plan or the mysterious Israeli Army Diet. At other times these plans are focused on eating one specific food such as the Grapefruit diet. These are all fad diets that are based on simple principles that may work for a short while but may also be counterproductive to long term weight loss.
This is not the way to get real results. The only way to really shed body fat is to change your lifestyle to create sensible eating and workout habits that you can follow regularly. One fat loss plan I can recommend for long term results is Burn The Fat Feed The Muscle by Tom Venuto. This is a plan that gets you on the right track for a lean and firm body.
The truth is that not being able to lose weight is something that depends on you and your action. Feeling that you can’t lose weight is an illusion that you can and should break. I hope that this article has given you new hope and motivation.