Despite a healthy lifestyle, some people are unable to lose weight. Before making any dietary changes, it is important to find the source of these excess pounds and what makes it difficult to lose them. Here are 15 reasons that may explain your difficulty losing weight.
You eat or snack without regard to your hunger and satiety signals.
Many people, especially those who are overweight, admit that they almost never feel hungry. This means that they almost always eat before a physiological need for hunger manifests itself (snacking, rumbling, empty stomach, etc.). The time, circumstances (holidays, holidays, etc.), positive or negative emotions, fear of being too hungry have become theirs
reasons to eat. The problem with eating without being hungry is that you don’t know when to stop. Satiety or satiation is only felt when you are hungry. For many people, you have to go back to basics and listen to your hunger and satiety signals to better manage your weight.
You alternate between periods of restriction and food sloppiness.
Every Monday, or after the holidays, you have new resolutions and decide to eat “very healthy” and in small quantities all week long. You may even experience feelings of hunger. On weekends or holidays, when the work routine is over, you let yourself go and eat what you want, regardless of your hunger and satiety, on the pretext that it is the holidays, but also and above all because it is impossible to endure severe restrictions for too long. So start eating reasonably now, 7 days a week, without any restrictions.
You try all the new diets.
Only a very small proportion of people who have lost weight as a result of a drastic diet succeed in maintaining this loss. The others regain the lost weight and even more! Since most people regain most of their lost weight, or more weight after a weight loss diet, there is a strong propensity to switch to a new diet. This is called the yo-yo cycle (repeated weight loss and recovery). Make the decision today to stop making restrictive diets that you will not be able to maintain in the long term.
You have a genetically low metabolism.
Since your youth, you have always been prone to weight gain easily. Your metabolism may be lower than average. Under these circumstances, either you accept excess weight and work to maintain it through healthy eating and exercise or you choose to calculate more accurately for life what you eat in order to achieve some weight loss.
You use food as a comfort or reward.
Many people eat when they feel emotions such as anger, pain, sadness to calm their condition or reward themselves with food after an effort or success. In both cases, it is not a question of real hunger but of false hunger. Recognizing these false appetites and finding a way to get through or congratulate yourself other than food is at the heart of healthy weight management.
You have been sleep-deprived for a long time.
It seems that lack of sleep promotes the consumption of energy-rich foods and the adoption of sub-optimal eating habits. A 4-year study of Japanese workers showed that people who slept less than 6 hours a night consumed more high-fat foods and ate outdoors more often than people who slept between 7 and 9 hours a night. In addition, these people tended to skip breakfast and snack during the day. To better manage your weight, it may be time to look for solutions to sleep better.
You spend a lot of hours in front of the screens.
It seems that weight gain due to the number of hours spent in front of the TV or computer is more related to increased food consumption than to decreased physical activity. For television, the increase in food consumption would be related to the number of food ads that are broadcast. With regard to computer work, it has been shown that sustained mental work would generate stress that would push us to eat beyond our real hunger. Also, intellectual fatigue could be interpreted as a decrease in energy due to hunger and not just as fatigue. For all these reasons, it is recommended not to watch more than 2 hours of television a day and to question yourself before rushing to a food and assess whether we need a break more than eating.
You don’t cook much.
The best way to control the quality of our food and the amount of food we eat is to cook at home from unprocessed or slightly processed foods. It is better to avoid a large part of ultra-processed foods (frozen meals, very sweet cereals, sweetened drinks, etc.) because their sugar, fat and salt content affect the hormones that regulate appetite. To better manage your weight, get into your pots and pans!
You always eat from large cutlery (plates, glasses, etc.)
Since 1960, the size of the dishes has increased by 36%. The trend is towards large square plates, gigantic wine glasses and large forks. These new formats can encourage us to eat more. The fault lies in Delboeuf’s illusion, an optical illusion documented in 1860 by the Belgian philosopher Franz Joseph Delboeuf, which makes us perceive an insufficient quantity of food when it is placed on a plate much larger than the portion of food. Since it is difficult to leave food on your plate, it is better to use smaller plates and glasses to reduce our portions and collect enough.
You never take snacks and eat too much at dinner.
Snacking is often suggested to better manage your weight. It helps to avoid low energy between meals and to be too hungry for the next meal. Sometimes, the irresistible urge to snack comes from a poor distribution of food during the day. It is often necessary to have a healthy, protein-rich snack (e. g. nuts and fruit) in the middle of the afternoon to help resist the temptation to snack in the evening. In addition, bringing healthy snacks to work or in the car avoids rushing to non-nutritious foods when you are hungry.
You don’t have lunch at all
It is not necessary to have a big breakfast, it depends on how hungry you are, but not eating at all between getting up and lunchtime will affect your food consumption on the rise during the day. In addition, there is evidence that people who eat breakfast are better able to meet their daily nutritional needs. If you’re not hungry when you get up, bring a breakfast snack to the office such as Greek yogurt, muesli cereal and fresh fruit.
In conclusion, there are several reasons why you may find it difficult to regain a balanced weight. Weight management is done by adjusting several behaviours and choosing changes that we like and that suit our schedule and lifestyle, in short, changes that will last over time.