A person exercises every day and doesn’t eat that much. Yet, they can't lose any weight. What else should they do to try to lose weight?

A person exercises every day and doesn’t eat that much. Yet, they can't lose any weight. What else should they do to try to lose weight?

I ran through the answers here and boy oh boy…I’m looking for someone around me that has a gun…

I’ve been a fitness trainer for weight loss for almost ten years now and every time when someone says “move more, eat less” doesn’t work, I silently pray for an earthquake or something.

I touched on this topic in my article [1]but when someone says “oooh, just eat healthy and you will lose weight. Calories don’t matter”. I think…

Wait, what? After this claim my following question is this:

What do you do when you hit weight loss plateau when eating healthy? Eat even healthier? No. You reduce your calories because that‘s what drives weight loss.

The Real Problem

Why can’t you lose weight even when exercising and eating less (who knows how much less…)?

This is considering that one has no pathologies that inhibit weight loss.

That is a brilliant graphic by @Bdccarpenter which will explain everything.

• First problem: people say they eat less but what does that even mean?

People say they eat less but that means nothing. You can eat less and still gain weight because you still overconsume calories.

In this particular study, subjects underreported their caloric intake by 1053 kcal/day!!!

This is crazy, right?

So eating less alone won’t make you lose weight. If you can’t lose weight - eat even less next week, and the next week, and the next week!

Until you see weight dropping. That means you finally hit that caloric deficit.

• Second problem: people say they exercise everyday but…do they, really?

What do I mean by that? I’ve seen people “exercising”. They sit on a machine for 5 minutes and then do a set which takes 15 seconds to complete a set. Then - the same story again.

You have to realize this: weightlifting only burns about 300 kcal/hour. 400 kcal if you are a genetic freak. Don’t think that exercise burns heaps of calories. Those who claim differently probably want to sell you something…

Again, going back to that study. Subjects overreported their caloric expenditure by 251 calories! That’s almost an hour at the gym…

My tip

Over ten years, I have never ever had a client that didn’t lose weight if he had caloric deficit dialed in. None. Period.

That being said, there are many ways to do that:

• Having a food diary
• Using something like myfitnesspal
• Adjusting macronutrient intake by increasing protein intake and lowering fats and/or carbs
• Increasing physical activity levels

• Final Thoughts

Don’t get me wrong - I don’t say that you have to track your calories to the tiniest detail in order to lose weight.

You simply need to admit the fact that if you are not losing weight, you are not in a caloric deficit.

Then, ask yourself this: “what can I do to decrease calories even more? Can I eat fewer fats? Can I incorporate an hour of walk into my schedule?

Eventually, by doing this, you will find yourself in a caloric deficit and think: “Oh, okay. I was wrong. I ate less but not enough less”.

Want science-based approaches to fat loss that are not the fluff and nonsense spouted by some Oprah-endorsed “emotional eating guru”? Get in touch with me via Instagram or the website (in Quora profile).

Footnotes

Image source Instagram

Thanks for Reading

Thanks Daniel