Genetics Certain factors that could contribute to your difficulty losing weight are beyond your control. Research has shown that there is a strong genetic component to obesity. Twin studies have shown that between 60% to 90% of your predisposition to obesity could be genetic¹⁴.
Maybe. Some bodies are simply better at burning fat than others. It's something you inherit from your parents or grandparents. You don't have any control over the genes that were passed to you, so you may need to work a little harder to burn calories and lose weight.
Factors at play include genetics, age, race and ethnicity, diet, physical activity, hormones, and social factors. If you struggle with weight loss, you know that there are no shortcuts. One key strategy to losing weight is to burn more calories than you eat.
Most people who have difficulty losing weight are simply eating too many calories. An important factor in weight loss is how many calories you're eating versus how many calories you're burning. It may seem easy, but if you're not tracking your calories each day, you may be consuming more than you think.
Some research also suggests that weight loss is about more than the calories a person consumes and burns. The body may change the rate at which it burns calories depending on how many calories a person eats. Therefore a person on a 1,200 calorie diet may burn fewer of them. This can slow weight loss.
As we reach our 30's, our bodies usually need less energy, meaning we may not be able to eat the way we did in our 20's. Then, as you move past 40 and head to middle age, changes in muscle, hormones and metabolism all make it harder to stay trim. But it's not a lost cause.
One of the main reasons that undereating can lead to weight gain is because consuming too few calories can cause your resting metabolic rate to slow down. This means you may burn fewer calories throughout the day.
"Lack of motivation can be a symptom of other factors, such as fatigue, high stress levels, and feeling overwhelmed," says Clark. Explore why you're feeling unmotivated and create strategies to help you fight back. For example, you can use what's holding you back to define the parameters of your goals.
Muscle Mass
A month or two after you start exercising, your body composition may begin to change. You will likely gain muscle mass and may begin to lose some fat mass. Muscle weighs more than fat, but it also burns more calories.
You're eating less, but could make healthier choices
This is where a calorie deficit alone isn't a magic formula. Reducing your calories to 1,500 a day but eating processed foods instead of healthy fats, protein and fruit and veg won't give you long-term results. You could also be limiting how healthy you feel overall.
Although the prevalence of obesity increases with age, weight gain is actually greatest across the younger years of adult life — late twenties and thirties — and diminishes gradually over time as adults get older, says Tucker.
However, without understanding your net caloric balance, walking 10,000 steps, 15,000 steps, or even 20,000 steps a day might not be enough to cause any meaningful fat loss or improvements in body composition. To achieve fat loss, you need to burn more calories than you get from your food.
A prolonged 1,200 calorie-per-day diet can slow metabolism, so it is best to only do it short-term. There are risks to consuming too few calories, including: Not getting adequate nutrition. Anxiety.
It has everything to do with your metabolism. The higher your metabolism, the more fat your body burns. If you have a low metabolism, then of course the amount of fat your body burns is reduced. Skipping meals or not eating enough actually helps your body to become really good at storing fat.
Mostly, losing weight is an internal process. You will first lose hard fat that surrounds your organs like liver, kidneys and then you will start to lose soft fat like waistline and thigh fat. The fat loss from around the organs makes you leaner and stronger.
When the calories you burn equal the calories you eat, you reach a plateau. To lose more weight, you need to either increase your physical activity or decrease the calories you eat. Using the same approach that worked at first may maintain your weight loss, but it won't lead to more weight loss.
Excessive exercise may hinder weight loss or even lead to weight gain. Here's what science has to say about the correlation between overtraining and the number on the scale. While exercise can offer a wide range of health benefits, it can be easy to overdo it.