The Hardest Part of Dieting

One of the hardest parts of dieting is that as you lose weight your body makes it easier to gain back. That’s because hormone levels change (particularly leptin), and that manipulates your hunger. The more you lose, the hungrier you become.

This matters because hunger can work in subtle ways. And, when your brain is pushing you to eat a little more here and there (especially if you’re exercising and rationalizing the ability to eat a few extra calories), it’s very easy to eat more than you think (more on this in a moment).

And, this becomes even more complicated when you consider that your body likely has a “set point.” This weight where your body likes to settle, and changing out of that set point is difficult when your body will almost force you to try and stick at that weight.

When you combine these two factors (your brain wanting more food and your body wanting to stick at a certain weight), weight loss quickly becomes a frustrating process for most people.

Once your frustration kicks in, you might even try to fight your body and win the war on weight loss by reducing calories again to make the scale drop.

And what happens? The scale doesn’t move or you appear to be gaining weight.

It’s enough to make you feel like your body must be broken. Or, maybe you wonder if it’s gluten…or dairy…or artificial sweeteners that are making you fat. So, you start restricting foods left and right, only to become more miserable. 

While your frustration is real, rest assured your body is not broken, and artificial sweeteners or dairy are likely not the problems. 

3 Reasons You Gain Weight
(When You Least Expect It)

In our experience with online coaching clients, we’ve seen everything. And, when it comes to weight loss, there are three common reasons you might continue to struggle with weight loss, even if it seems like you’re doing everything right. 

All of the reasons, ultimately, are linked to how much you’re eating. While all calories are not equal, calories-in and calories-out (also known as energy balance) is still the main mechanism that determines weight loss and gains.

As we already mentioned, you can’t under-eat your way to weight gain. But, you can appear to be under-eating and still gaining weight.

To make your life easier, we want to make sure you can easily identify all of the sneaky ways you can be tricked into following a diet that only leads to added frustration and a scale that won’t move.