5 REASONS WHY YOU MIGHT BE STRUGGLING TO LOSE BODY FAT
By Coach Fiona Kennedy
Fat loss in the simplest of terms means “expending more calories than your body takes in”, sounds easy right? However, for many people this process is not as easy as it sounds, keep reading to find out some reasons why you might be struggling to lose fat.
You are guessing how many calories you are eating
By not tracking your nutrition properly it can be very easy to overeat, in reality, most people don’t really know how much they eat. Since fat loss requires you to be in a calorie deficit, it is therefore crucial to track your daily calorie intake to ensure that you don’t eat too much. At Elite Ladies, our expert coaches assess each client and calculate the exact amount of calories needed for that individual to lose body fat. This calculation is methodically worked out based on a person's current lean body mass and in relation to their fat loss goal. From here we encourage our clients to use a tracker application such as my fitness pal to ensure that you are staying within your calorie guidelines
You think you are eating healthy
Quality of nutrients is just as important as quantity. Just because a food is labeled “healthy”, “fat free”, “added protein” etc doesn’t mean that it is the best choice. Take for instance the latest trend in the UAE “ the açaí bowl”. The açaí bowl although it contains some good nutrients like protein and fiber, it may be somewhere in the region of 500 calories and tends to be very high in sugar- not ideal when you are on a calorie controlled diet- as it’s almost half of your daily allowance in one sitting! At Elite Ladies, we encourage our clients to opt for whole foods, favouring protein, veggies & healthy fats in each meal and encourage our ladies to have their starchy carbs post workout.
You’re not following a structured exercise programme
Having structure to your training can not only help to make you more accountable, it can help to keep you on track with your goal. If you are just doing random workouts and not tracking your sessions you will not know if you are progressing. At Elite Ladies our expert coaches perform a full assessment for each female and from here design an individual training programme with the sole intention of helping females achieve their goals. We also continually monitor and reassess to ensure that things are moving in the right direction too. There is no perfect training programme that will guarantee that you will lose body fat, however we believe at Elite Ladies that the best approach for losing fat is a combination of full body strength training and cardio in the form of intervals.
You are not active enough outside of the gym
For a lot of people the majority of their day involves sedentary tasks like: sitting down driving to work, sitting at the desk when they get to work, sitting down to drive home from work and sitting in front of the TV at night. If you think about it there are 168 hours in a week, is it enough that we only exercise 3-6 hours a week at the gym? In my opinion NO it's not enough! Over and above our aesthetic goals, we should also take our health into consideration and try to be more active in our daily routine. Things like; taking the stairs instead of the lift, parking the car further away and walking a little bit further to get to your destination can all contribute towards expending more energy (what you need to do to lose fat). A great way to incorporate this into your daily routine is by tracking your daily steps, a general rule of thumb is aiming for between 5,000-10,000 steps each day. At Elite Ladies we try to encourage clients to do additional exercise such as walking either on days that they are not training or as extra activity on the days that they are training.
You are not being consistent enough
Most people aren’t strict enough for long enough when it comes to fat loss. For the majority of people weekdays Sun-Thurs are more controlled with training and eating habits but then as soon as the weekend arrives the flood gates open and it's a “free for all” on Friday and Saturday. Depending on your goal and specifically how much fat you have to lose you need to be focused, committed and consistent seven days a week for a reasonable amount of time to see results and actually lose body fat. To put this in perspective, to lose 1 pound (½ KG) of body fat you need to create a deficit of 3500 calories. This means if you have a lot of fat to lose it will require you to be in a calorie deficit for long enough to make this possible. At Elite Ladies our coaches will support females in creating new habits and encourage them to make sustainable lifestyle changes, we find that the best way to achieve consistency is by focusing on mastering one new habit at a time.
CONCLUSION
There may be a variety of reasons why you are struggling to lose body fat but most probably it could be influenced by one of the above factors. The notion of losing fat is easy on paper- it’s the execution that most people struggle with. To lose fat successfully and more importantly to keep it off follow these simple steps: track your calories, eat nutrient dense foods, follow a structured training program which prioritizes full body strength training, be more active in your daily routine and lastly if not most importantly be consistent in all of the above.