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Let's get right into it! In no particular order, here are the top reasons interfering with results that we see in our coaching practice:
1. Stress. Even if you're eating "perfectly", exercising, meditating, getting outside in nature etc., but you're absolutely stressed and living in fear, worry and anxiety daily, it's nearly impossible to create a healthy, strong, lean body while enduring chronically high cortisol levels. When the body is in a fight or flight state, cortisol is activated to release glucose in the bloodstream for energy. The best thing to do when you feel stressed is get moving! If not, that glucose moves into fat storage if not used otherwise + the food you consume is more likely to be stored as body fat later. Think about it: if your body is perceiving a threat, whether caused by a saber-toothed tiger or a triggering email from a gaslighting colleague, you better believe it's going to hold onto body fat in an effort to keep you alive. Burning fat is just not a priority when your sympathetic nervous system is chronically activated. Eventually, getting to the heart of what is triggering you is essential to cultivate a more resilient response and keep stress low. We truly were meant to live in our parasympathetic state - rest and digest - a majority of the time.
2. Poor sleep. This usually shows up along with stress. During our last peak performance workshop, we went into great detail about the importance of sleep and how body composition, athletic performance, and overall health are negatively impacted with inadequate sleep. In a nutshell, you'll wake up with high blood sugar levels and your hunger hormone, ghrelin, will increase causing intense cravings as your body is searching for energy to keep you awake and functioning.
3. Toxins / impaired liver. The liver is ultimately responsible for fat loss. If your body is constantly bombarded with excess toxins, like alcohol, BPA, pesticides, phthalates, parabens, and other endocrine-disrupting chemicals, your liver will be too busy to prioritize burning fat. In summary, sluggish liver = sluggish fat loss.
4. Inconsistency, impatience. No one - not even us as coaches - likes this one but oftentimes it needs to be called out. Losing fat is simple but it's not always easy. The thing that gets in the way the most is... us! All too often we see people progressing every week but give up because it's not fast or drastic enough. These are the types that rely on motivation from the scale changing instead of practicing discipline and focusing on process instead to see long-term results. Sustainable fat loss is slow and steady + integrated into one's lifestyle and food preferences. If you lose 1 pound a week on average, that's a whopping 12 pounds in 3 months! Time will pass anyway... does it really matter how long it takes?
5. Underestimating caloric intake. This is another tough love one. We can only see so much when reviewing food logs. We can't see bites, licks, and tastes. We can't see logging meals at the end of the day and someone forgetting everything they ate.
6. Chronic under-eating / true metabolic adaptation. On the flipside, if you've been dieting in a strict caloric deficit or under-eating for years, it's possible that the body no longer responds to a deficit and instead holds on to fat for dear life while breaking down muscle tissue for fuel which is more expensive to maintain. Yes, this is a real thing and we see it most often in women. Those who have been doing it for years may benefit from eating at maintenance (burning the same amount of calories consumed) or in a surplus (eating more calories than burned) for many months if not years while focusing on strength training to re-calibrate the body and re-balance hormones before attempting another caloric deficit. The time spent in a deficit throughout one's life should be very small!
7. Grossly over-estimated calorie and macronutrient goals from an online calculator or inexperienced coach. Most calculators tell you that you're burning way more calories than you really are, likely for liability reasons. Due to the sedentary lifestyle and low muscle mass of most modern humans, our collective metabolism or BMR (basal metabolic rate) is very low. This is one of the many reasons we integrate strength training into our programming - so you can eat more food and protect your bones well into old age!
8. In a co-dependent relationship with the scale. Here's the cycle we see: relying on the scale only as progress, freaking out when seeing weight fluctuate from strength training or anything else causing temporary water retention, responding with under-eating which compromises muscle gains and flatlines metabolism, thus ultimately stalling changes in body composition.
9. Excess cardio. Hyper focusing on cardio instead of strength training for years can lead to sarcopenia (muscle loss especially after age 30) which reduces metabolism and calories burned daily, so even if you're eating the same exact amount of food as years prior, it stores as body fat since you don't have as much muscle mass to utilize those calories. Here's the fun part about building type II muscle fiber from progressive strength training (what we teach): although it takes time to build, it's very difficult to "lose" it! To see change in the body, lifting 3 times a week is the industry standard so long as you are consuming enough protein and fueling properly. But once you build enough muscle to your liking, you can maintain lifting 2 times a week and even take longer breaks without losing much muscle mass or strength.
10. Prolonged fasting and skipping meals. This goes back to #1. For men, some can get by just fine with fasting as this can create laser focus and calm through parasympathetic nervous system activation. For pre-menopausal women, fasting and skipping meals turns on all the red alert emergency signals in the body, putting you into an excessively stressed state, with a cascade of negative effects discussed in #1.
Did any of these resonate with you? Hit reply and let us know if you're struggling and want some help! You don't have to do it alone 💚
Shannon Morse & Lisa Kirby | Creators of Awaken Your Nutrition @thegreendoor.life | thegreendoorlife.com
P.S. Check out our nutrition master class if you're new and want to learn what we're about 💚.
P.S. If you're local to the Bay Area or in town this week, check out our in-person Meal Prep Master Class at 6:00 p.m. on June 23rd in Novato, CA!
We will guide you through every step on exactly how to batch cook by macronutrient so you understand how to prepare an entire week's worth of delicious, balanced, nutritious meals, whether you're cooking for one or have a household to feed.
After our hands-on cooking tutorial, we'll enjoy the family-style dinner that we prepared together + share our e-book with meal plan and shopping list templates.
Space is limited to the first 20 people who RSVP. We only have 5 spots left! Please click the purchase button below to save your spot.
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