Why Working Out Alone Will Not Make You Drop the Weight
Sometimes people think that if you're really active, you'll lose weight. Here's 5 reasons why it needs to be more than just that.
So a big question I often see with people that want to drop weight is "I work out x times each week. Why am I not losing weight?"
This depends on so many factors, it makes sense why it might be hard to see any change on the scale.
First, what are you doing to work out? Strength training, while super important, doesn't last long enough to burn too many calories initially during your session, and while it may help you burn some calories after your workout, it's almost impossible to know how much, in order to factor it into your calorie defecit needed to lose weight.
Second, how much cardio are you doing each day? Whether it's walking, running, working on your feet, moving somehow, those activities, multiplied by how many minutes/hours you're doing them is going to be the bulk of activity-burned calories.
Third, what are you eating? Is it more than you're supposed to and it is counteracting your workout efforts? They say you can't exercise out a bad diet. Figure out how many calories you're supposed to eat in a day, subtract 500 and that'll make you lose one pound each week, before exercise. Lots and lots of science supports this method.
Fourth, are you only using the scale to track progress, or have you taken your measurements too? If you're working out using strength training, you may be putting on muscle, which from a weight and mass stance, will not look like weight loss at first. Take your measurements from you arms, legs, midsection, hips and chest and track the changes there. These are the changes that make you look good, not a number that can be skewed by drinking something as harmless as water.
Which brings me to fifth, water weight. This concept is so frustrating sometimes, but it is affected by of course, drinking water, which we all should do a lot of, eating salty items, working out to the point where we might have some muscle aches, normal, cyclic hormone changes, even the weather, medication and lifestyle changes. So if all that, and even more factors than one at a time, cause fluctuations in weight, definitely use something other than the scale to track your progress.
How many of you have been frustrated by a good workout, only to see the scale not change, or even go up? Oh yeah, we have all been there! But keep going, you got this.