So, you’ve started on a weight-loss journey, and you’ve done your research: read books by trusted sources, consulted blogs by leading thinkers, and calibrated your daily routine accordingly. You’re going slow and steady, because you know crash diets usually result in rebound weight gain. You’re eating whole foods and performing a sustainable cardio routine. You’re committed and consistent, and, according to what you hear around the office and at family gatherings, a similar approach worked for colleagues and your Aunt Carla.
Yet you’re not reaching your weight-loss goals.
What gives?
With weight loss, as with so many things, the reason is highly individualized — there are a lot of factors tied to your unique physical, mental, and emotional status that could either stall or spur your progress.
Take, for example, blood-sugar regulation. High blood-sugar and insulin levels wreak havoc on weight-loss efforts, but not everyone responds in the same way to the same foods.
In 2015 the journal Cell published a study that tracked the effects of 46,000 meals on blood-sugar levels in 800 participants and found an astonishing range of responses to identical foods. This is why the nutrition guidelines that helped Aunt Carla manage her blood sugar may not work for you.
Or take exercise. Functional-medicine nutritionist Cindi Lockhart, RDN, LD, IFNCP, says her clients often ramp up their exercise regimens when their weight-loss efforts stall — but for some, this slows weight loss even more. Aggressive workouts stress the body, she explains, and if stress is one reason you have trouble losing weight, more of this type of exercise can work against you.
Such cruel paradoxes abound. “Clients will contact me, asking, ‘When will I lose weight?’” says Lockhart. “But the truth is, we don’t know when that switch will turn on. It depends on how long the underlying problems have been going on.”
If you’re on a weight-loss journey and the numbers on the scale aren’t budging, don’t beat yourself up. There are a lot of factors at play beyond good nutrition and exercise that often get short shrift, including these nine.
Missing Link No. 1: Adequate Sleep
If you’re eating well and exercising during the day, your problem might be occurring at night. Sufficient, high-quality sleep is essential for weight loss.
What’s enough sleep? Most experts agree that seven to eight hours nightly is adequate. And going to sleep at approximately the same time each night is important, since our bodily rhythms need to stay in sync to get the deep rest we need. (For more on synchronizing circadian rhythms, see “Get in Sync.”)
When you’re even slightly sleep deprived, you tend to feel hungrier. This is partly because the hormones ghrelin and leptin become dysregulated, which increases appetite and decreases satiety, explains integrative physician Akil Palanisamy, MD, author of The Paleovedic Diet. Just one night of sleep deprivation can trigger this hormone imbalance, according to a 2008 study in the Journal of Sleep Research.
So, when we’re short on sleep, we tend to eat more (often late at night) and feel less satisfied by what we eat — and then we eat even more. In addition, the blood-sugar crashes that follow late-night eating can interfere with sleep and the cycle repeats itself, notes functional-medicine practitioner Leo Galland, MD, author of The Fat Resistance Diet.
The damage caused by one night of insufficient sleep doesn’t stop there: A 2016 Journal of Sleep Research report found that a night of partial sleep impairs insulin sensitivity, which Palanisamy notes has been shown to cause “fat storage and weight gain.”
“All roads end in sleep,” says exercise physiologist and strength-and-conditioning coach Pat Davidson, PhD. “Sleep is an enormous factor in body composition.”
Action Plan
Make sleep as high a priority as good nutrition and exercise. And eat your main meal before 3 p.m., advises Palanisamy. A 2013 study in Obesity found that those who ate their largest meals earlier in the day lost significantly more weight than those who ate big evening meals — even when total caloric intake and all other behaviors were the same.
Missing Link No. 2: Stress Management and Relaxation
Chronic stress is another archenemy of healthy weight loss. Not only can it disrupt sleep, but it also triggers a hormonal cascade that prompts the body to store fat.
When we’re in fight-or-flight mode, the adrenal glands pump out cortisol, signaling the liver to release glucose into the bloodstream. Our prehistoric ancestors would’ve used that glucose to deal with an imminent threat, such as fleeing a tiger on the savannah. But few stress experiences today are followed by a bout of vigorous exercise that burns off glucose. (If you did try to fight or flee your boss during a stressful meeting, you might successfully manage your glucose but put your job in jeopardy.)
Stress elevates cortisol and blood-glucose levels — and that triggers the release of insulin, which promotes fat storage. Over weeks and months of chronic stress, the effects add up.
And then there’s stress eating. A 2007 study in Psychoneuroendocrinology linked high cortisol reactivity with increased food intake during stressful times.
Action Plan
Some stressors — parenting a newborn or caring for a sick parent, for instance — can’t be avoided. But when weight loss is a goal, make any small changes you can to help reduce stress: Scale back the number of commitments on your calendar, schedule a monthly massage if you can afford it, or just set aside a couple of hours weekly for yourself, even if all you plan to do is solve a crossword puzzle.
Once you reduce your everyday stress, says Davidson, you can add in the healthy stress of exercise, which will help you lose weight. And when you’re able to exercise, you will be better fortified against the inevitable daily stressors when they do crop up.
As for the demands you can’t change, “find what helps you step back, look at what’s going on, and change how you think about it,” suggests Galland. Remembering that “this too shall pass” almost always helps put difficult times in perspective.
Missing Link No. 3: An Individual’s Carb Tolerance
Low-carb regimens, such as the paleo and ketogenic diets, help many people lose weight. Others lose weight easily with high-carb, high-fiber vegan diets. But some folks have tried one, or both, or some combination of the two and still found little success.
“One thing that has been lost in the low-carb-versus-high-carb battle is that these diets work for different people in different circumstances,” says paleo-nutrition expert Robb Wolf, author of Wired to Eat.
How can a specific diet be so successful for some and ruinous for others?
There are two primary reasons. First, successful weight loss depends on steady blood sugar, and research shows that individuals can have wildly different blood-sugar responses to the same foods. Some people have to limit all carbohydrates just to keep blood sugar stable; others can tolerate healthy carbs from unprocessed whole-food sources; and a few can eat pretty much anything without boarding the blood-sugar roller coaster.
The second reason is satiety. Weight loss requires consuming less energy than you expend, but calorie restriction alone almost always backfires. It puts your metabolism into starvation mode, which causes your body to cling to every last calorie.
The key is figuring out which healthy, whole-food meals satisfy you while keeping blood sugar steady, says Wolf. These may be low-carb paleo or high-fiber vegan. Find the foods that work with your metabolism and keep you feeling more balanced.
Action Plan
You can tell a lot about your blood-sugar response to particular foods by how you feel. If you feel tired right after you eat something, that’s a good indication of a blood-sugar spike and crash.
For precise feedback, use at-home blood-glucose testing, which measures your exact blood-sugar response. These monitors are relatively inexpensive and easy to use, says Wolf, and despite the commitment (and skin prick) of testing blood-sugar levels after each meal, many of his clients enjoy the practice. It gives instant biofeedback on certain foods and food combinations, and it fosters healthy motivation: Breakfast sent my blood sugar higher than I’d like. Can I do better at lunch?