 Hey gang, welcome here if you have just somehow stumbled upon me. Who won the lottery? So glad you're here. If you are a regular or you've been here before, welcome back. Can we get serious now? I get a lot of people coming to me to ask me, why aren't I losing weight? Frankly, I find the whole thing a little frustrating because I can't figure it out. You know, my diet is solid. I'm exercising. I'm sleeping at the right times. I'm drinking a ton of water. I can't drop the pounds. Please refer to last week's video on how to lose three inches in three days because gut bacteria is talked about in that video and that is one of the main drivers why people don't lose weight. But here are seven unexpected reasons you might not be losing weight. Reason number one, mindset. What is your entire attitude on this whole process? Don't put me down for cardio. What are you doing? I was on full running. First of all, get clear on why you want to lose weight. Is it because of how you're perceived by other people? Because if you're basing your reason of wanting to lose weight on how other people see you, it's going to be far more of a struggle than it should be. Do you notice yourself slipping up one day and just thinking, ah, I messed up. Forget it. And then you've slipped up the whole rest of the day and the next day and the next day and it's like a slippery slope. Who cares if you slip up? All you need is 80-20. 80-20 will make your weight loss happen. You don't have to be 100% strict and I really just like that because the 100% strict method. I'm only eating foods with us and 30% calories from that. Yeah, I mean it can work but it's not going to be a good time and I don't know about you but to me, if it's not a good time, bye. It's a harsh world. Creating weight loss success, although it has a lot to do with what you do and what you don't do obviously, think about the why behind the choices that you make. What is the why behind the choice to lose weight and what is the why behind the choice to slip up when and if you do slip up? What's the why behind why you don't want to get started right back up again? What's the why behind making it a whole slippery slope of avalanche slip up rather than just, oh you know what, I had a cookie. It was great. You know, I just grab a journal, grab a pen or do some meditating, do some thinking, just think about it and get clear on it because that is the first step in weight loss. Number two, genes. There is a huge, huge misconception that genes run the show. Surveys has. Yes, we are born with genes but genes are light switches. We can turn them on or off based on our internal and external environments. The internal environment being what you're eating, what you're drinking but also in here. What are you taking in, in your mind? How is your mind working? What is the internal environment in there? Please refer to step one. But yeah, I do get clients that say, oh well, my parents were fat. You know, I was a really heavy set kid. I'm just destined to be overweight because my whole family's overweight. I'm not going to lie, it will be a little bit more difficult for you as opposed to the other person who didn't have the genes for weight gain. But you can shut those off. If you want more info about that, please comment below and I would be more than happy to help you out there. And just some general tips when it comes to the gene front. If you are one of these people that do have the weight gain genes, limit empty calories, especially sugar. Try a lower carb, higher protein diet and always, always lots of volume with greens and veggies. You don't have to portion control and count calories on anything when it comes to greens and veggies. Load up on those. Those are seriously going to help you. And on the other hand, if you're on the other side of that scale where you're a really slight skinny person and you kind of see yourself as skinny, fat or you just can't put on weight or muscle, you need to increase your protein consumption and focus your fitness on lifting heavy weights and high intensity interval training. That will help burn off the fat and build the muscle up on your body. Three, you're too consistent. I always, always tell people consistency is key and it is, but are you using consistency in the manner where you're doing the same things day in and day out all the time? I'm reliving the same day over and over. Because our bodies are really, really smart and the metabolism wants to make itself as efficient as possible. So say you've lost a lot of weight doing steady state cardio over a very long period of time, you are going to plateau and you will stop losing weight because your body will adapt to that. So you really do need to change things up. I love going for long walks. That's how I spend time with the people that I love. But you really do need to keep your body guessing and switch up your routine. It's also way more interesting that way. You need to switch up what you're doing about once every four weeks. If you're lifting weights in the gym, switch up the weights or the routine once every four weeks and that'll make sure your body keeps guessing. If you've been doing steady state cardio day in and day out for a really long time, throw in a high intensity interval session once or twice a week and seriously watch that weight drop off. Are you doing three sets of 15 for everything? Try doing one set to absolute failure of a heavy enough weight where you can only do about 10 reps max. Watch that muscle build and the fat come off. Working out too much is number four. All exercises have some negative effects that are generally outweighed by the positive effects of exercise, but without proper recovery, these negative effects are going to pile up and then you're in trouble. Regular, intense, focused exercise really does tax the body's nervous system and we need an appropriate balance of working in, cultivating energy and rest to working out, spending energy. If we don't have an appropriate balance of conserving energy and giving ourselves energy and rest, you're going to end up in a plateau and you're not going to be able to continue losing weight. I have seen an athlete that I was training, unable to lose any more fat for some reason after doing a bulk. As soon as I got them to stop exercising entirely, this might not be right for you. There's no one size fits all. If you need help, comment below. But I got them to stop exercising completely for four days in a row and they leaned right up because the body thinks, oh, okay, I can relax now and it starts repairing the systems and being more efficient at getting that fat moving through the body. How do you know? Pay attention to how you feel. Is your sleep becoming disturbed? Are you chronically fatigued? Are you going back to the gym while you're still sore? Because the best rule of thumb to follow is to not go to the gym if you are still sore from your previous workout. I don't care how many days you have to wait in between. Wait those days in between. Think about it, do you take time to rest? And when you're resting, are you constantly on your phone? Rest really does mean resting the mind as well. If you want to see the most emaciated people, go check out where they give the bar exam. So just lower the training volume or intensity until you feel strong again in body and mind. Five, eating too little, not eating enough. My God, this whole calories in, calories out thing, it's really starting to piss me off, I'm sorry. But yes, calories in to calories out, you will lose fat if you are in a caloric deficit. If you are burning more calories than you are ingesting, you're going to lose fat. That's not necessarily going to be just fat though. You will be dropping weight, but you can easily drop muscle doing that. One of the best ways to lose the harder muscle that you're trying to gain is to keep yourself in too much of a caloric deficit for too long. Make sure you allow yourself at least one higher calorie day once a week. You can indulge and eat over in a surplus the amount of calories that you're burning about once a week. That's not going to be a problem. That's why you see all these people having cheat meals, cheat days. It's okay and I guarantee your body's going to thank you for it. Just don't let it be a binge. Eating too little absolutely sabotages your metabolism. Your metabolism is going to slow to a crawl without enough food slash fuel to keep that fire burning. Not to mention you might be throwing off your hunger and satiation signaling hormones and then you're going to be overeating too much as well. In the end, there is something to be said for fasted cardio or fasted workouts. Please, please be careful with that and only do that if it feels good to you. Adrenal fatigue can screw up a lot. Adrenal exhaustion is extremely difficult to recover from so don't allow yourself to get to that state for weight loss. Being fueled with enough calories and protein an hour or two before a workout will seriously help you perform at a higher level. If you're trying to gain muscle, you need the food. Your body can't put on muscle if you're not feeding it enough. If you're burning way more than you're putting in where is your body going to create the muscle from? Because our bodies create themselves with what we put in our mats. Lifestyle number six, chronic stress can keep your body from growing stronger and or shedding weight because it will unbalance your hormonal system. Your hormones are what drives weight loss and if you are way too stressed, your hormones are gonna be all out of whack and therefore, so is how your body builds muscle or drops fat. If you have a difficult mentally taxing job that keeps you really busy from Monday to Friday and let's just say you have to get up to get the train at six, you're not getting home till six p.m. So you're sacrificing sleep to get up at four so you can bust a workout in otherwise you wouldn't have time or you're getting home at six, you're tired but you're working out right before bed to cram it in there. That's gonna send you backwards. You're going to plateau and you will end up with adrenal fatigue and subsequent adrenal exhaustion. Be nice to yourself. Work out when you have the energy to and if you can't take a look at what other changes you can make in your lifestyle to allow for that. Your health is a non-negotiable. You will have nothing else as good as it could ever be in life without enough health to properly enjoy it. So please, please make your health a non-negotiable. If you are sacrificing health for dollars, you will need to spend those dollars on your health later. So please give your health a fair shot. And number seven, one that I struggled with during my weight loss journey, your friends. I love all of my friends. They're fantastic. But are you hanging out with people in a way that is going to help you reach your goals or not? I remember when I started into this, one thing I started to do was to ask a friend, hey, instead of going for drinks, do you want to go for a walk? Do you want to go for a hike? Do you want to check out a yoga class together? Do you want to be gym buddies? Maybe it'll be fun to cook together, prepare food together, meal prep together. If your friends are all the gang that likes to go for drinks, go to eat out a lot, just see if you can try to get them to meet you halfway a little bit because that's going to add to your happiness and lower your stress level as well in the end. It is so, so important to surround yourself with like-minded people. If you find that you have grown in a direction from your friends where you're no longer like-minded in the health and fitness aspect, go to other circles of places, check out a yoga studio, check out a gym, make some friends, check out meetup.com. I'm not saying at all to dump in with your friends, but make some new friends that are in alignment with the lifestyle that you truly do want to live and it makes an amazing difference in your happiness level overall. So those are my seven unexpected reasons why you might not be losing weight. 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