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Why is weight loss so slow? Slow fat loss is a significant mental barrier for many women over 35.
Women have generally done several diets by the time they come work with me in my 6-month weight loss coaching program and have been conditioned to expect fast weight loss.
If they aren't seeing fast weight loss, then they automatically equate that to nothing's working and look for excuses to quit.
But the truth is that many of their previous diet attempts were doing diets that women over 35 could never sustainable until they're 85 years old.
Sure you can lose weight fast following some bogus diet plan like Optavia as an example for a few weeks, however, the cost of that is you cannot sustain that diet plan and then you regain the weight later on.
If you want weight loss that never comes back that's maintainable and sustainable, then you need to learn what responsible weight loss looks like and how to do that in a way that doesn't make you miserable.
Our brains will always look for reasons to quit weight loss. But what does quitting do for you anyway? How does quitting weight loss solve the problem for you?
The only thing quitting legitimately does is give you relief from whatever you are doing to lose weight. Women often attempt to lose weight by creating suffering and misery. They make things as hard as possible!
If you are losing weight in a way that induces suffering and you are not enjoying it, then of course you will look for reasons to sabotage your weight loss.
I work with my clients to make weight loss easy and enjoyable. Weight loss should ADD to your life and make your life better. Weight loss should not induce suffering.
You have to learn to keep going no matter what in this journey because quitting does nothing. As soon as you allow yourself to believe some stinky thinking that it's not enough and taking too long, you are on a slippery slope.
Unless you change that mindset and are aware of your mindset, your mind will always try to convince you nothing's working and it's taking too long. It's a way individuals sabotage ahead of time to justify quitting because they are scared of failing and are trying to control the outcome.
When you understand your mindset better and what responsible weight loss looks like, this becomes a much easier change.
Listen to the podcast for more details and help on this topic or read the transcript below!
In this Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast Episode, You Will Hear:
- What Responsible Weight Loss Does & Does Not Look Like
- Why Women Over 35 Struggle Mentally With Slow Weight Loss
- The Dangers Of Fast Weight Loss
- What Successful Fat Loss Looks Like
- Why You Need To Be Cautious Of Named Diets
- Biggest Misconception Women Have About Weight Loss
Never Miss An Episode! Subscribe to the Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast on Apple, Stitcher, Spotifyor Amazon Music
Related Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast Episodes
- How I Lost 80 Pounds Walking
- How To Lose Weight Fast
- Why You Self Sabotage
- Restriction Leads To Binging
- Why You Keep Regaining Weight
- Most Dangerous Diet Optavia
- Are You Living In A Diet Prison
- 10 Mindset Shifts To Escape The Diet Prison
Why Weight Loss Is Slow Podcast Transcript
Today I want to talk about a question I get all the time from my clients. I also get it a lot from women who follow me on social media, and it is, how come fat loss is so slow and how can I be okay with slow fat loss?
I really had to stop and think about this question. I have to admit it kind of drives me crazy because when progress is happening like why are we upset that it isn’t more?
And remember, progress happens outside the scale and measurements.
Progress can be you’re feeling better, you have been energy, improved control around food, you’re getting stronger in the gym, you’re feeling better about yourself, you’re showing up for yourself, you’re able to walk farther, your digestion’s better, maybe you’re sleeping better, maybe you’re more consistent with eating balanced meals.
Like progress happens in so many ways and yet, we are so hung up on the scale and how our clothes fit and if we are making progress, how, it isn’t enough.
Quick side note, I had a lovely client come to a call recently and she was telling me how she quit tracking her food for a few weeks because she felt like nothing was working.
Then we looked at her measurements. They were down. We looked at her inBody scan and her body fat percentage was down. Her scale weight was down.
She lost 5 inches around her waist since the beginning of summer!
She realized as I was pointing all this out to her how dumb her thinking was. She even said, I know it’s working. My clothes are fitting better.
I’m wearing smaller jeans. She’s like I can’t believe I let my mind convince me nothing was happening and caused me to quit.
I said even if nothing was happening does it make sense to quit? Like what does sitting around feeling sorry for ourselves even do?
How does quitting solve the problem? I explained to her this is a great lesson that she just went through.
That she needs to trust the process and not listen to her mind when it says crazy things. And I think this is important for all women in their fat loss journey.
You have to learn how to keep going no matter what. As soon as you start to allow yourself to think nothing is working or it’s taking too long or this is too slow, you are teetertottering on the edge of self-sabotage.
It’s a slippery slope and your mind is truly what dictates your behavior. I say this all the time that the critical missing ingredient in weight loss programs is mindset and that is what I work on a lot with my clients because the mind will stop you and convince of you of all kinds of crazy stuff.
So, in this journey, allowing yourself to think this is too slow. I want this to go faster. I need to be at the finish line.
Whatever it is you’re thinking. It really is just an entry point into self-sabotage and a way to justify quitting.
You have to watch out for this. Progress is progress. Stop putting yourself down when you are making progress. Change takes time. New habits take time.
So, how come fat loss is so slow and how can I be okay with slow fat loss?
As someone who lost 80 pounds in 2009, I was thinking about this question and asking myself what was I thinking about when I was losing my 80 pounds?
And honestly, I never really thought about slow fat loss. I think I was in such a place where I had hit rock bottom in my life that I didn’t like how I felt.
When I began losing my weight, I didn’t focus on, oh, this is going to take forever. This is so slow. This is going to take 18 months, blah, blah, blah.
I was in such a bad place mentally and emotionally and didn’t like how I felt that I just knew anything I did was better than this.
When I started my journey, I started walking. The walking made me feel so much better. I could feel myself getting stronger and having more energy.
I was sleeping better and just had a better outlook and attitude as a result of feeling better.
After a long time of just walking every day, I knew I wanted to work on my food if I wanted to lose some weight and get stronger and feel better about myself.
I told myself I’m going to figure this out no matter what it takes.
And when I said I’m going to figure this out no matter what it takes, I meant I’m going to figure this out and I’m going to get my life together and find what makes me happy.
I couldn’t keep being overweight and ashamed of my body and letting it hold me back from doing the things I wanted to do and put myself out there more. I also knew I was done doing any type of diet with a name.
Doing caffeine pills, trying to starve myself, trying to cut every single food that I enjoyed eating, bootcamp workouts that were too hard for me to do because I was too overweight and out of shape, shakes as meal replacements, meal replacement foods.
I was just done with all that. I knew there had to be an easier way and there was.
Every day, I was like I’m going to figure this out and I stuck with that mindset, and it helped.
I knew walking made me feel so good, so I kept focusing on all those tiny ways like the walking that made me feel better.
So, I thought to myself if so many women are freaking out about how slow it is to lose body fat, then we need to think about why we have to become okay with slow weight loss.
I believe the first problem women run into is they do not know what slow weight loss is and that it is normal. Women have usually done a lot of diets where they have lost weight really fast.
You have to think about how you have been taught and conditioned with those dieting attempts.
Usually, you’ve done some kind of diet with a name where you are eating very little food or completely changing the types of foods you eat or maybe even replacing your meals with shakes and meal replacements.
Those type of diets will get you results. You will lose weight.
It actually drives me crazy when women say I was successful on xyz diet name. You were not successful if the diet did not teach you how to eat so you could sustain weight loss. What are you going to do?
Eat entirely different foods the rest of your life until you’re 85 years old to keep weight off? Just eat meal replacements and shakes?
Like we have to reconcile that those diets were not successful. Yes, you lost weight.
But you couldn’t keep it off until you were 85 years old. It wasn’t sustainable. How you eat to lose weight, is how you eat to maintain weight loss.
That means we need to lose weight responsibly and stop taking shortcuts to lose weight as quickly as possible only to gain it back.
Responsible weight loss is the goal. Sustainable until you are 85 years old is the goal!
A lot of women who are trying to lose weight don’t like how they feel. They immediately jump on a name diet because that’s going to solve everything.
And so they starve themselves, they punish themselves cutting out all the less nutrient dense foods, they barely eat every day, they do meal replacements and shakes.
Sometimes they workout excessively like 2 hours a day. Now that is just dumb and let me tell you why.
If you’re listening, you may be thinking maybe I should barely eat and exercise 2 hours a day. Well, can you keep up with that?
Can you do that until you’re 85 years old? If not, it’s dumb.
I know a lof of women think they can do a diet temporarily then gradually bring foods back into their diet.
I know this because women make these comments on my social media videos all the time. It doesn’t work like that.
How you were eating before is what led to you being overweight. You’re not going to magically know how to eat those foods you cut out while following some name diet.
This is the biggest misconception I think women have.
You have to learn how to eat while losing weight. Like what are you going to do? Stop making all the meals you’ve been making for your family for the last 30 years?
Aren’t you going to miss them? Isn’t your family going to miss them? Wouldn’t it make more sense to learn how to better balance the meals you love so they align with you getting healthier and leaner?
How to make the meals you enjoy to include more protein and fiber so you feel fuller and feel better so you can avoid having snack attacks in the afternoon and evening?
After you lose weight, you don’t want to have to figure out, well now what do I eat? If I’ve been starving and over exercising and I can’t sustain that for the rest of my life the last place I ever want to try to figure that out is after I’ve lost weight.
That’s the wrong time to figure it out because you don’t have any motivation. Just think about it.
When you lose a bunch of weight, how many times have you lost weight with a diet you know you cannot sustain until you’re 85 years old?
But you just think, if I get the weight off, I’ll just ever gain it back. But then the second you don’t have any more weight to lose, you don’t have any motivation whatsoever to keep doing what you’re doing because you hate what you’re doing. It’s misery.
You were living in a diet prison to get this weight off and you hate it. Now that the weight’s off, you just want a break and your brain’s like, let’s just go eat the things we used to eat.
Let’s do the things we used to do for a break.
Then the second you reintroduce everything, your brain begins to think this is the way you’re supposed to eat. This is how you should be eating.
This feels so much better than what you were doing in the diet prison.
And your brain will keep reminding you that you should just keep eating this way. And then you start gaining weight and then you’re like oh my god how am I going to stop this.
If the only answer to your weight loss it to go back to torture and extreme things, it gets harder and harder for you to make yourself do it again.
That’s why so many women get caught in the cycle of dieting and restricting and then over indulging and binging and gaining weight.
The reason I’m telling you this is because you have so many diet attempts like this that you have done over the course of your life where you have had these big losses on the scale rapidly and then your brain starts to think that’s how fast weight loss should go.
So the very first thing you must understand is what is responsible weight loss looks like.
Responsible weight loss is going to be approximately ½ pound to 1 pound a week. If you have more than 50 pounds to lose, it could be at 1.5 to 2 pounds per week.
Several of my clients have less than 30 pounds to lose and want a 2 pound a week weight loss.
Do you know what a 2-pound weight loss means? That means you need to be in a 1,000-calorie deficit a day or 7,000 calories consumed less per week.
If you eat 2,000 calories a day at maintenance, now you would have to eat 1,000 calories as day to see a 2-pound loss per week. If you are already leaner, that is not responsible weight loss.
A ½ pound to 1 pound a week is 250 calories to 500 calories less per day. That is responsible weight loss. Quit defining that as slow. That is not slow, that is responsible.
When you tell yourself I’m losing weight but it’s too slow, you feel like crap. It doesn’t make you feel amazing!
You’ve got to tell yourself instead, this is called responsible weight loss.
This is sustainable weight loss. This is the kind of weight loss that’s going to stay off until I’m 85 years old.
When someone goes into a 2-pound weight loss per week, they’re really going into what I call dangerous weight loss territory because the faster the pounds are coming off, the more you’re probably losing muscle mass and bone density.
The point of losing weight is to lose body fat. A major consequence of fast weight loss is you lose a lot of muscle mass and bone density.
Do you want to be a frail grandma at 65 who falls, breaks a hip and can never play with her grandkids? Well, you need muscle and bone density then.
Did you know that 50% of women over the age of 65 who fall and break a hip die or end up in a nursing home? Yeah… astounding statistic.
When I lost my 80 pounds, it was over the course of 18 months, but I did not know I needed to be prioritizing protein and strength training.
I did a lot of cardio while I was losing my weight and I actually developed osteopenia which is weak bones a few years after I lost weight.
I started having all these stress fractures and was diagnosed with osteopenia.
That’s when I began getting more serious about strength training and thank god today I don’t have osteopenia anymore because I have reversed that with all my strength training.
But this is what happens to women.
This is a huge negative consequence of losing weight too quickly. You are losing bone density and muscle. When you are losing 2 pounds a week or more, you are inviting muscle mass loss and bone loss.
A lot of women know this, but struggle to accept this. The bottom line is it’s taken you years and decades to get out of shape. It’s going to take time to get in shape.
So you want to start normalizing responsible fat loss vs fast weight loss. Remember the goal of weight loss is to lose body fat. Not lose a bunch of muscle and bone mass.
Also, when you’re losing over 2 pounds a week you are setting yourself up for disordered eating patterns.
I just stitched a video on my Instagram last week of a woman doing carnivore and saying she’s having aversions to meat and didn’t know what to do about it.
Food aversions are a direct result of restricting foods. It’s a disordered eating pattern from doing a whacky diet and losing weight irresponsibly.
Some individuals can have food aversions for years or their entire life. You don’t want that. And the last thing you want to have are food aversions from protein.
Restricting foods also makes you more prone to binging and overeating. I’ve discussed this topic many times on this podcast.
If you do an extreme diet or extreme methods with your diet then you will swing in the other direction of binging and overeating. It’s going from one extreme to the other extreme. You want to be losing weight in the middle. Something that’s doable. Something that helps you create a life that you want to live and that feels good for you.
You should be able to eat with your family. You should be able to go out to a restaurant and on vacation and to friends house. You should be able to have holidays and bake and enjoy foods you love.
A big part of responsible weight loss is being able to enjoy what you’re doing to lose weight. If your weight loss plan causes suffering for you, you’re doing it wrong.
Weight loss should be enhancing your life. Make your life better and easier.
I noticed this with a client recently who had a busy time and struggled getting back on track and the reason she struggled was because she was making it harder than it needed to be.
She was like I needed to meal prep all these recipes and I really enjoy them, but I was just too busy. And I told her, you don’t need to meal prep anything. Your breakfast could literally be two yogurts and a piece of fruit. Protein and fiber. Breakfast done.
Go to a convenience store or the grocery store on the way to work to get it and you never had to step foot in the kitchen.
She was making it hard because that is what we do and the hard was creating suffering for her and making it harder for her to get back on track.
Everyone thinks everything should be complicated and hard. The thinking is most of the problem. Nutrition can be very simple, but a lot of approach it with this mindset of it needing to be hard and to induce suffering in our lives.
If we aren’t suffering, we aren’t reaching the goal.
Your plan should help make your life easier. It should improve your relationship with food. So many women I work with are afraid of foods.
They only used to restricting foods and then binging on foods. They’re either eating like a jerk or starving themselves.
When we fix these things along with the thinking, food is much easier to manage and then weight loss is easier too because we’re taking away the one thing that’s preventing you from losing the weight, which is the misery and suffering.
That’s why I say lose weight responsibly. Fast weight loss requires misery and suffering. Starving yourself and doing things you could never sustain.
So, you must accept that slow is how you sustain weight loss until you’re 85 years old and that slow is responsible weight loss.
Next is I think a lot of women think they are going to feel as bad and miserable as they do on day one all the way up until they lose weight.
They want fast weight loss because they want to get out of feeling bad and miserable as soon as possible.
When a lot of people lose weight, they are at a rock bottom where the weight of being overweight weighs them down so heavily.
Then they want to lose weight fast because they think, until I reach my goal weight, I’m not going to feel any better. And that right there is the problem.
Think of it this way… if I could wave a magic wand and you lost 5 pounds today, would you feel a little better than you do in this moment? Most of you would say well, yeah.
If you’re miserable today, in 5 pounds, you would at least be headed in the right direction.
You might be thinking how far you still have to go, but you can also think at least I’ve started and least I’m already beginning to feel better. I’m a little bit on a roll.
Every little milestone, you need to remind yourself that you’re feeling better and better and better. It compounds over time and remember I said it’s not just the scale where progress is made.
You really have to train yourself to look for where progress is happening outside the scale.
If progress is happening, you are beginning to feel a little better, a little stronger, a little more in control, more motivated, a little more proud, things are getting easier.
When you start forcing yourself to really recognize where you’re feeling better and where progress is happening, you’re not in a rush to get to the end because now the end doesn’t represent when you get to feel happy and better.
You begin noticing, a lot of moments between now and when you reach you goal where you can feel better about yourself.
This question about how to get okay with slow weight loss is really more about how do I recognize when I’m beginning to feel better?
How do I recognize that I’m making progress and on the right track?
You only want to rush things that you hate. It’s like sitting in traffic. It feels like it takes forever. You want to get home because sitting in traffic isn’t fun.
I don’t want you losing weight that feels like you’re sitting in traffic and you’re just counting down the days until you can get off this.
Weight loss should be more like a scenic road trip. You know it’s going to take some time, but you’ve got good scenery to look at, good music and podcasts and you’re just enjoying the ride.
When you learn to lose weight that way, you’re no longer in a big rush to get to the finish line.
What this means for you is that you need to create a way of eating and a life for you that’s enjoyable, easier and sustainable. That means you need to take the time upfront to work on the habits and mindsets that support that.
If you are losing at a slower pace, you are solidifying your habits and mindset, so you don’t have to worry about regaining weight. You lock in your habits upfront.
I talk about this all the time… build the foundation of your house before putting the walls up.
When you’re doing it this way, you don’t have to give up every food you enjoy to lose weight. You don’t have to overexercise to lose weight.
You don’t have to do elaborate meal prepping to lose weight. Like I said before, breakfast could be two yogurts and a fruit.
You can make it easy, and I recommend you make it easy with things you like. That where your work is… is creating those foundational habits.
The benefit is you won’t regain the weight if you do the work to have those really good habits so when weight loss is slow I want you to remind yourself habits. Habits, habits, habits.
The goal is to have healthy habits you can do forever. The goal is sustainable habits, so weight never comes back.
Because the tradeoff is doing a whacky diet that you could never sustain until you’re 85 years old then all the weight comes back and then you’re starting over.
The last thing I’m going to remind you of is to be honest with yourself in this journey. I have seen some interesting behaviors from clients over the last 11 years that I’ve seen.
Sometimes people think they’re doing the weight loss thing but they’re not really doing it. They’re kind of sort of doing it.
Let’s say you’re working on a calorie deficit for 12 weeks and you’re giving a C effort and then complaining why weight loss is so slow or why you didn’t get fantastic results.
If you are going to be in a caloric deficit for 12 weeks (and remember we only stay in a caloric deficit for a short timeframe unless you have a lot of weight to lose), you must put in the effort otherwise don’t expect results.
I see some women who think they can get away with putting in a C effort for those 12 weeks then feeling disappointed.
For example, let’s say you’re eyeballing a lot of foods to plug into your food tracking app, and you’re not using a food scale to weigh and measure foods in grams, there’s a 40% chance the calories you reporting are off.
Then you don’t really know how close your average calories are to your target deficit. If you’re not hitting your protein goal within your average calories, you are making it more likely that you will lose muscle not body fat.
If you’re not moving your body and trying to get steps or do some form of movement daily, you’re not doing everything you can.
If you’re going out to dinner 5 times a week while trying to be in a deficit, you’re not taking the goal as serious as you can.
This is why we are not in caloric deficits all the time because there are some short-term sacrifices you need to make especially if you are already leaner. When you have more weight to lose, you can get away with a lot more stuff guys.
But when you’re already leaner you just won’t be able to get away with winging a calorie deficit. This is why we plan a deficit and keep it a short timeframe.
We don’t stay in them forever or until we get the body of our dreams. You do need to make some short-term sacrifices while in that planned deficit and if you’re only giving it a C effort then we can’t really complain how slow weight loss is.
I talked about making things easier today with how you eat. Repeat meals. Shamelessly take shortcuts by buying pre-made meals or ingredients that are already ready for you at the grocery store.
I learned recently that several clients didn’t know they could make protein oatmeal in the microwave.
A lot of people think they can only do instant oatmeal in the microwave and that is not true. I use quick oats. It’s fast, easy, takes one minute to make my breakfast. I even have a blog post with my chocolate protein oatmeal and the instructions say how to make it in the microwave in 1 minute.
It’s what I make nearly every single morning. Who has time to think about what they’re eating for every meal every day? That is exhausting and will make weight loss harder for you.
Repeating meals, having a routine around meals while it feels rigid, it’s actually freeing because it makes your life easier. It frees you up from having to think about food all the time.
When I’m in a deficit, I eat protein oatmeal for breakfast. When I’m not in a deficit, I eat protein oatmeal for breakfast. In the deficit, the amount of oats and flax and fruits just slightly decreases. That is the only difference.
I enjoy my protein oatmeal, I look forward to it, it fills me up and it’s helped me keep my cholesterol down because I have terrible genetics with high cholesterol and heart disease.
But that is what you need to work on is finding what you enjoy that checks the boxes for your medical conditions and helps you hit your nutrients with protein and fiber.
So, yes sometimes weight loss is slower because you have to spend the time upfront to figure that kind of stuff up.
But once you do figure it out, your life is easy. Food is easy. Your way of eating is sustainable and your able to lose weight responsibly.
But watch out for thinking you should have results when you are kind of sort of doing things. You do not have to be perfect day in and day out.
But you do need to be consistent and certain things do need to be more attended to in a deficit especially if you are already leaner. Do not confuse weight loss being slow and you giving a C effort… mmmk?
If you would like to lose weight responsibly, setup a free 30-minute weight loss consultation with me and we can discuss your responsible weight loss plan. The link is in the show notes. I’ll talk to you soon ladies!
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