Achieving lasting weight loss can be like searching for the holy grail – you want it! You know that if you get it life will be better but you get exhausted trying to achieve it.  If you’ve been trying to lose weight and get frustrated by your weight loss efforts this article is for you.

I want to break down why this is happening.

Day after day, I connect with women who tell me that they’re doing all of the right things and yet not getting any kind of weight loss result. There are a few key areas that you either just don’t know enough about, or you’re blind to your own behavior.

Here are 7 common reasons you’re not losing weight:

1. You eat too much take out or restaurant food

Unfortunately, even though it’s fun to go out and socialize, restaurant food will completely derail you your weight loss efforts. I know sometimes life is busy and we don’t get the chance to make dinner at home, but eating out often means you are simply taking in way too much excess fat (and eating super big portions).

That’s how restaurants make food taste so good – extra fat, extra sodium. If you start to decrease the frequency that you eat out and start cooking more at home, you’re going to see a difference in your waistline.

Tip: Learn some basic tasty recipes that you can cook easily at home so you don’t eat out so often

2. Your portions are too big.

This is a problem for almost every single one of my clients (and used to be my problem too). You eat too much.

There. I said it. Plain and simple. But it can hurt to hear – I remember a time when I was walking on the treadmill with my hand weights and complaining to a friend about my weight – she looked at me and said, “Maybe you eat too much”.

I was completely indignant. I looked at her like she was crazy and said, “No, that’s not it – besides I eat really healthy…” She ended up being right after all.

We’ve never had more 24/7 access to food than we do right now. We’re surrounded by it. So, we eat it. We go back and take second helpings (often even when we’re full).

We eat at restaurants – besides having so much extra fat in their dishes, restaurants often serve up huge portions (point #1). And because it’s right in front of us, we eat it.  You know that feeling when you’re thinking, “I’m full, but it’s so good I can’t stop eating.” You really need to, that will help you lose some weight.

Tip: Stop eating when you’re 80% full, and don’t go back for seconds.

3. You don’t eat enough protein

I can guarantee you’re probably not getting enough protein. And if you’re not getting enough protein, you’re eating too many carbs to try and feel full. You need to have a certain amount of protein in a day – there is a ton of variation in the recommendations out there but conservative estimates are 0.36 grams of protein per pound body weight (0.36 g X 160 lbs = 57.6 grams of protein). Kris Gunnars does a great job explaining the role of protein in this article

It’s not that I think carbohydrates are bad – they’re good, in the right amount. We need have to have carbs in our diet. However, if we’re busy and constantly on the go, we’re often grabbing things that are snackable, crunchy, in packages, and those are all carb things. We don’t usually grab a hunk of chicken from the fridge.

Tip: Try to eat more protein throughout the day, not just at dinner.

4. You’re consuming too many liquid calories

This is a big one. It’s not uncommon for me to hear stories about how my clients use to drink lattes during the day and wine at night. We think it’s no big deal – it’s just a glass of wine, right? We think we’re just going to have a drink and relax and socialize with our friends, but one drink often leads to two, then to three and our food choices usually get worse along the way (hello chips, cheese, chocolate, etc.).

The other thing that I see with liquid calories (juice, pop, and, the most evil of them all, those drinks from coffee shops that have whipped cream, syrup flavorings, and the chocolate or caramel sauce) is that we truly have no idea how much energy (calories) we’re consuming. Some of those drinks have over 400 calories in them – and there’s just no way you can drink those things on a regular basis without health/weight consequences.

I say this over and over: There’s just not enough hours in the day to out train your nutrition

Tip: Drink more water and fewer calorie laden drinks.

5. You don’t eat enough vegetables

Most North Americans eat far below the recommended number of veggie servings/day and are extremely deficient in the leafy greens category. This needs to change. Eating vegetables is how we get fiber, plus minerals and vitamins into our diet.

But for most people dinner plates are piled high with pasta or rice and vegetable are a distant afterthought. I even hear people say, “I just don’t like veggies.” There are too many ways to prep and make veggies taste yummy for that to be a reasonable excuse.

Tip: Cut up a bunch of veggies at the beginning of every week for healthy snacks.

6. You don’t move your body enough

The other thing that you might not be doing enough of to lose weight or to at least help with weight maintenance is you’re probably not moving your body. We know that exercise isn’t necessarily the best vehicle for weight loss, but it is one of the most healthy things we can do with our body.

It’s a lifestyle habit we must all adopt because we’re too sedentary. We know that if you start to exercise you will have way less trouble keeping the weight off once you lose it, so this is really important.

Tip: Schedule in regular bouts of activity into your day – you’ll feel better and be more productive.

Make exercise something you LOVE to do, not something you punish yourself with. Click below to get instant access to my *free* ebook now.

7. You don’t get enough sleep

The last thing that I see in how women sabotage their weight loss efforts is by not getting enough sleep. This is critical. Really hear this, because this is something that I hear women talking about a lot.

They have full days – they’re parenting, they’re volunteering, they’re working, and then nighttime comes and they get a little bit of downtime, alone time, “me time,” and they stay up and watch that DVR’d episode of Grey’s Anatomy or whatever it is you watch. You feel tired, but you’re going to bed at 11:00pm or 12:00am, getting up at 6:00am, and you’re living in a constant state of sleep deprivation.

When you’re sleep deprived you are unable to handle the stresses that life throws at you. It’s harder to balance your emotions. When you can’t balance your emotions you’ll go right back to your habits of eating treats or comfort foods to soothe yourself.

Tip: Get to bed earlier so you can get the rest you need.

If you’ve been following me for a while, you know I’m a pretty straight shooter when it comes to what it really takes to lose weight.

Here is what weight loss requires:

• You need to say no way more than you say yes
  • You need to say no to alcohol more often
  • You need to say no to the snacks, treats, and drinks way more often
  • You need to say no to taking second helpings of things.

• You need to go to bed. To do that, turn off your TV. Too many of us are giving away all of our energy to something that is just kind of soul sucking and life depleting. We’re watching fake people living fake lives and we’re compromising what matters most to us – our health.

• You need to be in the kitchen. There is no way around this, you have to start cooking. If right now you’re on the cycle of takeout and restaurant food, then you have to figure out how to get back into the habit of grocery shopping, eating your veggies, and having that stuff prepped and ready to go in your fridge.

This is what requires thought and planning, and that’s where some of the social sacrifices come in. Of course it’s fun to go out for dinner, but if you’re going out for dinner every single day, it’s completely incongruent with your true goal of losing weight.

• You must remember that you have a vision or a dream of how you want to be, how you want to feel, the energy you want to have, how you want to look, what you’re able to do. It’s worth it, but you have to remember that it’s worth it. You can never give up. You can’t give in to what matters most in the moment to what you want most long-term. That’s where it takes some commitment.

If you follow these tips, even if you did it for a couple of weeks at a time, I can guarantee you’re going to start to see those pounds go. I’d love to know how it works out for you, so leave a comment below and share with me what you’re going to do, also, ask me your questions.