The 10 Reasons Why You Can't Lose Weight

The diet industry is a billion-dollar industry. There are eating plans, crash diets, pills, injections, magic teas all promising to the “the thing” that “finally” allows you to lose the weight. Desperate people spend billions of dollars each year, buying into these promises, crossing their fingers and hoping for the best. And most of them fail, about 94% to be exact. So, with such a dismal failure rate, how could the diet industry be so bloated with cash? Are there that many new people every year, suddenly finding themselves overweight and attempting to find the solution for the first time? Surely these couldn’t be repeat customers, falling for the marketing tactics repeatedly, year after year, throwing more and more money at the very industry that has been reveled as a lie time and time again. Even big food and big pharma are in on it. There is plenty of blame to go around. I literally laughed out loud as a nutrition coaching client to me today that he only drinks “100% juice” proudly, thinking he was telling me about some amazing healthy habit he should get credit for. I unfortunately had to break the news to him that yes, he like so many others had been duped by marketing, and in fact, the 100% juice he was drinking all day long was just as harmful to him if he were drinking soda all day long. I had to explain what fructose is, how it effects the body and yes, that soda pop and juice are composed of the same molecules, fructose. It’s amazing to me in this day and age of “information at your fingertips” that we are still as ignorant as we ever were about the human body, nutrition and the greed of corporations making promises they can’t keep.

In this article, I am going to cover briefly the 10 reasons why you can’t lose weight. These are the things that any good Nutrition Coach should be working with you on, and if not, you should be finding better help (like one of our Fire Team Whiskey Coaches for example).

Reason #1: You are going on a diet.

The very first rule when I start working with a new client is that “this is not a diet”. A diet implies temporary. A diet implies restriction. A diet implies misery. No wonder no one can stick to a diet! Until you make the mindset shift and decide that this is life change, you will stay stuck at step one every single time. Sure, you may be able to get temporary results, but you will go back to your old ways, and the weight will return.

Reason #2: You don’t know the difference between the Krebs Cycle and a motorcycle.

I find it fascinating that pretty much everyone who wants to lose weight has no idea how their biology works. Or they just believe, “What they were told”. Bottom line is, weight loss has everything to do with metabolism. And metabolism is extremely complex and has multiple biological, hormonal, environmental and genetic components at play. A dumbing down belief of “calories in calories out” or “eat less and move more” is just plain ignorant (and obviously don’t work because if it were that simple, why is 75% of America overweight?). While I don’t expect everyone to get a master’s degree simultaneously in Nutrition, Biology and Functional Medicine, you should learn the basics or at least hire someone who is an expert in these things to help figure out all the moving parts required to help you be successful at losing weight, covering all the essential bases that we have control over biology, nutrition, hormonal and environment.

Reason 3:  You want to magically erase decades of damage in 30 days. Oh, how very impatient we humans are! Back to the magical thinking problem we have as a species. It’s basic math. Think of when you were last healthy. 5 years ago? 10? 20? That is the amount of time it will take to get back to that place. Yes, that is disheartening enough to make most people decide “it’s not worth it” and choose a life of suffering from chronic medical conditions and an early death. You can speed up the healing process by applying multiple efforts, but the reality is, this is a marathon, and any permanent change will require a commitment to do this for the long haul, not just a crash diet to lose a few pounds for your high school reunion.

Reason 4:  You are comparing your body to the “ideal”. I had a client ask me once “How can I get arms like yours?” my response was “When you stop comparing your body to other people.” There will always be people who are blessed in the genetic lottery of life. They are few and far between, the rest of us must accept that we are working with a different clay, therefore, we can only do so much with it. Once you start focusing on how to get your own body the healthiest and fittest it can be, regardless of trying to make it look a certain way, you will find yourself making more progress, feeling less frustrated and kind of proud of the body you have and the hard work that shows in it.

Reason 5: You believe you are the exception to the rule. Everyone believes that they are the 1%, no one believes they are the 99%. Basic probability tells us, we are the 99%. It you keep believing that you will be the exception to the rule, for example, “I can eat fast food 5 times a week and not have health consequences”. Or “I don’t need that much sleep.” Or “being 30 pounds overweight is no big deal, at least it’s not 50”. We humans are extremely good liars, and we are the best liars to ourselves. Our minds will do everything it can to make us feel reassured and less anxious, to include outright lie. Just because we believe the lie doesn’t make it true. The truth will catch up to you, no matter what.

Reason 6: You have decided to ignore “all the other things”. I have rejected applicants for Fire Team Whiskey because of this very thing. I have had people pay to join our program, and in the first coaching session, this person is only willing to workout and won’t do anything else to get healthy. For those people, I just let them know that they are not a good candidate for coaching, and we just set them up with an app membership to give them access to the workouts and we both don’t need to waste our time any further. I know for a fact that this person won’t succeed because they are not in a place in their life yet where they realize that they can’t out train a bad diet. But it’s not just diet. Chronic stress and chronic sleep deprivation are directly correlated with heart attack, stroke, obesity, cancer and diabetes. When you start a health journey, it’s not a buffet, you can’t just pick a couple of things and get good health. You must work on all the things, this is how you get immense and long-term results.

Reason 7:  You won’t go deep. If losing weight were easy, everyone could do it, yet 94% of people who go on diets fail. For most people being overweight is symptom of a pathology. Overeating and eating junk food are just poor coping skills for stress. We all have coping skills, good and bad to deal with stress. Some of us binge eat junk food. Others smoke cigarettes. Others go for a run. Others seek therapy. Others drink alcohol, etc. If you are not willing to work on the underlying stressors in your life, you will continue to use those old habits, good and bad to deal with the stress. You must do the deep, hard work, and as Michael Jackson said, “take a look at yourself and make a change”.

Reason 8: You are in the same environment that got you fat. Environmental triggers are huge. Almost no one thinks of this when they are trying to change their behavior. Even your driving route to and from work can be a contributor to your poor habits. I have had several of my clients change their route to work because of their habit to stop by a particular fast-food place on the way to and sometimes from work. I have had clients delete all the food ordering app accounts. I even had one client have her husband literally install a lock on a particular cabinet in their kitchen, and that was the place that he kept his junk food, so his wife couldn’t get access to it while I was working with her. Pizza Friday at the gym? Cancel your gym membership. People at work bring donuts?  Work from home or close your door on those days or ask your fellow employees to not offer you any junk food. You are responsible for changing your environment, not anyone else.

Reason 9:  You leave the backdoor open. This is one of my favorite ways to “call out” clients. I use this phrase every time a client starts making excuses for not meeting goals. I say, “you still have the back door open”. I use this metaphor to describe our tendency to always leave ourselves options to not follow the plan. They are the “exceptions to the rule” hat prop that back door open, even if it’s just a smidge, but it still means we are not “all in” on the plan. Excuses like, “Well Cindy made lasagna and breadsticks for everyone, so I felt obligated to eat it so I wouldn’t hurt her feelings.”  Or “I just was so busy over the weekend; I didn’t have time to prepare my meals for this week”. Or “I was just so hungry and tiered; I didn’t care anymore”. Scenarios like these leave us exceptions to our rules, our commitments we made to ourselves to behave a certain way. Until you shut and lock that back door and operate within the parameters of the structure, your priority will never be to your commitment to long term health. There will always be something that take priority. And if you place anything as a priority over your health, you will fail repeatedly.

Reason 10: You know nothing John Snow. People like to assume that they are experts in everything because they have Google. Billions of people search for weight loss programs, and diets and miracle weight loss cures. They read some articles, watch a video, read a book, and poof, I am an expert in nutrition, hormones, metabolic health, biology, and fitness. Even as educated and well rounded as I am as an expert in this field, I am constantly reading the latest research, podcasts, books, articles and attending online and in person conferences reviewing the latest science in these areas. Science is ever changing and ever updating. And just because you read and article somewhere on internet land, doesn’t mean that it’s fact.  Weight loss is complicated. Its not a “calories in verses calories out” math equation as some still believe (because they were told). That is not how our bodies work, they are not a math equation. Genetics, age, gender, hormones, gut microbiome, circadian rhythm, sleep, stress, toxins, mental health, nutrition, sun exposure and of course food, all play a role in our health. Everybody is different and everybody is different at different times of their life. Diet A for me may work for me but be terrible for Cindy and makes her gain weight. Diet A may work for me now, but Diet D may work for me better in 20 years from now. Assume you know nothing, and you couldn’t possibly learn it all, so get some help from an expert to find the right combination of things that get your health moving in the right direction. Educate yourself on the basics and don’t do something because “I was told”, use your brain, we have them for a reason. Do research, talk to experts, hire a coach and get off the diet rollercoaster and start the marathon that is health.