There is usually a variety of reasons why people can’t lose weight, and developing a better understanding of these reasons is often the first step in addressing them. If you want to trim down but can’t quite transfer that desire into action, there may be some barriers holding you back. In my experience as weight loss coach and personal trainer, here’s what I consider the five most common barriers that prevent people from losing weight.
- Inactivity – With desk orientated work, inactive leisure time and labour saving technology, a lot of movement has been engineered out of everyday life. Unless you compensate for this inactivity with plenty of planned exercise and movement, you will find it very hard to lose weight.
- Using food as medicine - Food is often used as a form of medication against negative emotions. Feelings of exhaustion, guilt, frustration or sadness can trigger emotional eating that is counterproductive. When food is used to help deal with emotions, it’s usually the type of foods that won’t help you lose weight.
- Large portions – People who feel frustrated at a lack of weight loss even though they follow a pretty healthy diet may simply be eating too much. Even if your diet is healthy, excess kilojoules get stored as fat. Large plates, large drinking glasses, fast eating and failure to drink enough water can all contribute to large portions.
- Too many liquid kilojoules – Drinks such as fruit juice, soft drink, sports drinks, energy drinks, cordial and alcohol are all big on kilojoules, but low on fullness. In other words, you won’t eat less because you’ve had one of these drinks, making the extra kilojoules very hard to burn off.
- High expectations – Your attitude towards change and the rate of weight loss you are expecting will have a huge bearing on your motivation. If you are expecting fast results, you should really expect fast failure. Weight loss is almost always slower than what people expect. Don’t give up if your weight loss slows or even comes to a halt.
Do you think there are more significant barriers to weight loss not on this list? What are the personal barriers to weight loss that affect you?
