5 Reasons You Are Not Losing Weight on a Low-Carb diet

After running into an old friend who lost a lot of weight, you are motivated to begin your own weight loss journey. Like your friend, you have decided to go on a low-carb diet. It seems pretty easy. You just have to make sure your meals are lower in carbs and higher in protein than a regular meal. There is no calorie counting required. You do not need to buy any special foods or products. No pills. No tea. No surgery. Just real, authentic food.

Four weeks down the road though, you still have not lost any weight. Instead, you seem to be adding more weight. You are disappointed and confused because you have avoided sugar and starchy foods (like bread, pasta, rice, beans, and potatoes) and stuck with delicious real foods, including protein, natural fats, and vegetables. You are doing everything right. What could be the problem?
Here are the top 5 reasons why you’re probably not losing weight on a low-carb diet.

Your cheat treats are ruining your progress
The low-carb diet seems very easy, but it requires a lot of discipline. Some people can have cheat treats as well as cheat days, and get away with it. For some others, it will do them more harm than good as per their dieting programme. This is because people have different body types and react to carb intake in a different way. You need to monitor your body and know how carb sensitive (or insulin resistant) you are, that way you know if you should even have cheat days in the first place. Again, if you know you are prone to food addiction, you do not even want to tempt yourself with cheat treats because that will be the beginning of your failure.

Too many fruits
Most people are deluded to think that fruits are great for dieting. They eat huge plates of fruits for dessert and even “cleanse” with fruit-packed smoothies. Unfortunately, if you are overweight or trying to lose weight, fruits are not your friend. Most fruits contain a lot of sugar and fructose and so would actually be classified as sweet treats rather than healthy food. Eating fruits while on a low-carb diet will upset your dieting efforts and make it hard for you to reach your weight target. If you must eat fruits, go for low carb nutrient dense ones like berries. Lemons are also great.

You are Not Exercising Properly
Yes, dieting makes the most impact when it comes to weight loss; however, it doesn’t completely exclude the need to exercise. If you are determined to lose weight, even if you are on a low-carb diet, you still need to exercise your body to improve your metabolic health and increase your muscle mass. The trick, though, is exercising right. Ensure you are doing the right kind of exercise and that you are doing it a frequently as you should. Too little will not give you good results and too much may even be detrimental. Weight lifting, interval training, and low-intensity exercise are usually good options.

Lack of Sleep
This may come as a surprise to you but how well you sleep and the amount of stress your body goes through is critical to weight loss. You may be thinking: “if I don’t sleep well and I’m stressed, that should even help me lose weight”. But NO. Lack of sleep and stress actually correlates with weight gain and obesity. Lack of sleep makes you feel hungrier and so you eat more often than you need to. It also makes you really tired and less motivated to exercise or eat healthy (you’ll want comfort food). So, even if you are disciplined with your low-carb dieting but you are not getting proper sleep or you are too stressed, you may not get the weight loss results you expect.

You may have a Medical Condition
If you have ticked all the boxes, you are very certain you are doing everything right, yet you are not losing weight. There is a chance that your problem stems from an underlying medical problem that you are not even aware of. Most hormonal disorders come with weight gain. Again, certain medications have weight gain as a side effect, and if you are taking them perhaps for a condition you may have, no kind of dieting would work for you. If this is your case, it is advisable to make an appointment with your doctor.

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