Not Seeing Weight Loss Results?

You've been committed and focused with your workouts. You've watched your diet and been diligent about doing all the things you need to do to lose weight. But after four weeks, you're still not seeing any weight loss results. Well, first let me say congratulations and you should be proud of yourself. "The journey of a thousand miles starts with the first few steps." To be honest I don't know who said that but it is absolutely true. And you have taken those first steps. So for that, great big kudos go out to you. But now, let's look at what's happening that is causing you to not see weight loss results.

dukan diet, natural weight loss, quick weight loss diets,

First, let's start with your diet. The diet plays the biggest role in weight loss and yet it can be the most confusing part of the battle. Personally, I know I have been at that place where I believed I was doing everything humanly possible to eat a healthy diet when I was trying to lose weight. Interestingly enough, the more I learned about nutrition, the more I found out that I could change and the more I understood why I was not seeing weight loss results.

The biggest factor to consider in your nutrition is how many calories you are consuming in a day. Essentially you could eat whatever you wanted and as long as the total caloric intake was under what the total daily caloric burn was. That is the only way to lose fat weight. This means that the "Snickers Diet" works as long as you keep your caloric consumption under the recommended 1800 to 2000 calories for women and 2300 to 2500 calories for men and your caloric burn far exceeds those amounts. Of course, for heart health it's not the best option...but that subject will come in another article.

The best way to manage your caloric intake is to start logging everything you eat and the number of calories consumed during the day. It can be surprising to see the actual number of calories that were consumed in one 24 hour period. Once you start seeing your daily tendencies you can start tweaking your eating habits. Keeping a daily log is also something of a nutrition budget. When you know how many calories you can have in a day, then your log will help you determine when and if you can have that chocolate chip cookie for dessert.

Another reason why you're not seeing weight loss results could be due to your exercise routine. The key factor with exercise is intensity. Many times I use to go to the gym and perform an exercise routine at a level where I thought I gave a pretty good effort. But I never checked my heart rate to know how hard I was working. I also tried the "fat burning mode" option on the cardio machines. I figured with a preprogrammed feature on the equipment it must be a good technique. The truth is though that the only way to truly burn calories and lose fat is to mix high intensity workouts in with your exercise routines. Studies have found that by doing so you get quicker and more effective results. This also allows for efficiency in your exercise routine.

So what qualifies as high intensity? The best way to achieve a high intensity workout is to keep your heart rate elevated to approximately 70% to 85% of its max. Another way to determine the intensity level is to use the RPE scale. That scale is a personal determinant where you decide how hard you are working. Using that scale, a high intensity would have you working at a hard to very hard level. (Both of these determinants are based on being in good health.)

So if you're not seeing weight loss results, take a closer look at caloric intake and exercise intensity. Making changes there will have you going from not seeing weight loss results to having others see a great looking body.