Training Hard and Still Not Able to Lose Weight?

There are a lot of health and fitness myths out there and many of them involve exercise and weight loss. One common belief it that if you exercise you will always lose weight, but there are many different ways to exercise and working out is still only one part of the big picture. In fact, it is certainly possible to train hard and not lose weight and it can happen for many reasons, some of which are better than others.

Here are 4 common reasons for not losing weight while training hard

Reason #1 – Gaining muscle:

This is the best case scenario if you are training hard and not losing weight. When this happens it means you are simultaneously gaining muscle and losing fat (assuming you are not gaining weight). This is a sign that you are doing a lot of things right and having positive physical changes, even though the progress may not show up on the scale.

If this is really what is happening, you should notice other positive changes, such as improved fitness/workout performance, feeling better in general, and/or having more energy. Additionally, people who gain muscle and lose fat often notice that their clothes start fitting better and their weight starts being redistributed so there is a visible improvement in their physique even without losing weight.

Action Step: Weight is not the best indicator of success and it is possible to make progress in a lot of different areas without changes on the scale. If you want to put more emphasis on losing weight, work on improving your nutrition and/or changing your exercise routine to focus loss on muscle gain and more on fat loss.

Unfortunately, gaining muscle is not the most common reason for working out hard and not losing weight and the following three reasons all happen quite frequently. In many cases it is a combination of some or even all of these reasons, so it is important to look at all aspects of your health and fitness program to find out what is happening.

Reason #2 – Nutrition:

Exercise burns calories and can improve your metabolism to burn even more, but the calories burned during your workouts don’t always translate into weight/fat loss. Weight loss is a numbers game where the calories you consume have to be less than the total calories burned by your metabolism, exercise, and other activities.

The problem is many people think exercise is the most important factor in the equation, but it is usually third behind the calories you consume and your metabolism. Unless you exercise for hours every day, the calories burned through exercise are far less than the calories burned by your metabolism.

Some people think they can never lose weight because they have a slow metabolism, but your metabolism is not solely determined by your genetics and there are things you can do to make it burn more calories. The most common strategy to increasing metabolism is gaining muscle by working out, because muscle burns calories even at rest, but nutrition plays a part as well.

In most cases, it is not an issue of eating specific foods to boost your metabolism, but rather avoiding the problems that cause your body to shut down your metabolism prematurely. The most common things people do to decrease their metabolism are eating too little, skipping meals, and not getting their required nutrients (vitamins, minerals, protein, water, etc.).

The decrease in metabolism is often more significant than the calories burned through exercise, so if you really want to lose weight, you have to maximize your metabolism. Of course, the other big issue is the number of calories you consume. While it is possible to eat too little, most people simply eat and drink too many calories every day.

Even the best exercise routine is not enough to overcome poor eating. If you burn a significant number of calories through exercise, that hard work can easily be undone by a moderate amount of junk foods. Of course, you can still improve your fitness and feel better from the exercise, but you may not lose any weight and if you eat a lot, you could continue gaining weight.

Action Step: If weight loss is your main priority, the place to start is with your nutrition. Exercise will improve your results, but if your nutrition has significant problems, weight loss can be almost impossible. It is much easier to consume calories than it is to burn them off through exercise, so your nutrition really is your most effective tool for losing weight.

Reason #3 – Overtraining:

Many people believe that more exercise is always better and the harder you push yourself, the better your results, but these are only true up to a point. You definitely can exercise too much or push yourself too hard and if you do, it can bring your progress to a screeching halt.

Overtraining is the most common exercise problem for people who workout hard and it usually involves a combination of physical and mental/emotional symptoms. It includes things like performance decreases, burnout, illness, weight changes, heart rate change, and much more. Simply put, exercising too much causes lots of problems and the more overtrained you are, the longer it takes to get back to normal.

Since overtraining is such a big concern and so prevalent these days, there is a lot of information about the signs, symptoms, etc. Instead of restating all of this clinical information, I will discuss a real world example of overtraining that I encountered while working at a traditional gym.

A few years ago I met a person who was at the gym most days of the week and probably spent about 10 hours a week exercising (mostly lifting weights). He told me that he was having trouble making any progress so I asked him about his workout routine, health, training history, etc.

It turned out that during the last year and a half he lost about 100 pounds (~45kg) and even won the yearly member body transformation contest. Unfortunately, during the last four months he did not make any progress and even started gaining back some fat. He also said he was exercising as hard as ever and increased his number of sets to stimulate more progress, but it was not working.

Overtraining is something I have dealt with a lot and everything he told me (including doing the same exercises all the time) made it clear that he was overtrained and needed a complete overhaul of his program. I had him write down all of his exercises/workouts and told him I would make him a new program to get him back on track.

His new program had a lot of new exercises and I significantly decreased the overall number of sets in each workout. I would love to say that he was excited about his new program and started making progress again, but unfortunately he was unhappy with the program.

He did not like the fact that it had different exercises and he wanted to keep doing the same thing he was doing, except get better results. Since he previously made progress with those exercises, he was determined that those exercises are why he succeeded and different exercises would make things worse. He also didn’t want to exercise less because he thought that would make everything worse as well.

I left the gym to start my own business soon after, so I don’t know what ultimately happened, but I would like to think he eventually took my advice. Anyway, I share this story because overtraining is fairly easy for an exercise professional to identify, but it can be very hard to reverse, especially when you have to change things that were previously successful.

Action Step: If it seems like you are doing everything right and exercising a lot, but not making progress (or going backwards), you might be overtraining. Overtraining can be complicated to correct, but start by reducing tour training volume (sets, reps, weight, distance, etc.) and change up your workouts and see if things improve.

If you are significantly overtrained, you may need to work with a qualified fitness professional to get back on track. When people like to workout hard, the last thing they want to do is perform easier workouts, but that may be the only thing that corrects the problem. In any case, if what you are doing is not working, you have to change something to have any chance of future success.

Reason #4 – Stress and sleep:

This is usually combined with at least one of the other reasons, but if you are not getting enough sleep and under a lot of stress, it can make losing weight/fat much tougher if not impossible. Some people experiencing high levels of stress do lose a lot of weight, but this is usually not the case and it’s a bad way to lose weight anyway. Essentially, the more stress you have and less sleep you get, the worse your results will be.

Action Step: If you have a lot of stress in your life or do not get enough sleep, work on changing some things in your routine to help reverse the problem(s). If nothing else, take a few minutes each day to do some deep breathing and relaxation exercises. Being overstressed and overtired really can negate an otherwise effective exercise and nutrition program.

Losing weight/fat can be challenging and doing lots of hard workouts is not always the answer and sometimes it even makes things worse. If you are having problems losing weight, my best advice is to take a close look at every aspect of your lifestyle (nutrition, exercise, stress, etc.) and figure out the main roadblocks to your success.

Finally, if you are already doing well in one area, such as exercise, focus on the other areas instead of trying to further improve something you are already good at. In terms of effort and progress, this will give you a lot more bang for your buck.

By Ross Harrison
VFT “Awesome” Fitness Expert 🙂
VirtualFitnessTrainer.com