Achieving sustainable fat loss will happen for you when you finally decide to step away from yo-yo dieting and commit to building a healthier lifestyle. 

Let me guess. Are you dieting all the time, losing and gaining the same amount of weight over and over again? Are you constantly battling to stay on track? Everything you eat and all the workouts you do are always dictated by your upcoming vacations, holidays, and big events. You feel as if you’re on a roller coaster of getting on and off a wagon. Are you letting everything around you trigger your next move, and you feel like a failure because you can’t stay committed and consistent? 

Here’s the deal–you’re not a failure, you just have the wrong approach. This constant obsession has become your lifestyle, and for this reason, you never make any real progress.

So is this the picture of healthy, sustainable living that you desire? Not even close.

6 Reasons You Struggle With Sustainable Fat Loss and Why You Can’t Make This a Lifestyle

1. You Have Shining Object Syndrome

Everytime you hear about a new diet trend you jump on it. Nevermind the program you’ve been following over the past few weeks. You’re convinced it’s not working because all you care about is your trip that’s right around the corner, and you’re frustrated that the scale isn’t moving after just a few weeks. So you panic and hop on another fad diet because you’re not dropping weight fast enough.

You have to understand that you didn’t get here in four weeks and you’re most certainly not going to completely change your body composition in four weeks. Healthy, sustainable fat loss requires you to follow healthier habits consistently over time. Jumping from one thing to the next only makes it harder for you to reach your goals.

This roller coaster you are on is slowing you down and keeping you stuck. Find a basic program that focuses on metabolism health and a realistic calorie deficit. Then put your blinders on, focus on consistency, and trust the process. 

2. You Focus Too Much on Your Short Term Goals

Here we are again–you’ve got a big life event coming up and being in tip top shape for that event is consuming you. Forget any long term goals, what do those matter. Well, they matter more than you know. In fact, your long term goals should be the driver of any short term goals. 

Long term goals are the goals that keep you on track and motivate you to stay committed. When you focus on long term goals you won’t let all the fad diets and short term nonsense get in the way of what really matters most to you. 

You want to build a strong body that is healthy and toned? This needs to be a long term goal my friend. Long term goals consist of different short term goals and phases.

If your long term goal is losing weight and changing your body composition then you’re going to need to start by taking a minute to evaluate where you’re starting from. Is your body really ready for fat loss? If not, you may need to take some time to restore your metabolism while you build lean muscle.

This short term goal is going to require you to eat more food and step away from the high intensity cardio classes, but these things are what position your body for effective fat loss. Then once your body is ready and you’re able to commit to being disciplined for a short time, you can start another short term goal where you shift your focus to a fat loss phase in order to drop body fat and reveal that muscle you just built. This fat loss phase should only last 12-16 weeks maximum and needs to end with you at maintenance–this is the  beautiful and sustainable place you’ve been working so hard for and it will help you to maintain your results.

Long term goal setting also requires you to stop jumping ship every time the scale fluctuates. Again, when you’re focused on long term goals like changing your body composition, you’ll be able to stay consistent because little things like scale fluctuations won’t matter to you–you’ll want to see muscle and you understand that muscle weighs something on the scale so you’ll keep pressing on celebrating your gains. 

Keep your eye on the real prize. Stop expecting this to happen in 4-6 short weeks. You can make amazing progress in that timeframe, but the body you really want is on the other side of all your short term goals. You have to stick with it and have a clear roadmap to follow through your journey.

Create long term goals and celebrate the short term victories along the way! 

3. You Always Compare Yourself to Others

You are not her. What she does may not work for you. What she wears may not fit your body the way it fits her. Who cares!!!! Like my good friend, and book author Tara Renze says, “You didn’t come to be her, you came to be you!!” I’ll add one more thing to this–you came to be you RIGHT NOW!

When you keep looking backwards at the old you and wishing you could still be her, or sideways at what the girl is doing next to you and hoping you will have what she has, you lose your way. You stubble and get distracted. These distractions slow you down, make you question yourself, get in the way of your efforts to be consistent, and cause you to fall. 

Stay in your own lane. I can’t say this enough. It’s too easy to get distracted by everything everyone else is doing out there. And I’m sorry but you may not weigh what you did in college again. You are human, you are a little older and wiser, and you need to meet yourself where you are today. 

No one is promised tomorrow so stop wasting time trying to be something you’re not. Use that negative energy to be present today and show up for YOURSELF! Be the best YOU that YOU can be today! 

4. You Don’t Take Ownership For Your Actions

This is a BIG one! As a nutrition and fitness coach, I hear excuse after excuse for why people can’t do the things they want to do in life. I’m going to be really honey here…I don’t sympathize with excuses, but I do sympathize with people that own their excuses. 

The first sign of someone that wants to really change is them admitting that their actions are the issue. This doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. You don’t have to be perfect. We all have things we need to work on. It’s part of life. It’s why we are here on Earth. To grow and become better humans.

You will never be consistent with something or committed to yourself if you can’t look in the mirror and lean into why you continue to end up here time after time. Your excuses won’t get you anywhere. You can’t just keep sitting on the sidelines of the life you want because you don’t have time, you’re in menopause, your tyhroid is off, your social life gets in the way, or you have an injury that’s holding you back. You have to pivot and make changes when obstacles present themselves. 

Take ownership for who you are, where you are with your circumstances, and how you choose to navigate these things in your life. Are you going to continue to start and stop, and feel weighed down by these things, or are you going to finally decide to figure out ways to get around them?

5. You Don’t Have a Baseline of Non-Negotiables 

Living a healthy lifestyle and achieving sustainable results doesn’t come from doing all the things all the time. It actually comes from creating daily habits that are absolute non-negotiables that you can stick to day in and day out, no matter what. These things make up your priorities and they are your baseline when it comes to staying consistent. 

Non-negotiables keep you grounded in healthy habits so you don’t feel like you are constantly trying to find your way again when something throws you off course. If you want to build some sustainability in your life with exercise and nutrition to support your health goals, start here.

Pick 2-3 super easy non-negotiables that you know you can follow most days and then build on those things. 

For me this is protein, hydration, and movement. No matter where I am or what I have going on, I wake up each and every day focusing on eating protein at every meal, drinking half of my body weight in ounces of water, and I move my body even if it’s a 5 minute walk.

What are your non-negotiables going to be? Write these down today and stick to this baseline when everything else around you seems out of your control.

6. You Don’t Have a Solid Why

I’m ending this post with what I feel like is THE MOST IMPORTANT reason you aren’t able to achieve sustainable fat loss. And this isn’t woo-woo talk here–you can scroll on to the next topic on the internet but I’m telling you right now, if you struggle with consistency, you don’t have a deep enough why that’s motivating you and until you figure this out you’re going to continue to struggle!

Before you ever decide that you want to set goals for yourself you need to sit down and decide why those goals are important to you and it can’t just be that you want to be a certain size for your next life event. 

If you’ve been spinning your wheels for the last several years it’s because you don’t have a why that matters enough to you to keep going. Here’s why a deeper why matters: 

You: “I want to lose 20lbs for my high school reunion.” 

Your why: “Because I want to feel confident and comfortable when I’m in my clothes while I’m there and I haven’t seen these people since I was at my prime.” 

So what actually happens as a result of this why:

You started with a short term goal. Maybe you dropped some weight, but not all of it, because you hopped on a trend that had a quick end date and your goal was to lose 20lbs fast. When you return from the reunion you don’t have anything motivating you, and no non-negotiables in place because your long term goals weren’t a priority, so you start making excuses about the fact that you can’t ever stick to anything, and the wheels keep on turning. 

See where I’m going with this?

Your why determines EVERYTHING!!! Get crystal clear on why you want something. To do this, set your long term goal and ask yourself why you want to achieve that goal. Then ask yourself five more times, “then why?”. Write it all down. Get down deep, below the surface stuff, and settle on a why that’s so important that you can’t give up on yourself!

So What Are You Willing To Do To Achieve Sustainable Fat Loss?

When I ask women what their goals are, they almost always tell me they want to achieve sustainable fat loss and create healthier habits that serve their bodies long term. 

If you’ve struggled with your weight and you’re finally ready to get to a place where you can  create a healthy, sustainable lifestyle, reach out to me. Let’s talk through a plan of action that will help you achieve this. Book a free discovery call with me today!