Why is Losing Weight So Hard?

I often hear from my clients, I'm doing everything right, so why can't I lose weight?

I understand the frustration, and it's grounded in biology. Your body has a vested interest in keeping things stable, including your weight. The technical term is homeostasis, which means that there are intricate and complicated biological mechanisms to keep your body systems in balance. Stability = survival. As long as those systems are working as designed, it's hard to both lose and gain weight.

Despite that, it is possible to lose weight if you understand the factors that influence your homeostatic balance. In this post, I explore a couple of the most common reasons I see that can make weight loss slow, but not impossible. Next week I'll explore a few more.

How Your Starting Diet Affects Weight Loss

Some clients come to me eating the SAD diet, which is nutrition shorthand for the standard American diet. It's usually high in processed foods, low in fruits and vegetables,  high in refined carbohydrates, and often low in protein and fat. I understand why it's easy to eat this way in our current food environment.

'I've eaten this way my whole life,' one client told me. It was part of her culture. Making changes required both education and strategies for changing her habits and going against her cultural norms.

Other clients come to me with a pretty decent diet. They eat mostly whole foods and enjoy fruits and vegetables. They have a good understanding of what a healthy diet looks like and are frustrated that they still have a hard time losing weight.

The first client will often lose weight more quickly, at least in the beginning, simply because there is more opportunity for making impactful changes to their diet. I like to think about it as having more 'levers to pull.'

If you already eat a pretty good diet and struggle to lose weight, don't despair. A healthy diet gives you a strong start. We'll look for other levers that will make a difference.

The Role Age Plays in Weight Loss

Your metabolism slows as you age, but perhaps not as much as you think. A 2022 study, published in the journal Science, showed that metabolism doesn't independently decrease until after age 60, and even then, the changes are slow.

However, if weight loss after 40 seems harder, you're not imagining it. The study found that a shift in body composition is one of the reasons. This is because muscle mass and metabolism are closely connected.

Think of muscle as your 'metabolic engine.' It helps to keep your blood sugar and insulin low, which promotes calorie burning rather than fat storage. Because muscle is harder to build as we age, and perhaps because you have slowed down, a decrease in muscle mass may eventually show up as insulin resistance and weight gain.

The other age-related factor, especially for women, is the hormonal changes that occur with menopause. One of the myriad roles of estrogen is to promote insulin sensitivity. When estrogen declines, insulin resistance increases.

So, it's not age, in and of itself, that makes it hard to lose weight, but these other changes that come with age. Fortunately, we have strategies to address them.

How Degree of Insulin Resistance Affects Weight Loss

Insulin resistance plays a big role in weight gain, as described in The Weight-Loss Metabolism Connection. It's one of the things that disturbs your natural weight stability, and reversing it is necessary for sustainable weight loss.

Two things that promote insulin resistance, as described previously, are low muscle mass and hormonal changes. Another factor is time.

The longer you have experienced insulin resistance, the harder it is to reverse. But it is possible, if you're patient. The scale will start to move when your metabolism improves. In my program, Personalized Nutrition Coaching to Improve Insulin Resistance, there are many ways to improve your metabolism, which I customize for every client that I see.

All three of these factors come into play for some clients, making weight loss slow, but not impossible.

One client came to me because she was struggling to get to a comfortable weight. She had a great starting diet, which we tweaked a bit, but we couldn't change the fact that she was post-menopausal, had prediabetes, and had been overweight for most of her adult life. So we looked for other levers. We worked on her impulse eating behavior, developed plans for staying on track during travel, and introduced strategies for reducing stress.

After working together for over a year, she's lost 20 pounds. That might seem slow, but my client is thrilled. Best of all, she has gained confidence that she knows exactly what to do to keep the weight off.

You probably know which of these three factors is complicating your weight loss goals, and if you don't recognize one, my next post will discuss a couple more. If you're curious about what you can do, let's have a conversation about creating a customized plan to address it.

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