Episode 280: You're working out and not losing weight. Here's why.

But more within a day.

How often are you moving your body? Because one of the number one challenges that I see women have is they're like, I'm exercising.

I'm working out.

I'm not losing weight.

And then I'm like, well, okay, that's awesome.

Okay, because I just want to be clear up front, there are so many benefits to exercising outside of weight loss.

And I will even go so far as to say that if the number one reason that you are exercising is to lose weight, right there, right off the bat, you've got a problem.

One, because exercising is usually for most people not going to be the number one driver of weight loss.

It's really going to come more for food, but I think there are definitely some caveats to that.

And number two, because then the outcome of your exercise is is completely – is based on weight loss.

So if the scale is not moving, what's your motivation? What's your drive? Why are you going to keep working out, right? So if you are not connected to all the ways in which exercise is beneficial for you mentally, physically, emotionally, it's going to be really, really hard to stick with it.

And then that is going to play a role in your ability to lose weight, right? So you kind of then get stuck in this like catch-22 thing right there.

So number one, if your number one reason for working out or for doing a specific type of workout is to lose weight – I'm going to raise a red flag on that for the reasons that I just said.

Okay.

Now, that being said, if losing weight is one of the reasons that you are exercising, cool.

What are your other reasons? And you need to be clear on them, right? So if you and I were having a coaching conversation and I said to you, why are you exercising? Why are you working out? And the only reason you could give me is like, because I want to lose weight.

I'd be like, okay, we need to figure out some other reasons for you.

Okay.

I digress a little bit, but that's important.

So coming back to the two themes I talk about, right? Intensity and consistency.

But when I talk about consistency, I think I actually use the word frequency and there's a relationship between consistency and frequency.

But how often are you moving your body throughout the day, right? Because again, going back to if you're like, oh, I'm working out, I'm doing a workout three days a week, four days a week, five days a week, whatever it is, and I'm not losing weight.

If that's the only way that you are moving your body, or even if it's the primary way that you're moving your body and you're not really moving your body around the rest of the day, that's a problem, right? Certainly when it comes to weight loss, but also when it comes to how you feel in your body and how you're using your body.

Because if you do a half hour or even a 45-minute workout, And then you sit most of the rest of the day, aside from like, okay, maybe you're running a couple of errands or whatever.

You're not – that workout is not burning enough calories to make you lose weight.