Re: Summer 2016 | Page 24

3 Reasons why you might not be shifting those pounds You feel like you’re doing everything right. You’ve done the healthy food shop and even prepared your lunches for the week in advance. You may have even resorted to eating chicken, broccoli and rice multiple times a day like the guys at the gym told you to (you don’t need to do that by the way) yet you’re still not seeing the results you’re after. There are many, many reasons as to why you might not be losing fat but in our experience, these are most likely: 1) You’re expecting miracles You don’t get out of shape over night. So don’t expect to get in shape over night either. If you’ve been drinking wine and eating pork pies for years, it’s unrealistic to think you’ll reverse all that in a matter of weeks. And that’s just the fat loss part, building lean muscle can take even longer, which is essential for transforming your body. You might even be seeing some results but have an unrealistic expectation of how quickly it is going to happen. As a rule of thumb for fat loss, you should be shooting for around a 0.5 1% decrease in weight per week if your goal is to trim down. That means if you weigh 180lbs/81kg you would expect to lose roughly 0.9 - 1.8lbs or 0.4 - 0.8kg per week on average. The reason this is so important is because people compare themselves to others on TV or in the media who are losing a lot of weight. The reason they might have lost a lot of weight is because they had a lot to lose in the first place. As you get smaller and leaner, the rate at which you lose fat will decrease. It’s very unlikely you’ll notice much change on a weekly basis but those numbers compounded over a period of weeks and months can lead to an impressive transformation. Remember, slow progress is still progress. 22