When your weight loss tactics aren’t working, it can feel completely disheartening.
You feel like you’re really trying to lose weight, but your pants only stay loose for a few days before tightening right back up again.
You don’t understand what’s happening. You eat home-cooked meals, you don’t eat a lot of junk food, and you’re making sure you go for your daily walk, so why aren’t the pounds coming off?
Not only is it frustrating when weight returns, but it’s soul-crushing! You’d rather just throw away the scale and give up trying to lose weight at all.
You think “I feel like I’m doing everything I can,” “Why should I keep trying if it’s not helping me lose weight?”
Things definitely do change once you enter your 50’s. There’s no doubt you’re dealing with a new set of rules that didn’t apply in your thirties, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get your body back to the energized slim body it used to be.
It just means you’ve got to make a few simple tweaks to your current strategies to rejoin the path towards healthy and lasting weight loss.
Here are 3 fixable reasons to why your scale (and your pant size) might not be changing and the simple solutions to help you rejoin the path towards achieving healthy and lasting weight loss.
When “Just One” Bite Becomes Many:
Throughout the day there are a million small temptations that tease you until you give in.
There’s the dreaded nibbles corner at work, and as you pass by you just can’t help but “accidentally” (on purpose) take “just one chip”.
Let’s not forget the latest birthday party, where you feel like it would be rude if you didn’t take “just one SMALL piece of birthday cake”.
Just one small glass of wine, just one piece of chocolate, just one bite.. the problem is, the bites are adding up.
The “Just One” Syndrome is a sneaky weight loss saboteur because you don’t realize just how much extra you’ve eaten. You see each bite as a separate incident, a separate unit that overall shouldn’t affect your weight loss.
And you’re right! One bite doesn’t matter. But the accumulation of “Just One” bites throughout the day or week add up to a lot of extra calories and that’s what might be causing your pants to feel tighter and tighter.
The Solution:
Study after study shows that keeping a food journal is by far one of the best ways monitor what you eat and helps to reduce frustrating weight gain incidences such as “Just One” syndrome.
But no matter how great of a tactic it may be, you may not be ready to do this. So, what can you do instead?
Let me introduce you to “The Elastic Solution”. It’s quick, it’s simple, and it brings you back to mindful eating without having to write down everything you eat.
Just grab a bunch of elastic bands or, for style, get some aluminum bangles (you can buy these in groups of 5-10 at accessory stores) and put them in your pocket or your purse. Make the conscious effort to put an elastic or bracelet around your wrist every time you take a ”Just One” bite and see how many bands or bracelets you have at the end of the day.
Try to slowly reduce the number of bracelets you end your day with. Reduce the number by one each day until you’ve successfully achieved none. Do this challenge every day and always aim for zero bands.
If you have Just One Syndrome, I promise that your weight will stop bouncing around as you cut back on the number of bites you eat each day. If you’re diligent, you might even notice your pants get looser and looser…
It’s Not About One Food Group, It’s About Two:
You probably already know that feeling full for longer will help you eat less throughout the day and can significantly help you slim your waist.
Many focus on either protein for the hormone signaling benefits that make you feel full longer. Others focus on fibre because it slows down the rate that food leaves the stomach.
But protein and fibre together at every meal make up the real winning team.
One 2010 study, combined the benefits of fibre and protein together in yogurt. The trials were conducted on 145 women. The women who received a high protein yogurt without the added fibre didn’t remain full for as long as women who ate the fibre/protein-rich yogurt.
The point being, while protein alone, or fibre alone can help you feel full, when you combine the two at each meal, you’ll eat less throughout the day and begin to finally see those amazing weight loss results.
And you don’t need to eat yogurt enriched with fibre to feel full longer. It can be any combination of protein and fibre.
Try bringing veggies to front and centre in your meals (for high fibre) and meat (or high protein meat alternatives) as your close second.
By adding more veggies as your main fibre source, you’ve created another weight loss after 50 tactic that helps slim down your waist quicker called “Volumizing”. read all about it in 5 Simple Changes for Quicker Weight Loss After 50.
As long as you’ve got protein and carbs at each meal, you’ll begin to naturally reduce your calories by feeling full and eating less throughout your day. Now that’s an easy weight loss win!
Portion Distortion Happens At Home Too:
If you’ve ever thought “I know I eat healthy, why aren’t I losing weight?” , there’s a really simple reason.
You can still overeat, even if you are only eating “healthy” foods.
While eating at home is a great way to eat healthy (as restaurants add in a lot of high-fat flavour boosters). Sometimes you tend to eat larger portions at home without even realizing it.
This has nothing to do with that plate of seconds you may decide to have, but rather the actual plate. Or should I say plate size…
In recent decades, plates have increased in size by as much as 2 inches. This change in plate size may add up to as much as 1,500 calories per day that you could be consuming.
Here are some quick tips for reducing portions:
- Try eating from your salad plates instead of dinner plates and you’ll be amazed at how full you feel from a smaller plate. It’s an optical illusion that really works ( I do this one too).
2. Whether you order food from your local restaurant or you make it yourself, remember that there’s no shame and no reason why you can’t save half for later. Whether it’s a pot of rice, a large chicken breast or a muffin. Start eating with the mindset that you’ll only eat half, then move it out of sight (so it’s out of mind). If you find that you’re still hungry and your stomach is growling, by all means, go back and finish the other half. I bet you’ll be surprised though when you don’t need to.