Boy drinking juice

Image courtesy of www.theatlantic.com

You want to lose weight. You are (for the most part) disciplined about it. It’s not as if you’re scarfing down banana splits for lunch. So why is this attempt to shed pounds such a miserable failure? You could be facing one or more hidden weight-loss roadblocks, warns fitness expert Josef Brandenburg, co-author of “Results Fitness.” He says that even the most diet-savvy of us could be sabotaging our own efforts to get in shape if we are faced with one of these roadblocks…

1. Living in pain
Pain makes it more difficult to lose weight because pain not only makes us hungrier and causes us to eat more, but also limits the intensity at which we can work out and the effectiveness of that exercise session.

2. Shorting your sleep
When you don’t get enough sleep, it can have a double whammy: increasing your appetite while slowing down your metabolism. Almost all the hormones that help you lose weight and keep it off, including leptin and ghrelin, only work properly if you get enough sleep.

3. Quality of movement
“Movement is metabolism. The better you move, the better your workouts and results will be,” says Brandenburg. But here’s the big gotcha: Your body must respond to movement, for movement to result in weight loss.

4. Being out of touch
If you think you’re doing it all right–exercising more and eating less–but you’re still not losing weight, then you need to get real. It’s impossible to actually be doing it right and not see results. Something is wrong! You need to identify what that is.

5. Cheating on your treats
We all need a treat every once in a while, but when you cheat on those treats too often, an indulgence becomes a diet buster. And treats aren’t just sweets. They can also include the bread basket in a restaurant, a fried appetizer, calorie-rich drinks and unhealthy entrees. “If you eat it, you’ll wear it,” warns Brandenburg.