Have you changed your diet but you are still not losing weight? Today I’m sharing the most common reasons I find that my clients are still not losing weight, even after adopting a real food diet.

1) Your body is operating from an energy deficit.

When there is a chronic energy deficit (fewer calories coming in than going out), over time the body starts thinking food is scarce. This results in the body holding on to fat as a way to protect itself.

To make an analogy, think of your body like a house. If you’re not making enough money to pay your electricity bill, what do you do? Well, you turn down the heat in your house to compensate. The body operates in a similar way. When there are not enough calories coming in, the body saves energy by reducing body temperature (slowing the metabolism), turning down digestive juices (making digestion weaker), reducing the pulse, and slowing thyroid function (resulting in less energy). This is a built-in survival response by the body, to help you go longer on less food. This is often induced through calorie counting and dieting.

2) You’re not healthy yet (your cells, your body and/or your mindset).

Weight loss is not a priority when your cells, internal organs, and your body are not nourished (see what body stressors are holding you back from weight loss with the Personal Nutrition Assessment).

A biggie here is cellular inflammation (!). When your cells are inflamed (you have 30 trillion cells in your body) from unhealthy cell membranes, you won’t be able to lose weight. Quite the opposite actually, your cells tend to retain more water.

So the fact that you can’t short-cut to weight loss, should be no surprise. It should only come after the body is healthy enough to do it naturally.

As Diana Schwarzbein wisely says, “You need to be healthy to lose weight, not lose weight to be healthy.”

The best ways to access the health of your cells and your body is by doing two of my favorite tests:

Fatty Acid Testing – did you know a fatty acid imbalance can encourage weight gain, cardiovascular disease, and inflammation? A single finger-poke blood spot test at home can tell you just where your fatty acid balance is at, and how inflamed you are at the cellular level. More importantly, it’s super easy to fix! More on fatty acid testing here. Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis – to address your nutrient deficiencies, you must first find out what they are! Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis (HTMA) allows you to “go-pro” with your nutrition by showing you your mineral deficiencies and excesses by way of a tiny hair sample collected from your scalp. It’s my go-to method for making sure my clients are eating the right foods and taking the right supplements (hint: only food-based) for their body chemistry, and not taking ones that are bringing them even more out of balance. More information on HTMA here.

And don’t forget to make sure your mindset isn’t what’s keeping you from getting success. This quick read will let you know right away.

3) You’re eating food that exceeds your body’s current digestive capabilities.

When you eat food that exceeds your body’s ability to digest, those foods end up work against you. This is common in people who are struggling with nutritional debt. Nutritional deficiencies make the body more sensitive to harder to digest foods, particularly dairy and gluten. Often it’s necessary to remove those foods while you work towards nutritional wealth. When your body gets richer so-to-speak, then you can usually add them back in without problems.

Also, when you’re eating food you can’t digest– you’re NOT actually absorbing and assimilating the nutrients you are actually eating. So in turn, this creates MORE nutritional debt.

4) You cut out carbs and/or sugars.

When you’re not eating enough of the right carbohydrates that are essential to stimulating metabolism and the conversion of thyroid hormone (T4 to T3) in the liver, weight loss is unlikely. Without an adequate store of carbohydrates (glycogen) in the liver, the body will not make enough of this very important thyroid conversion.

An easy way to self-check yourself is by taking your body temperature (using this) first thing when you wake up in the morning. If it’s lower than 97.8 degrees upon waking, your inability to lose weight is probably related to #1 and/or #4.

How to get back on track?

My e-book: Creating Wealth: The cure to nutritional debt is designed to get your body and metabolism back on track so you can conquer your weight loss goals while avoiding restrictive dieting! Read more about it here so you can get healthy to lose weight naturally!

Need even MORE help navigating your weight gain?

Subscribe below to gain instant access to my interview: Why Your Metabolism Was Fast, But Now It’s Slow. You’ll learn a ton of my best metabolism boosting strategies!



Are these problems stopping you from losing weight? Please share in the comments!

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