Top 10 Reasons Why Keto Diet isn’t Burning Fat
If you’ve been on a keto diet plan and are still having trouble losing excess body fat, there may be hidden factors that you’re not aware of. If you want to achieve your weight loss goals, you need to look beyond the diet and consider your habits and lifestyle. Let’s take a look at what factors can cause a keto diet is not burning fat:
You’re Consuming Too Many Calories
Depending on the strategy you’re using, you may not be tracking calories very well. The old-fashioned “calories in, calories out” approach to dieting is an outdated way to lose weight. Keeping a strict record of every bite that passes through your mouth is not only unnecessary, but it’s also crazy.
However, if you completely forget what you’re eating, you may be eating more than your body needs. So, the goal is to strike a balance and watch your calories without obsessing. Portion checking, meal planning, and conscious eating are ways to understand your calorie intake without tracking every bite of food. It’s easy to take the “I’m eating healthy foods, so calories don’t count” approach. However, if you eat too much, even broccoli can lead to weight gain.
You’re Drinking Your Calories
If weight loss is your goal, it’s crucial to focus on liquid calories. You may be eating the perfect diet, eating natural foods, and keeping calories in check, but if you’re drinking high-calorie beverages, you’re losing. The obvious beverages to avoid are sugary drinks like soda and fruit juices.
But there are other “tricky culprits” that can enter your diet as well. For example, do you drink your morning coffee with cream or milk? While a little cream may not sound like a big deal, it can easily add up to 100 calories.
Therefore, be aware of drinks that masquerade as healthy. Be sure to check the nutrition label on the back of the bottle to find out what’s hidden in the drink. You may be surprised to find that your favorite brand of iced tea contains sugar, or that drinks like vitamin water have almost as many carbohydrates as Coca-Cola.
You’re Not Getting Enough Exercise
Weight loss should be done in two ways. Watching what you eat is important, but getting your body moving is just as important.
Weight loss exercise has more to do with overall physical health than tracking calorie burn. Studies show that even a brisk walk can reduce visceral fat. But if you want to stay in shape, lifting weights is vital to keeping your body burning fat efficiently. When you burn fat, you will naturally lose some muscle. Since the muscle in your body is the tissue that burns calories, the more muscle you have, the more energy you burn each day.
To combat the loss of muscle mass that occurs with burning fat, you need to perform resistance training to maintain muscle mass. By burning fat while retaining your muscle, your daily energy expenditure stays high while burning unwanted fat.
You Need More Water
The importance of drinking water to your body’s overall health cannot be understated. Keeping your cells and tissues properly hydrated is vital to keeping your body running metabolic processes. It helps with metabolism, detoxification, cellular nutrition, and much more. Therefore, hydration plays an important role in weight loss.
In addition to its basic role in your body, water can help you lose weight in two other ways.
- People often confuse thirst with hunger
In one study, volunteers lost 44 percent of their body weight after drinking 500 milliliters of water before a meal. This doesn’t mean you should replace food with water, but it does highlight the fact that people often replace food with water. The next time you feel hungry, try drinking some water first and see if your hunger disappears. If so, you may be feeling dehydrated. If not, go ahead and enjoy your meal.
- Drinking water can increase your metabolic rate
Studies have shown that drinking water can increase metabolism by up to 30% within 40 minutes of ingestion. While this may not seem like a long time, those extra calories can add up. They also point out that water plays an important role in the way the body processes energy, and that proper hydration is key to optimal energy expenditure.
You’re Not Getting Enough Sleep
Sleep is an important aspect of overall health and is just as important as proper hydration. Studies have shown that sleep deprivation is strongly associated with the risk of obesity in children and adults. Just one night of sleep deprivation has been shown to affect metabolic function and keep circadian rhythms away from optimal fat burning.
Sleep is also important for maintaining the balance of hormones that make you feel hungry or full (growth hormone-releasing peptide and leptin). When you don’t get enough sleep, your stomach hunger levels go up and leptin levels go down. This makes you feel hungry and unsatisfied and often triggers food cravings.
When you sleep, your body is resting and regenerating, keeping your brain, heart, kidneys, and immune system healthy. Lack of sleep, on the other hand, can lead to emotional problems, brain fog, high blood pressure, decreased immunity, and fatigue.
You’re Eating Too Often
Some experts advocate eating fewer and more frequent meals throughout the day as a way to lose weight. While this can put a person in a caloric deficit when eating the correct portion size, usually this excessive eating frequency can lead to excessive caloric consumption. Instead of eating five small meals (or three meals plus two snacks) throughout the day, you may want to try intermittent fasting.
Intermittent fasting (IF) has gained a lot of attention as a way to not only reduce calories but to improve metabolic health. In addition to weight loss, studies have shown that intermittent fasting may also be beneficial for heart health and diabetes prevention.
You’re Not Eating Enough Protein
One study found that when people followed a high-protein diet, they found increased satiety for 24 hours, increased overall calorie burning, increased metabolism while sleeping, and increased fat oxidation. This is partly due to the effect of protein on the satiety hormone and stomach hunger hormone. Consuming protein regulates your growth hormone-releasing peptide levels, making you feel fuller for longer. It can also help delay gastric emptying and slow down the absorption of nutrients from food.
In addition to its satiety-enhancing effects, protein can also increase your metabolic rate. A high-protein diet burns twice as many calories as a high-carbohydrate diet. Studies have shown that getting enough protein in your diet, in addition to resistance training, is crucial if you want to burn fat while maintaining muscle.
You’re Stressed
Stress can be an obstacle to weight loss. In addition to the psychological effects, stress has a myriad of physiological effects that can affect the way your body processes nutrition. The main stress hormone released in response to stress is cortisol, and high cortisol levels are associated with an increase in abdominal fat.
Researchers have not yet identified the exact mechanism linking stress to weight gain, but the effect of cortisol on insulin secretion may play a role. With elevated cortisol, many metabolic pathways and hormones are affected, possibly leading to cellular resistance to the hormone insulin.
Therefore, finding healthy coping mechanisms is important not only for weight loss but also for overall health. Some research-supported coping and stress-relieving mechanisms include yoga, meditation, walking, breath control, and journaling.
Your Hormones Stop
One of the main reasons many women struggle with weight gain is hormonal imbalance. If you’ve been struggling with weight issues and dieting hasn’t helped, it may be time to have your hormones tested. Some common hormonal imbalances that can cause weight gain and hinder weight loss include.
- Low estrogen
- Low thyroid hormones
- Leptin resistance
- Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS)
You’re Consuming Too Many Carbohydrates
If you’ve been following a ketogenic diet but have noticed no weight loss, it may be because you’re consuming too many carbohydrates. For your body to switch to fat-burning mode, you need to restrict carbohydrates so that your metabolism shifts to ketosis. This doesn’t happen when there is glucose in the blood.
While being on a keto diet does not necessarily guarantee burning fat, it does provide some physiological changes that make burning fat easier. One of the well-known benefits of being in ketosis is a reduction in hunger and appetite. Studies have shown that in a ketogenic state, hormones associated with hunger and appetite change, leading to a natural decrease in caloric intake. Another benefit of being in ketosis is the potential to increase daily calorie consumption.
Finally, for your body to stop easily burning available fuel in the form of glucose and instead use your fat stores, you need to clear the glucose from your bloodstream. The best way to do this is to reduce the number of carbohydrates you consume.
Numerous studies have shown the benefits of a low-carb keto diet for burning fat. Therefore, if you want to lose a few pounds, it is important to understand the hidden carbohydrates in your diet. Watch out for added sugars and carbohydrates in foods such as sodas, sauces, packaged foods, and bars.
Conclusion
When it comes to weight loss, eating fewer calories, exercising more, drinking enough water, evaluating the amount of sleep you get each night, strength training, and eating too many snacks are just a few of the factors. Although the keto diet will help you burning fat, the overall lifestyle must play a role in lasting weight.