If you’re eating nutritious foods and staying active but the number on the scale refuses to move, you’re definitely not alone. Many people struggle with weight loss despite putting in consistent effort. The truth is, losing weight is rarely straightforward, and several hidden factors may be slowing your progress. The good news? Once you understand what’s holding you back, you can make the right adjustments and move forward again.
At its core, weight loss depends on creating a calorie deficit. This happens when your body burns more calories through daily functions and physical activity than it takes in from food and drinks. When this imbalance occurs, your body is forced to tap into stored energy — primarily body fat — to meet its needs.
In simple terms, fat loss only occurs when a calorie deficit exists. There’s no way around it. To reduce body fat, your body must access its energy reserves, and that only happens when calorie intake is lower than calorie expenditure. As a general guideline, losing one pound of body fat requires an energy deficit of about 3,500 calories.
To achieve this deficit, some form of limitation is always involved. Certain eating plans focus on cutting specific foods, such as sugar or refined carbohydrates. Others emphasize restricting macronutrients, like low-carb or low-fat diets, while some eliminate entire food groups. There are also approaches that limit when you eat — such as intermittent fasting — or how much you eat through portion control, calorie tracking, or macro counting.
Although the nutrition world often debates which method is best, research consistently shows one thing: any eating strategy that reduces calorie intake can lead to weight loss — as long as it’s followed consistently(1).
That said, knowing the theory is much easier than applying it in real life. Even though a calorie deficit is essential, many people struggle to achieve or maintain one. Lifestyle habits, mindset, and small daily behaviors can quietly sabotage progress. Fortunately, once you identify these common obstacles, you can remove them and get your weight loss journey back on track.
Most Common Reasons You Can’t Lose Weight
Here is a ranking of the most common reasons you’re not losing weight.
1. You’re not in a true calorie deficit, consistently.
Many people will say “I’m in a calorie deficit but I’m not losing weight”, but if you’re not losing weight, you’re not in a calorie deficit. Unfortunately, many people think they are in a calorie deficit because they’re following a fancy meal plan, they’ve cut foods from their diet, or they’ve used a fancy online calorie intake calculator, but none of those things guarantee you are in a calorie deficit.
Because a calorie deficit is fat loss, you only know you’re in a calorie deficit when you’re seeing results. Unfortunately, many people assume that they are in a calorie deficit without properly calculating their calorie needs, monitoring their activity level, tracking their food, or weighing their food.
Determining your required calorie intake for weight loss is a game of consistency, monitoring, and adjustment. Not only do you need to estimate your calorie deficit needs with accurate data – and most people underestimate their calorie intake and overestimate their activity level – but you need to monitor data points by accurately tracking food intake and weighing yourself, consistently.
Consistency is king when it comes to weight loss. Even if you are in true calorie deficit 4 days of the week or 20 days of the month, if you are in a surplus the other 3 days of the week and 10 days of the month you likely won’t see the weight loss progress you desire.
Not to mention, your calorie needs will change as you progress in your weight loss journey as you experience the natural process of metabolic adaption, when your body becomes more efficient at using energy and burns fewer calories, which makes consistency, tracking, and calorie intake adjustments all of the more important (2).
2. You’re not as active as you think you are.
When calculating the calorie intake required for weight loss, many people overestimate their activity level. Not only do people tend to overreport their physical activity by roughly 50%, but studies have shown that “smart” watches overestimate calories burned during exercise by 28-93% (3, 4).
This overestimating of activity level can be detrimental to weight loss progress as your “calories burned” are much lower than estimated and, therefore, the calorie deficit you thought you had created is not there.
3. You’re not resistance training.
Many people with weight loss goals gravitate to what they consider “high-calorie burn” forms of exercise, such as cardio and high-intensity interval training, when in reality walking and resistance training are just as effective, if not more.
Resistance training, also known as weightlifting and strength training, helps to build muscle mass by challenging your muscles to work against a weight or force. This increase in muscle mass helps to support our basal metabolism rate, which is the primary component of metabolism and total calories burned throughout the day. Our resting energy expenditure is largely dependent on our fat-free mass, therefore, the more muscle mass we build through resistance training, the higher our resting energy expenditure (4).
Although resistance training doesn’t typically burn as many calories as high-intensity cardio during exercise, resistance training is more effective at building and preserving lean muscle mass during the fat-loss process, which helps to mitigate decreases in metabolic rate that can impede weight loss. Furthermore, if the intensity is high enough, post resistance training workout you will benefit from excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC), which is the increased energy your body uses after a workout to recover, repair, and return to its pre-exercise state (5, 6).
Additionally, resistance training is the most effective exercise approach for changing body composition, which can alter body shape and reduce inches, even if there is little weight loss reflected on the scale.
If you are new to resistance training, to minimize the risk of injury, it is best to start with body-weight exercises and allow the body to build strength before adding external resistance such as bands, kettlebells, dumbbells, and barbells. That said, exercise alone is not as effective of a weight loss strategy as diet and exercise combined, therefore, both should be made a priority if you’re trying to lose weight.
4. You’re not prioritizing whole foods.
Eating a diet composed primarily of whole foods is one of the easiest ways to quickly cut calories. Not only is real food free of added sugars and oils, which are major sources of added calories in processed foods, but they are far more filling, satiating, and nourishing.
In the nutrition prioritization pyramid, after consistency and lifestyle, food quality ranks as one of the most important diet and lifestyle changes for health and weight loss. Not only does prioritizing whole foods in the diet help to ensure you are organically eating a better balance of macronutrients and micronutrients, but it naturally affects how much you eat.
Whole foods, including fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, eggs, dairy products, poultry, red meat, seafood, and shellfish, are the most nutrient-dense foods and most filling foods. The high protein, fiber, fat, and micronutrients of whole foods positively impact our hunger hormones to increase feelings of fullness compared to ultra-processed foods, which are hyper-palatable and very easy to overeat.
That said, you don’t need to cook everything from scratch if you want to lose weight. There are many healthy store-bought foods and products that are made from whole foods and minimally processed that you can include in a healthy diet. Just be sure to read the label and ingredients to choose the best options possible.
5. You’re not weighing your food.
Weighing your food is the only way to accurately track how many calories you are consuming. Although many weight loss programs will suggest using your hand to estimate portion sizes as a portion control tool, using portion plates, or measuring cups to portion your food, weighing your food on a scale is, by far, the most precise way to track your calorie intake.
To use an analogy, tracking your calorie intake without weighing your food is like tracking your financial budget without looking at your expenses. If you’re trying to save money, you need to know how much money is going into your bank account and how much is leaving your bank account. If you’re tracking your budget on a spreadsheet and estimating your income and expenses, but you never cross reference the numbers to ensure they are accurate, it is highly unlikely your spreadsheet will match your bank account at the end of the month.
While done with good intentions, many people track their food intake in a calorie-counting app but fail to weigh any of the food they are eating. In doing so, they are merely estimating how much food they are consuming and tracking this estimate. So, while their app may say they are eating 1,500 calories, there is no way to confirm this is actually how much they are consuming because they haven’t weighed anything.
In fact, research has shown that people underestimate their calorie intake by up to 20%, and overweight people may underestimate their calorie intake by up to 40% (3). While this can be frustrating to hear, it merely demonstrates the average person’s lack of understanding of portion sizes. Weighing your food, even if only for a brief period, can be a very eye-opening and educational tool to help increase this area of nutrition knowledge and support your weight loss efforts.
6. You’re not tracking cooking oils.
If you’re tracking your food, but you’re not tracking cooking oil, you may be leaving hundreds of calories untracked. In fact, not tracking cooking oils is one of the most common calorie-counting mistakes.
Although olive oil, coconut oil, and even butter are healthy fats that can be included in a healthy diet and support weight loss, cooking oils are some of the most calorie-dense foods. A mere tablespoon of butter and two tablespoons of olive oil add up to 340 calories, which, when left untracked, can remove you from the calorie deficit you think you are in (8, 9).
7. You’re not tracking beverages.
While what you eat is important for weight loss, what you drink is equally important and, unfortunately, all too often ignored. The “calories in” side of the calorie deficit equation comes from the food you eat and the beverages you drink and not tracking calories from beverages can quickly erode any calorie deficit you think you’ve created.
Many beverages are just as calorie-dense, if not more, than food, and sugary beverages are some of the biggest contributors to weight gain (10). Although soda, milkshakes, and alcohol are generally considered unhealthy, high-calorie beverages, even healthy beverages, such as fresh fruit juices, smoothies, and protein shakes contribute to your daily calorie intake.
While these beverages do not need to be avoided for weight loss to occur, their calorie content must be considered and tracked to ensure they are accounted for in your calorie deficit. Even healthy beverages can easily add up to several hundred calories per day. For example, not tracking a green juice (111 calories), small latte (155 calories), and protein shake (165 calories) can increase your total daily calorie intake by 431 calories and remove you from what you thought was a calorie deficit (11, 12, 13).
Moreover, alcohol consumption can make it harder to lose weight. Not only is alcohol high in calories, and mixers often even more, but after a few drinks people are more likely to make poorer food choices, which adds even more calories (14).
8. You’re not eating enough protein.
Protein is the most satiating macronutrient as it impacts several appetite-regulating hormones, namely ghrelin, that increase feelings of fullness, which is incredibly helpful when you are trying to lose weight.
Moreover, protein has the highest thermic effect of food, which is the energy expended to digest, metabolize, absorb, and store the food that you eat (15). This is particularly beneficial for weight loss as it can help to increase calories burned by increasing the body’s resting energy expenditure, which is an integral component in metabolism.
The protein requirements for weight loss are higher due to the greater threat to lean muscle mass from bodily protein being used to battle a calorie deficit. While exactly how much protein you need varies based on the size of the calorie deficit and leanness of the individual, evidence suggests that a protein intake of 0.7-1.0 grams of protein per pound of body weight per day is ideal for weight loss (16).
As for when to eat your protein, the exact breakdown throughout the day is less important than meeting your optimal total daily needs. According to research, the body appears to be more flexible with the distribution of protein intake throughout the day for retaining muscle mass during a calorie deficit, as long as protein intake is met and resistance training is engaged (17).
There are many ways to increase your protein intake, however, generally speaking consuming a source of plant or animal protein at every meal can help ensure you are eating more calories from protein to support weight loss. Eating a high-protein, low-calorie food at breakfast, lunch, and dinner is a simple, yet effective, way to increase your protein intake.
9. You eat at restaurants often.
Everyone loves a good restaurant meal and, while it’s important to treat yourself, eating at restaurants too frequently can hinder weight loss progress.
Tracking your food is pretty easy when you’re making every meal at home, as you can measure and weigh everything, but when you’re eating at restaurants you’re often left to guess and estimate the ingredients and portions of your meals. Not only does this diminish the accuracy of tracking, but restaurants often use more oil and butter than one would use cooking at home, which can quickly increase the calories of a meal.
In fact, one study found that eating at fast food and full-service restaurants was associated with an increase in daily total energy intake of roughly 200 calories and significant increases in saturated fat, sugar, and salt (18). And another study found that meals from non-chain restaurants contained an average of 1,205 calories, which is roughly 60% of the daily calorie needs for an adult female ( 2,000 kcal/day) and roughly 48% of the daily calorie needs for an adult male ( 2,500 kcal/day) (19).
When eating at restaurants frequently, these significant calorie increases can easily pull you out of a calorie deficit and even lead to weight gain. However, if you must, do your best to plan ahead, read the restaurant menu on their website, and consider “banking” some calories by eating a little lighter during the day so you aren’t concerned about going over.
10. You’re misinterpreting the scale.
If you’re trying to lose weight, one of the most important things to understand is that there is a difference between weight loss and fat loss and this difference has a big impact on the scale.
Weight loss refers to a decrease in your body weight from muscle, bone, water, and fat, while fat loss refers to weight loss strictly from fat, which contributes to weight loss.
Many factors can influence weight and it is completely normal to see small fluctuations in weight from one day to the next. Changes in water, salt, and carbohydrate intake and lack of bowel movements can cause weight increases, however, these do not necessarily mean there was an increase in fat tissue. This is especially true for women as they experience natural fluctuations in weight during their menstrual cycle (20).
Moreover, if you’re confident you are consistently in a calorie deficit, eating enough protein, and resistance training, but are not seeing changes on the scale, it is possible that losing fat and building muscle mass simultaneously. This process is known as body recomposition and is often reflected in a loss of inches through loss of body fat and muscle gain but not reflected as weight loss as most scales do not differentiate between the amounts of body fat and muscle you have.
It is for this reason that weighing yourself regularly is important but it is the larger trends that are most important, not the small day-to-day changes. If you’re committed to losing weight, it is best to weigh yourself daily so you can collect more data points, however, instead of comparing today’s weight to yesterday’s weight, compare this month’s weight to next month’s weight. While you will experience weight fluctuations in the process – and they will be frustrating in the moment – the goal is to see a very gradual downward trend in weight over time.
11. Your expectations are unrealistic.
Happiness equals reality minus expectations and this couldn’t be truer than when you’re trying to lose weight.
Unfortunately, many people start a weight loss program with unrealistic expectations and, therefore, become frustrated when the process does not pan out the way they expected. When this happens, they give up on their weight loss efforts and often regain weight any weight they had lost, if not gain more.
The truth is that healthy weight loss is a slow and progressive process. While you can experience rapid drops in weight when you start your weight loss journey, which are often due to water loss, on average, a 2-4% monthly weight loss/fat loss rate is considered normal and sustainable. For instance, if you weigh 170 pounds, a healthy weight loss rate would range from 3.4 to 6.8 pounds per month. Not to mention, every individual has a different healthy set point range that is largely predetermined by genetics, height, sex, age, metabolism, and hormones.
Furthermore, it is normal for weight loss plateaus to occur in the process. A weight loss plateau is when you temporarily stop losing weight and it may occur for several weeks before weight begins trending down again.
For these reasons, you must set clear and realistic expectations before you begin your weight loss journey to reduce frustrations and help you weather the storm when setbacks occur.
12. You’ve not chosen a sustainable approach.
As previously noted, weight loss requires some form of calorie restriction and research has shown that all dietary approaches that restrict calories are equally effective when adhered to.
Unfortunately, too often people pick the dietary approach they think is the “best” or the “quickest” and not the one that suits their personal preferences. Following a low-carb diet when you love carbs or intermittent fasting when you love sharing meals with your family may lead to some short-term success, but is more than likely to fail in the long run simply because you don’t like it.
When choosing a dietary approach for weight loss, personal preferences, schedules, and flexibility should not be ignored. While there are pros and cons to every diet, the pros must outweigh the cons and make logical sense for your lifestyle so you can stick to it.
The reality is that you don’t need to micromanage every meal to achieve fat loss, rather, you need to develop healthy eating habits that you can adhere to consistently to ensure you maintain a calorie deficit. Not only does this help in the weight loss process, but it aids in the long term to ensure you don’t experience weight regain once you stop dieting.
