The first and most important reason why you are not burning fat is because you are eating too many calories. Plain and simple the only way to lose body fat is to be in a caloric deficit. You need to be expending more calories than you take in. A lot of this has to do with calories that you don't notice.
Your Metabolism Will Slow Down to Store Fat
The more you work out or manage your calorie intake to lose weight, the more your metabolism wants to compensate by slowing down to maintain your current weight, this is called metabolic compensation. It kicks in to preserve and store fat for future energy.
A sufficient calorie deficit causes fats to be released from fat cells and used as energy. Exercise amplifies this process by increasing blood flow to muscles and fat cells, releasing fats to be used for energy in muscle cells at a more rapid rate and increasing energy expenditure ( 4 ).
Mostly, losing weight is an internal process. You will first lose hard fat that surrounds your organs like liver, kidneys and then you will start to lose soft fat like waistline and thigh fat. The fat loss from around the organs makes you leaner and stronger.
One of the primary reasons losing weight is harder to do as you grow older is due to a slowing metabolism. It is estimated that your metabolism slows down 5% every decade after you turn 40. This can occur because of the loss of muscle (or sarcopenia) which plays a crucial part in maintaining your metabolism.
There are some medical conditions that can drive weight gain and make it much harder to lose weight. These include hypothyroidism, polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), and sleep apnea. Certain medications can also make weight loss harder — or even cause weight gain.
Stalled weight loss efforts can be attributed to many factors, such as hormones, stress, age and metabolism. “As you age, your metabolism slows down and stress can produce cortisol, which leads to weight gain,” she says. “It's a normal process, but something we have to constantly monitor.
“The set point theory says that the body will settle at a specific weight where it likes to be,” says MD Anderson Senior Exercise Physiologist Carol Harrison. “And it will defend itself so that it stays at this specific weight.”
Abdominal fat cells tend to have the receptors that do not allow for easy release of fat; this is the key to why belly fat is so resistant to weight loss efforts. Eventually, if your overall body fat percentage drops low enough, your body will begin burning the fat in your belly.
When the scale doesn't move, you are losing body fat while gaining muscle. Your weight may stay the same, even as you lose inches, a sign that you're moving in the right direction.
After eight hours without eating, your body will begin to use stored fats for energy. Your body will continue to use stored fat to create energy throughout the remainder of your 24-hour fast. Fasts that last longer than 24 hours may lead to your body to start converting stored proteins into energy.
In summary, Women are the strongest between 26 and 37 years of age. Men are the strongest between 26 and 35 years of age. But of course there are individual differences between athletes and some people peak before or after that age window.
According to the study by supplement company Forza, turning 30 is the biggest inspiration for both men and women to lose weight.
Muscle is denser than fat, and as it is more compact within your body, as you gain muscle mass, you end up looking thinner, no matter your physical weight. So, if you've been doing a lot of strength training lately, it's likely this is the reason that you're looking fantastic but not dropping those numbers.
While everyone loses weight differently, dropping as little as 3 to 5 pounds can show up on your face first, Eboli says.
In terms of how your body looks, “it usually takes 4 weeks for your friends to notice weight loss, and 6–8 weeks for you to notice,” says Ramsey Bergeron, a certified personal trainer. “Your friends who don't see you every day are much more likely to see a change than someone you're around all the time,” he adds.
Dehydration causes your body to retain excess water, which can lead to 5 pounds of weight gain overnight (5). When you feel thirsty and drink a lot of fluid at once, you'll absorb the extra fluid quickly and it shows up on the scale within 24 hours.
Check and make sure the floor where the scale is being used is level. If scale is still reading incorrectly, it may be out of calibration. To double-check take a known weight and place it on the scale to see what it is reading. If the scale is not within tolerance, the scale may need to be calibrated.
“Your weight won't be consistent if you weigh yourself on Friday and Monday,” she says. “Many people have a different routine on the weekends. They might eat out more, drink alcohol or snack more. Compare that to Friday, if you've been eating consistently for five days, and you'll see a big difference.”
When this happens that excess energy gets stored in the body as fat. You'll never be able to get rid of your stomach fat – or any stubborn fat for that matter – unless you're burning more energy than you're taking in (typically through a sensible combination of diet and exercise).