3 Reasons Why It's So Hard To Lose Weight

Losing weight is hard. On one hand, we have people who think that it's really just some basic math: more calories out and less calories in; accomplish by eating healthier and exercising more. But if it is so easy for everyone to just do it, why is almost a third of America still obese? Well, here are three reasons why it's so hard not being fat.

3. Motivation is Fleeting

Every year in January, us Americans like to make New Year's Resolutions. Losing weight has been one of the top resolutions just about every single year since... probably forever (I only searched back as far as 2010 because I'm lazy, but I think it's safe to assume it's forever).

More importantly, everyone knows it's dumb to do it because less than 10% actually achieve these goals. Even worse, more than half that have achieved it actually gain some of it back after six months. So why do we still do it?

We get motivated.

Unfortunately, motivation does not last long. To understand it, you have to know where it comes from and why it leaves. To fix it, you have to figure out how to get it and how to keep it from going.

Motivation comes from desire. If you feel a strong desire to look thinner or just be healthier (possibly from looking in the mirror in the morning, or if you're more desperate like me, it's every time you walk past something reflective like buildings and windows), you build the sudden motivation to lose that weight and work toward your desire.

However, desire can also be your enemy. You desire to look great and be healthy, and to do that, you have to lose weight. To lose weight, you have to exercise more and eat less (because that's what everyone tells us). Okay, so let's start working on exercising more first. Maybe you schedule time in the morning for a light jog around the block. It's just something simple to start out with. But to do that, you have to take that time away from something else. Your morning routine is probably already limited the least amount of minutes spent before you go to work, so it looks like you'll have to wake up earlier. But let me ask you this:

Is your desire to sleep and feel that totally refreshing feeling more than your desire to look great and be healthy? Because if it's not, especially in the morning when you alarm is going off an hour before it usually does, you're going to hit that snooze button and you're not going to jog that morning. And damnit if you don't make excuses to yourself to justify why you'd rather sleep instead of exercise.

So while you feel that desire right now, and you're feeling motivated right now because of it, that desire and motivation can get easily wiped away when you find out that what you're trying to replace with exercise is actually more desirable when the time it actually counts comes.

Fortunately, changing your diet is less work than integrating exercising into your lifestyle because you aren't replacing the activity of eating; you're just changing what you eat. Even then, that'll lead you to discover...

2. Your Body is Working Against You

We are still learning about our bodies because we are weird, complex organisms. Even if you've managed to maintain a consistent diet and exercising regimen for the first couple of weeks because you found a way to keep convincing yourself that a better body is more important than sleeping in, you're still at risk for not shedding those extra pounds. Don't worry, it's not really your conscious fault.

Losing weight is more than just a physical battle with your body's biology. It's also a horribly twisted mental and emotional one. You're battling your own body in every possible way. You have to constantly fight to uphold your willpower to not get dessert, and doing so depletes your energy and will exhaust you.

One of the newest theories is how your body even sabotages your efforts because scientists think your body already has a predetermined weight in which it maintains. While I personally don't believe that theory in full, they aren't completely off the mark. Fat cells in your body produce a hormone called leptin, which is responsible for suppressing appetite. Cells in the lining of your stomach produce a hormone called ghrelin that increases appetite. When you start to lose weight, you also start to create an imbalance between the two, decreasing leptin and increasing ghrelin, essentially making you hungrier the more weight you lose, and making you work harder mentally to maintain your willpower in not overeating. This is why it's so important to eat fibrous foods like fruits and vegetables because it can help you curb your cravings for more, and ease your fight with your own appetite.

Portion control is another biggie. If you're on a diet plan where you're supposed to eat a certain calorie deficit, controlling portions is easier than counting calories. I tried counting calories once, and I quickly grew bored because it's very tedious to keep track of what you've eaten, how many calories per serving, and how many servings you ate, blah blah blah. It sucks. So instead, I try to only take two thirds of what I'd normally consume and leave it at that.

I've also learned to stop eating when my body makes a heavy sigh because it's actually an early indicator of being full. More often than not, I won't actually feel full until 10 or 15 minutes after, and by then, I would have regretted continuing to eat because now my stomach hurts.

So now that you've devised an dieting plan, you will learn that...

1. Exercising Sucks

I can't be the only person that thinks this. And if I am, then go have fun getting a runner's high because I'm pretty sure I'm incapable of it. For me, exercising really sucks. I've decided that I'm just really bad at it, I guess. I've tried running on the treadmill, and running outside, but I can barely make it three minutes before I feel like I'm dying and I slow to a walk. I don't have asthma, so I don't know what my problem is.

Even just walking, I start to feel pain in my calves after 10 minutes, and my left foot will start cramping as if I was swimming after 15. I really just suck at exercising. I will usually walk for 30-45 minutes when possible (I average 15-30 minutes). And the one time I decided to just say, "F**k my foot, I'm going to continue walking on it anyway," I cried in pain after taking my shoes off in the locker room and couldn't flex any of my toes for two hours after. So I haven't had any good experiences when pushing myself.

I understand, I need to start out slow and build endurance, but how slow is slow? When do I start building endurance? My fiancé got me a FitBit One over a year ago, and while I feel like I've been less sedentary because I'm more aware of my activity, I haven't really shed a single pound. Perhaps being aware of my activity has convinced me that I've been doing more than before I had a FitBit, but I actually haven't. So here I am left wondering why I'm doing all this work and seeing exactly zero results. Really take a hard look at what you've been doing each week and consider... did you really make your 10k step goal every day? No? Did you really eat a 500 calorie deficit every day? No? Then this is why you're not seeing anything. Every little thing counts, and you need the willpower, nay the desire, to maintain that.

So yes, while it probably does just boil down to eating less and being more active to live a healthier life and lose weight, doing so wreaks havoc on your mental state and that's why it's so hard to maintain this goal.

By the way, I'm no success story (yet, being optimistic here). I'm still trying to lose 40lbs before my wedding in December. It's the same 40lbs I tried losing for the last year and a half.