Why Am I Not Making Progress?

A healthy diet is important.

Exercising regularly is important. Being consistent is important. But let’s face it, you can have it all dialed-in, you’re doing everything you should be, and nothing is changing. In some cases, you may even be going in the opposite direction of your goal. This is extremely frustrating, to say the least, but it happens to more people than we realize. We don’t often hear about it because people don’t usually share their lack of progress in the same way they do their progress. When things are going as planned - or better - we usually see progress reports on social media, often accompanied by progress photos. But if we’re not moving towards our goal - or worse, moving away from our goal - we tend to be pretty silent about that. But I want to assure you, it happens far more often than you think. You don’t hear about it, you don’t see the posts on social media so you might be left to think you’re the only one. Here’s a fact: the emotions going through your body, will have a direct impact on your physical appearance. Anxiety, stress, grief, sadness - these things all manifest differently in different people, however, they can be the leading cause in your lack of progress. For some people this looks like weight gain or loss (gain is most common in women), loss of muscle, increase of body fat. Our bodies are not designed to be under extreme stress for long periods of time. Our “fight or flight” response (our body’s reaction to stress or danger) is not supposed to be a regular thing but these days it is for many people. We are in situations by choice or not, that cause our stress hormones to be activated on a regular basis - not just to a stressful or dangerous situation. You may be experiencing this daily. In addition, we tend to add caffeine by way of coffee, sodas or energy drinks to get us through these stressful periods that really zap the energy out of us. On top of the stress we are constantly fatigued. This is a recipe for weight loss disaster. Adding the caffeine to the mix increases the hormonal response by our adrenal system (responsible for our “fight or flight” response).

So without getting too technical in this post, what does this mean for you? Simply put, it means that tending to our mental and emotional health is of utmost important to keeping our physical body in optimal condition (whatever that looks like for YOUR body). Rest and self care is critical. If you find yourself moving in the opposite direction of your goals, it may be time to take a look at your lifestyle and consider how you can make some changes to reduce the stress/anxiety in your life.