3 Ways Exercise Can Actually Slow Down Your Weight Loss Results

Every time I sit down with a busy, time poor woman who’s been struggling with her body confidence for years I always ask:

“Why do you think you’ve failed so many times in the past to lose the weight and keep it off?”

Within these answers there are a lot of common threads – I hear reasons like:

– I’m looking for a deeper cause to my weight gain, because I’ve lost it before, but I keep gaining it back
– I keep self sabotaging, I can stick to a diet for a couple of weeks, then I just seem to get distracted…
– I don’t even know – not enough will power?

and in today’s video I want to talk about the reason I often get which goes something like:

“I guess I just love food too much and I’m too lazy – I exercise but I’m obviously not pushing myself hard enough”

And this answer is very telling to me…

Because even if a woman is super hard working, smart and successful in other areas of her life – women
have been taught to take their bodily condition as a personal failing;

Something that is evidence of why they’re broken and need to be fixed.

When in reality, the problem lies in the fact that the traditional weight loss methodology that tells us:

“Exercise is just about calories in and calories out – eating less and exercising more.”

When in actual fact, especially if you’re already stressed and your hormones are in flight or fight mode

– exercise can actually make you even more tired, struggle even more with your cravings and ultimately go backwards!

Check out the video below for the 3 reasons why exercise can actually slow down your weight loss results…

Transcript

Hey there Wonder Woman,

In this video I want to share with you 3 main reasons why doing exercise actually can decelerate and create a hazard and obstacle to losing weight.

One of the things that I just read in a really awesome book about ketosis was there’s scientific studies that show that exercise isn’t conducive to weight loss. That was using the example of recreational marathon runners and seeing how heavy and overweight they were – and they put it down to the compensation effect.

1. The Compensation Effect

It can happen consciously where you go, “Well, I’ve been to the gym today so I can get a boost juice and

a little protein bliss ball full of dates and cacao – and a bunch of really sweetened high-packed energy food.”

You can really smash 300 calories out. And if you flog yourself in 30 minutes, maybe you can go to spin class and smash out 600 calories. But you can consume that 600 calories just in your everyday routine throughout the rest of the day because you’re exhausted and you’re reaching for those pep-ups because you have so fatigued your adrenals.

If you’re reaching out for help from us, it means that you’re not getting the results that you want.

There are so many women who are talking about working with us in the Body Confidence Project and sometimes they’re saying to me, “Well, you know, I already go to F45 five times a week and I go to Pilates twice a week. I just don’t know if i can fit this in.”

If you’re reaching out for help from us, it means that you’re not getting the results that you want. Because exercise is just calories in, calories out, eat less, exercise more, right? And so we put these standards on ourselves – but actually, that’s also the barrier to why you’re not the results that you want.

2. Being a slave to the idea that weight loss is just about exercising more

The test that I use is if you already had your ideal lean, curvy, athletic, fit, toned, vitality-feeling body, would you be training that often? Would you put all those exercise sessions between you and your ideal body?

If you already had your results, your ideal body, you would give yourself a break more often.

It’s different for different people – but when you actually check in with yourself, you’ll notice that if you already had your results, your ideal body, you would give yourself a break more often. You wouldn’t be such a slave. You would listen to your body and go, “You know what, I actually don’t feel like doing that” or “You know what, I actually really want to dedicate myself to one Pilates class and maybe just a couple of F45 sessions.”

And that really is the key. Because if you’re doing something as a means to an end, you’re doing something and you’re doing a process, and it’s like you’re thinking about an on and off switch and what goes up must come down – and that’s what ricochets in the all-or-nothing.

3. The Safety Weight Set Point

The other main reason that I want to share with you as to why more exercise can actually be a barrier to weight loss is the idea of having a safety weight set point. It’s a stubborn set point that no matter how much exercise or how hard you try with your dieting, it’s like trying to pull back a freight train; you have to put so much energy into the effort it takes to lose weight.

But as soon as you relax, it’s like flicking the rubber band back, you just go back to exactly where you were – if not a couple kilos heavier. And that’s because there’s something in your subconscious mind that’s saying that you are in fight or flight mode. And what we help you do is get into rest and digest mode so that you can absorb the nutrients, so that you can let that low chronic anxiety.

You know, I’ve lost 30 kilos since the birth of my child almost two years ago and I haven’t been able to do hardly any of the exercise that I used to do. And I haven’t been able to employ any of the diet techniques that I’ve learnt in the past.

I had to allow a place to nourish myself back to health, to release those excess outer layers, so that my body knew it was safe for me to be slim.

The number one thing that I knew was I had to listen to my body and I had to think about the environmental stress factors that were contributing to any of that fight or flight. I had to allow a place to nourish myself back to health, to release those excess outer layers, so that my body knew it was safe for me to be slim.

Notice right now I’m taking some time out. I just had a beautiful lamb casserole with some broccoli, a handful of macadamia nuts, I’ve got a bit of coconut water and I’m about to go walk the dogs. And that’s about the amount of exercise I can get done today – I can go for a 30-minute walk with the dogs – but the whole time I’m reducing the stresses that kick off my body’s hormonal fat switch so that I’m not in that fight or flight response, not in that starvation mode.

If you can nail these 3 things of realizing that exercise actually consciously can make you eat more food, or even subconsciously make you more lethargic, make you reach for craving foods like will-powering and gearing yourself up to when you have to be more motivated and finding yourself lost in this sort of suck hole of self-sabotage, it’s probably because you’ve been trying too hard to get the results.

And that’s why so many ladies who are worried about the time that it’s going to take to get the results, it’s actually going to save you heaps time. I’m going to save you heaps of time and heaps of money.

When you pull back everything, all those resources, and remember you don’t have to fight for your birthright, your body’s safe weight set point just needs to lower itself, lower itself. Relax. Just chill, baby. Chill. It’s like you create a new homeostasis for yourself.

Wouldn’t you like to know a way to have less effort in trying to force things, more time to spend with your family and loved ones?

So I’m going to leave that with you – because wouldn’t you like to know a way to have less effort in trying to force things, more time to spend with your family and loved ones?

And for everybody who says they really love intense exercise, look, I’ve been an elite athlete for 15 years. I freaking loved intense exercise but it came at a great cost to my hormones, to my stress levels – and I used to have to fight really hard and I also wasn’t very kind to myself. I had very much a conditional self-approval. I only ever thought I was as good as my performance.

If you want to find a way to just be able to let your subconscious mind take over and have that lean, healthy, slim version of you on autopilot, reach out to us and find out more about the Body Confidence Project.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE BODY CONFIDENCE PROJECT