Reasons why you're not losing weight

Every day, you work for hours in the gym, eat only healthy food and you have completely given up your craving for desserts. Still, the weighing scale refuses to budge.

What could possibly be wrong? Experts suggest that weight loss is much more than adhering to a restrictive eating pattern or following recent exercise fads. It is a continuous process that involves daily lifestyle habits. Apart from this, it also depends on the incorporation of the right techniques. Here's a scan of the top 6 reasons why your weight loss program is not working for you.

Diet mistakes: You may be avoiding any kind of fried, spicy snacks. But, have you been replacing them with whole-grain versions that are high in sugar and calorie content? Also, if you believe that skipping a meal or two a day saves calories, you are wrong again. Studies and surveys have shown that people who skip meals often end up eating more calories during the course of the day. The ideal healthy diet plan for an individual should be three meals a day, with adequate and nutritious snacks in between that cater to hunger pangs and energy dips.

Low intensity cardio: Perhaps, one of the biggest saboteurs of weight loss programs are low-intensity cardio workouts. Simply sticking to a routine cardio session is not enough. You need to make it more challenging by increasing intensity and adding complexity. In order to break a sweat and attain visible results, you need to increase the intensity of your workouts to around 65-85 per cent of your maximum heart rate.

Excessive intake of liquid calories: Any form of liquid calories - be it alcohol, tea, coffee or sweetened juice, can reverse all your weight-loss effort and contribute to weight gain. As for instance, a mere 12 ounce of soda can add 150 calories or a 12 ounce of regular beer can add 160 calories. Hence, it is advisable to switch such products with lighter drink options like skimmed milk or vegetable juices.

Lack of willpower: Ultimately, everything boils down to your will power. If you are not motivated enough or if you are only a passive participant, then trust us, no amount of diet control or exercise can help you to lose weight. Merely showing up in the gym is not sufficient. You need to adhere to your fitness program with all your heart and mind. However, it is important that you find out the difference between training and overtraining. Sometimes, a reduced willpower may also indicate an underlying health condition or your body's need to recover from strain or stress.

Too much stress: Stress of any form - physical stress or mental stress may act as a major hindrance to your weight-loss plans. It causes the production of the hormone cortisol in the body that leads to decreased insulin resistance and increased accumulation of fats in the body. To avoid this, practice some basic relaxation techniques prior to engaging in any weight-loss modules.

Improper sleep: Just like stress, lack of sleep may increase the production of fat storing hormone, cortisol, in the body. A number of researches have also suggested that any form of interrupted sleep patterns may lead to weight gain in an individual.

Best antidote to stress is mindfulness

The best antidote to stress is mindfulness, existing in the here and now, not in the past or future, suggest meditation gurus. Researchers have now drawn a framework of four key components to help explain these positive effects.

Mindfulness, an essential part of Indian yoga traditions, has entered the mainstream as people try to find ways to combat stress and improve their quality of life. It is suggested the meditation can have benefits for health and performance, including improved immune function, reduced blood pressure, and enhanced cognitive function.

But how is it that a single practice can have such wide-ranging effects on well-being? The study draws on the existing scientific literature to build a framework on explanation, reports the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science, citing a Harvard University statement.

Study author Britta Holzel, of Justus Liebig University and Harvard Medical School, suggests the goal is to "unveil the conceptual and mechanistic complexity of mindfulness, providing the `big picture` by arranging many findings like the pieces of a mosaic".

Holzel and co-authors point out that what we think of as mindfulness is not actually a single skill, but rather a multi-faceted mental practice that encompasses several mechanisms.

They specifically identify four key components of mindfulness that may account for its effects: attention regulation, body awareness, emotion regulation, and sense of self.

Together, these components help us attend to and deal with the mental and physiological effects of stress in ways that are non-judgmental.

Although these components are theoretically distinct, they are closely intertwined. Improvement in attention regulation, for example, may directly facilitate our awareness of our physiological state. Body awareness, in turn, helps us to recognize the emotions we are experiencing.

Effective mindfulness meditation requires training and practice and it has distinct measurable effects on our subjective experiences, our behavior, and our brain function.