Why Arent You Losing Weight?

     You may think that outside factors are causing your never ending weight gain and you're continually making excuses about your ability to lose weight. You're in fact self-sabotaging yourself and you may not even know it. Here are some tips to help get back on the straight and narrow.

1.You're intolerant
Overweight people who didn't lose weight on a low calorie diet lost an average of 17kgs in 12 weeks when they cut out foods they were intolerant to, found research in the Middle East Journal of Family Medicine. Get your local doctor to give you a food intolerance test or do it privately with foodintoleranceuk.com to see if any of the 131 foods on their list are making you a big boy.

2. Progress makes you regress
Dropping a few kilos can make you reward yourself with food. That's because a decrease in body fat results in a greater desire to eat. Research in the journal Appetite found this desire increases with in line with your weight loss. The solution: when you have a craving for a beer, satisfy it with a full strength Stella rather than a pansy low carb Michelob.

3. You stick to light weights and high reps
Heavy weights bulk you up, right? Wrong. Sticking to high reps all the time robs your muscles of a constant challenge. "Your muscles can grow content and plateau, and doing low reps burns more calories after you leave the gym," says Rich Philipp's, trainer at Ultimate Performance. "For the fastest fat-burning results alternate between a week of high reps (12-20) and a week of low reps (6-10)." The new challenge will keep you shifting more calories with each workout.

4. You're not chewing
Break out the Wrigley's to your quell hunger pangs. People who chewed gum for an hour a day, ate fewer calories at lunch, felt less hungry throughout the day and used 5% more calories because they felt more energetic, found a study at the University of Rhode Island. Minty breath just got another upside.

5. You have no limits
People ate up to 24% less - but felt as satisfied - when they were forced to pay closer attention to the experience of eating by being blindfolded, found a study journal Obesity Research. That's a bit extreme, even for us, but try closing your eyes for 10 seconds mid-meal to gauge your hunger. No longer feel hungry? Then stop eating.

6. You have weekend benders
You probably know that you need to sleep more to slim more. But giving the nod the nudge for a weekend (less than 4 hours a night) reduces the satiety signalling hormone leptin by 18% and increased the cravings for starchy foods, like biscuits, to jump by 45%, found a study by the University of Chicago. The V-festival might be a riot but if you want to lose fat, only book a one-day pass and stay out late just one night a week rather two nights a week.

7. You think playing Wii sports is exercise
We're not the Jetsons yet - you still need real exercise. A study published in the British Medical Journal found active games like Wii sports only burnt about 60 calories per hour, which is only 2% more than inactive games you toggle on consoles like the Xbox360. That means it would take you about 9 hours to burn off a small Mars bar. Stop being an Avatar, get out the house and enjoy the real world.

8. You avoid protein and amino acids before cardio
So you already know you need a protein shake before a weights session, but you also need protein before cardio, too. After all, when you've dropped the fat you want to show lean muscle, not bones. "To preserve your muscle, take 6-8g of amino acids before a hard cardio session, especially when working out early in the morning on an empty stomach," says Philipp's. They won't bounce in your stomach, like an early morning protein shake so you'll feel comfortable enough to go longer and will save your muscle mass.

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