(Adapted & Modified from an article written by Chad Landers, owner of PUSH Private Fitness in Los Angeles) 

I hear it everyday in my profession.  People frustrated because they are not losing weight while claiming that they are exercising and eating well.  However, the scale doesn't lie, so if you aren't losing weight something is not adding up. 

Here are my top 7 reasons why you might not be losing weight: 

1. You Don't Count Calories. The simple truth is the vast majority of us simply eat too much. We tend to eat too many calorie-dense foods, our portions are too big, and we eat too often.

Consuming the proper number of calories is the single best thing we can do to be successful at fat loss! In fact, it's so critical that my other 6 "Reasons" could really be viewed as 1b, 1c, 1d, 1e , 1f and 1g.  Everything refers back to our ability to control calories.

For fat loss, this means a calorie deficit. In other words, we need to burn more calories daily than we take in. We can create this deficit by eating fewer calories or exercising to burn more calories, or (preferably) a combination of both.

I know you were promised that if you just cut out carbs, or fat, or gluten, or meat, or dairy, or legumes you wouldn't have to worry about calories. Sorry, but it's simply not true.

It's no wonder that most of us have no idea how many calories we are eating. We were told it wasn't important. Yet without this knowledge, we can't possibly create the proper calorie deficit to lose body fat.

The ONLY reason any diet works is that the food choices you are given to eat are typically lower in calories than the foods you were told to eliminate.

But make no mistake, it's not that you stopped eating animal protein or fat or sugar or legumes that got you to lose body fat. It's simply that you created the needed calorie deficit.

Keep a food journal, or use a smart phone app to find out how much you're eating now. You may not need a whole new lifestyle; you may just need to eat less of what you're already eating.  

2. You Demonize Nutrients.  For Atkins, it was carbs; for Pritikin, it was fat; Paleo, it's a lot of foods including legumes, grains, many starchy fruits & vegetables, dairy and more.  Now everybody is also  "gluten free".

The idea that eliminating any single nutrient, food or food group is the key to fat loss is simply ridiculous.  Yes, there could be reasons for an individual to limit or eliminate specific nutrients (e.g. someone with Celiac Disease eliminating gluten). But for most of us, this is completely unnecessary and could even lead to malnutrition.

But demonizing nutrients does sell a LOT of diet books!

 3. You Don't Sleep Enough. Other than the danger of a middle of the night, Ambien-induced food binge, sleeping is hugely important for good health, and even for fat loss. Lack of sleep has been positively correlated with an increase in metabolic syndrome (insulin resistance, hypertension, obesity). Studies have also shown that sleep deprivation is inversely related to body fat (less sleep equals more body fat).

And while dieting, a lack of sleep leads to more of the weight being lost from lean body mass instead of fat mass, definitely not what you want. So get your ZZZZ's!

4. You Follow Someone Else's Diet.  If someone told you that the key to their weight loss was eating mainly lean red meats, raisins and walnuts you'd probably think I'd say that's pretty healthy, right?

While those foods ARE good choices for some people, I HATE them all. What good is the best diet plan if you won't follow it?

The key is to find a diet that works for you, a diet that covers all your nutritional bases while creating the desired calorie deficit. And perhaps most importantly, a diet that you can maintain your weight with once your fat loss goal is achieved.

5. You Exercise To Eat.   For much of my life after sports I fell into this category.  I was obsessed with cardio.  If I didn't get in at least an hour of cardio, I was a wreck.  I liked being able to quantify how many calories I burned (even though most machines grossly over-estimate caloric expenditure).  However,  all it really did was help me justify eating more.  I was stuck in a viscous cycle of working out to eat.  So one hour became two, two became three (this is in college when I had the time).  Still I never lost weight because I then ate more and never created a caloric deficit.  This happens to people training for marathons all of the time.

6.  You Don't Lift Weights.  Going back to my cardio days, one of the other reasons I wasn't losing weight was simply because I was not building lean muscle mass.  In fact, sometimes I was decreasing it by trying to starve myself while doing A LOT of cardio. 

It was not until I started resistance training that my body composition truly started to change.  This I can guarantee....cardio is simply NOT enough!!  You have to add an element of weight training to decrease body fat.

7. Lack of Intensity.   For a long time, we were all told to work at a low-moderate intensity for long periods of time in our "fat burning zone" other wise known as long slow distance (LSD).  Fortunately for those of  us who don't have endless amounts of free time, current research has shown that shorterbursts of  higher intensity interval training (HIIT) results in leaner body composition than LSD.  In fact, 10 minutes of HIIT training has the caloric equivalent of 30 minutes of long distance running and saves your joints from chronic overuse.

This principle of intensity applies to weight lifting too.  Intensity can be achieved by lifting more weight, lifting the same weight for more sets or reps (called "volume"), decreasing rest periods, and even lifting a weight faster (only appropriate for certain exercises).

That said, there is still a place for LSD training if that's what you enjoy.  For many, that's their time to think and decompress.