Not losing weight intermittent fasting: Understanding common reasons

Intermittent fasting is considered an effective approach to weight loss that also brings a lot of health benefits. Clearly, not losing weight intermittent fasting can feel very frustrating. However, the truth is that it’s not uncommon. Most commonly women might not see progress because of the following reasons:

• Poor understanding of intermittent fasting and its rules;
• Wrong choice of IF pattern;
• Overeating during eating windows;
• Poor food choices;
• Lack of consistency;
• Lack of physical activity;
• Underlying health conditions;
• Emotional factors and stress.

Luckily, it’s possible to overcome these issues and see progress if you educate yourself and optimize your fasting approach.

Intermittent fasting is a dietary approach that has been trending for a while. Its core idea is to get your body into a fasting state and maintain this state for a certain time to stimulate weight loss and gain various health benefits. This eating plan in many of its forms is incredibly popular thanks to its effectiveness.

“But why am I not losing weight on intermittent fasting?” Let’s try to find the answer!

{{button}}

Understanding Intermittent Fasting

Before we delve into exploring the possible reasons for not losing weight on intermittent fasting (IF), let’s get clear on the definition and mechanism of IF work first.

In a nutshell, intermittent fasting is an eating approach that implies switching between fasting and eating windows according to the selected schedule. The most common IF patterns include:

• 12:12
• 14:10
• 16:8
• 18:6

The first number in these patterns indicates the number of subsequent hours a day during which you need to fast, whereas the second one indicates the number of hours during which you can eat. There are also alternative approaches that don’t imply everyday fasting–for example, you can have a prolonged 24-hour fast once or twice a week.

How Does It Work?

Basically, the idea behind IF is to restrict food intake to let your body use fat stores for energy more quickly and efficiently. Besides, longer fasting windows often imply meal skipping, which can help you generally reduce your daily calorie intake.

Thanks to these mechanisms, IF is considered a good solution for weight management. Additionally, this dietary approach is known for offering a number of health benefits, including improved insulin sensitivity, management of chronic conditions, and reduced risk of type 2 diabetes.

Important Disclaimer

Thanks to its potential weight-loss benefits, many women choose intermittent fasting to attain their body goals, in the first place. Naturally, if they notice that they are not losing weight while intermittent fasting, it can feel very frustrating.

Yet, the truth is that IF does not guarantee weight loss. It can be an efficient tool that helps you achieve your goals but it’s not a magic pill that will do everything for you.

Intermittent Fasting Not Losing Weight: 7 Common Causes

If you’ve been trying IF for some time and don’t see progress, it’s natural to ask yourself – “Why am I not losing weight intermittent fasting?” To help you address this concern and find a solution that works, we’ve reviewed some of the most common causes of poor weight-loss progress on IF:

1. Insufficient Understanding of a Fasting Concept

Although following intermittent fasting is pretty easy–avoid food during your fasting windows and enjoy your meals during your eating windows–there are still quite many pitfalls waiting for you out there. In particular, most challenges are associated with what you can and can’t do in your fasting windows.

Technically “breaking a fast” means consuming any calories during your fasting window, meaning you can’t have food during this time. Nevertheless, there are some not-too-obvious things that can break your fast, such as some medications/food supplements or alcohol. If you consume things that break a fast, you may not be getting the benefits you want from it, including weight loss.

2. Wrong Choice of an IF Schedule

As you already know, there are quite a few ways to do intermittent fasting, and the truth is–there is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to choosing the right schedule. When getting started with IF, it’s important to consider such individual factors as your body type.

Your body type can affect how fat is stored in your body and how easily you can get rid of it. Respectively, this individual characteristic can affect the effectiveness of IF. So if you are wondering “Why am I not losing weight on intermittent fasting,” analyze your body type and ensure that you pick a suitable fasting pattern:

• Ectomorphs - 12:12 or 14:10
• Mesomorphs - 16:8
• Endomorphs - 18:6; or 24-hour fasting once or twice a week

3. Overeating During Your Eating Windows

Although intermittent fasting can be a powerful auxiliary tool for helping you lose weight, it’s important to remember that weight loss and fat-burning only happen when you are in a calorie deficit–you consume fewer calories than your body spends.

What does this mean? When you fast during your fasting windows but then make up for all the skipped calories during your eating window, you may simply consume too many calories and hence, not lose weight. To avoid this, you need to engage in calorie counting and stay in a deficit.

4. Poor Food Choices

When getting started with IF, many people falsely believe that it’s solely about when you eat and not about what you eat. Indeed, intermittent fasting requires you to follow a specific eating schedule, without breaking it. This is important for seeing the process. But that’s just a part of success.

If you stick to the schedule but make poor food choices, this can greatly hinder the result. For example, you may have just one meal per day and fast for the rest of the time. Still, if you opt for high-calorie, low-nutrient foods, such as junk food, sugars, and so on, you may be fasting and not losing weight. Such a diet is also unhealthy and can lead to malnutrition.

5. Lack of Consistency

If you aren’t new to weight loss, you must know that it’s always a time-consuming process that requires consistency. Whether you are exercising or following a diet, the only way to achieve visible results is to stay dedicated to your efforts.

The same is true for intermittent fasting. If you are not losing weight intermittent fasting 18 6, chances are that you are just not consistent enough. Analyze your efforts to see the possible errors. Maybe, your fasting schedule is fluctuating or you allow yourself to indulge in too frequent cheat days. Things like this can break the entire progress.

6. Lack of Physical Activity

Although your diet plays an important role in weight loss and management, it’s important not to rely solely on it. Physical activity remains an important part of success for a number of reasons:

• It increases your calorie expenditure;
• It speeds up metabolism;
• It helps you retain muscle mass;
• It improves the quality of the body.

On top of that, regular exercising also supports your cardiovascular health, improves mental well-being, and generally helps you feel better and more energized. So if you notice that you are not losing weight while fasting, rethink your daily activity as it might be a part of the problem.

7. Underlying Health Issues

Lastly, if you are consistently engaged in intermittent fasting and not losing weight despite your efforts, there might be a more significant issue behind this. Certain health conditions, such as PCOS, thyroid, insulin resistance, and others, can make it much harder to lose weight.

If that’s the case, it’s recommended to consult with a healthcare specialist to develop a personalized treatment plan and find a healthy and safe weight loss approach that will work for you.

Emotional Factors of Not Losing Weight Intermittent Fasting

As you can see, a big part of concerns that sound like “not losing weight intermittent fasting 18/6,” can be explained by common mistakes, such as overeating, disregarding physical activity, and making poor food choices. Of course, there also might be underlying health issues that hold you back from achieving your goals. But that’s not all.

Exploring the possible reasons why IF doesn’t work, it’s also important to consider emotional factors that affect the result. These can include:

• Emotional eating - The emotional relationship with food is when you make up for good or bad emotions with the help of food. This eating pattern can greatly sabotage your weight-loss efforts unless you gain back control over your emotions and eating patterns.
• Chronic stress - A chronic state of stress keeps your cortisol levels all-time high. This can trigger physiological changes, including weight gain or difficulty in losing weight.
• Unrealistic expectations - Lastly, if you get overly concerned about not losing weight with intermittent fasting after a very short period of time, this might be just because of unrealistic expectations that contradict your physical abilities.

Fasting But Not Losing Weight: Simple Tips to Overcome the Issue

Now that you know about the possible issues, let us give you a few simple tips on how to overcome them and make your fasting progress more prominent:

• Educate yourself more and figure out what you should eat and drink on IF to stimulate weight loss.
• Accurately calculate your desirable calorie deficit and track everything you eat and drink to stay in it.
• Start being more active and integrate exercise into your daily routine.
• Experiment with different stress-coping techniques to manage your cortisol and emotional health.
• Stock up on patience and don’t set unrealistic expectations because they only add more stress and don’t help you achieve your goals.

FAQ

Is it normal if Im fasting but not losing weight?

Yes, it’s normal. Although it can feel frustrating and disappointing, not losing weight while fasting is not rare and it’s totally okay because fasting itself isn’t a guarantee of weight loss but rather a tool that can help with it.

Why am I not losing weight while fasting?

There might be a few reasons for that. Most commonly, the IF progress is undermined by such common mistakes as not understanding the concept of fasting correctly, overeating during your fasting windows, choosing a wrong IF pattern, making poor food choices, being inconsistent, and not embracing regular physical activity. Additionally, slow or zero progress can be a result of emotional factors or underlying health conditions.

I'm not losing weight intermittent fasting, what can I do?

Unless it’s caused by an underlying health condition that requires the guidance of a healthcare specialist, you can stimulate your progress by educating yourself, improving your food choices, and starting to count calories. It’s also important to find effective stress management techniques to eliminate emotional factors.

Conclusion

Wondering why you are not losing weight with intermittent fasting? You are definitely not alone there. IF can be a powerful tool for weight loss but it’s not a bulletproof method to lose weight unless you find the right approach to it.

After reading this guide, you should be able to detect the real cause behind not seeing the results of your efforts. Use this knowledge to rethink your approach to fasting and gain greater results in the long run!

{{pink-banner}}