Why You’re Not Making Progress
I think we can all agree that one of the most upsetting feelings is when after so many weeks of hard work, you feel like you don’t really have a lot to show for it. You’ve put in tons of time lifting weights, tracking your nutrition, setting time aside for walks, and you’ve tried your best to get to bed on time. But now, it’s been maybe a month… 2 months… 3? - and you feel like no matter what you do, you just can’t seem to continue making progress.
Kinda sucks, huh?
I totally get it man… it does suck. When you’re putting your heart and soul into trying to change yourself, but it feels like you’re not getting the return on your investment. Well, there is good news - It’s not as cut & dry as saying “I’m just not cut out for this”, as there are actually several potential reasons why you might not be seeing progress. And luckily for you, that’s what we’ll be going over in this article.
1. You are consistent… but only on the days where you feel motivated
I’m just going to be 100% blunt in this article. I don’t want to sugar coat anything as that may keep me from saying what needs to be said. But one of the most common reasons why people don’t make progress is because they’re only consistent part-time. Think about it, if you’re working part time vs full time, then you may be missing out on some of the benefits such as health insurance coverage, your 401k, and/or dental coverage. It’s the same thing when it comes to your health. If you only worked out, tracked your calories, or prepped your food when you felt like it (part time hours), then you may be missing out on a good chunk of the benefits cause you’d only have maybe one or two good days per week. And truth be told man, you very well may only feel motivated 10% of the time - There are some people who just don’t like exercising, which is okay. But it’s important that we still do it regardless, even if that means taking out what could be considered “optimal” and replacing it with something we do enjoy.
Humans are not meant to run solely off motivation - it just doesn’t exist. And the reason? Motivation is an emotion, and like any other emotion, it’s a temporary feeling. You’re not walking around all day under one emotional umbrella, you’re experiencing multiple feelings at any given point. You’re annoyed when you’re stuck in traffic, laugh when someone tells a good joke, sad when you hear about a tragic story on the news, and excited when your dog greets you at the door. And like other emotions, there are times when you feel motivated, and times when you don’t.
So why I’m saying this is you, is cause there’s a TON of people who fall into the trap of thinking they’ll always feel motivated. Which in their defense, is understandable. When you first buy a gym membership, hire a personal trainer, or look up a workout plan, it’s exciting! You’re thinking about all the possibilities, and where you’ll be in 3 months time. You feel this rush…this inner drive to just get after it. But once that honeymoon phase wears off, you’ll realize that it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. It’s actually quite the opposite. And depending on where you live (I’m in boston), there will be days where it’s raining, snowing, or it’s raining and snowing at the same time. But you still gotta show up, do your workouts, cook your food, and get your steps in.
One tip I can give you that really helped me is to give yourself 1 single thing that no matter what, you WILL complete, regardless of the weather, time, or how tired you feel. This is something that you will do on a consistent basis.
For me, that was getting 10k steps every day.
Now, I wanna preface by stating that the 10k step goal was solely for myself, and I understand that others may not have the same opportunities to get those steps in. A goal for you could be a to cook yourself at least 1 meal a day, make your bed every morning, do 5 pushups upon waking up, eat at least 1 serving of vegetables with every meal, include a 10 minute walk at lunch time, or spend 20 minutes per day listening to a health related podcast/audiobook.
But no matter what the goal is, make it so that it’s realistic for you to achieve. Don’t go out and say “I’m going to hit 10k steps every single day” when you’ve never tracked your steps before, or aren’t used to walking that much. Make it within reason, and make that one thing your #1 priority above all else.
When you’ve gotten through a week, 2 weeks, a month, 2 months, 3 months, and so on, without missing a beat, even though it’s just one single action, that consistency will develop a level of discipline. And discipline is what’ll get you through the cold rainy days. It’s accountability that leads to progress, not the intricacy of the workout or diet plan. You could have the most methodical workout plan in existence - backed by science and proven to work. But if you’re half-assing it, and are only showing up when you feel like it, guess what? That plan now becomes useless.
And I get it, something is always better and nothing - I’m not going to discredit that. Going out for a walk or hitting the gym will be better than you not doing anything at all. But here’s a cool little fact - Assuming you’re still a beginner within the first few months of your training career, you may still end up making a ton of progress, even if the workouts aren’t the best. This is because the novel stimulus alone from exercising will warrant some level of adaptation. You may build strength/muscle even if your workouts or your diet aren’t up to par. This phase within your fitness career is known as the “newbie phase”, and the quick muscle/strength gains you’ll get are called “newbie gains”. This is a really fun period to experience and it’s where a lot of people fall in love with strength training. Every week, you’re either adding reps or adding weight to your lifts of choice. And honestly, you feel pretty unstoppable!
But at some point, if we want to continue making progress, it’ll become imperative that we stick to a consistent plan. If that means working out 2 times per week rather than 3, so be it. If that means going down to 8k steps as opposed to 10k steps, so be it. So long as you’re consistent, that will always be the #1 deciding factor in whether or not you make progress.
2. You’re only tracking the good days
Kind of piggy backing off of my last point, but only tracking the days where you are on point is another trap many find themselves in. What happens when you allow yourself to do this, is you’ll end up creating a false narrative. You’ll be months into your health journey, and be confused as to why you’re not making further progress - cause you’ll be looking back at your data logs, and all you’ll see are the completed workouts, the logged food diaries, and the consistent step goals. But… this isn’t accurate, because perhaps you only logged in once or twice per week during those several months; so in reality, you weren’t consistent. This is why I’m calling this a “false narrative”. Sure you had 1-2 good days per week, but what about the other 5-6?
This is why it’s important to track every day. Even if you go over your calories, aren’t motivated, or weren't able to complete your workout, still track it. Because what this will do is it’ll paint a much more realistic timeline. You’ll be months into the future looking back on your previous logs. And now, because you didn’t just log the good days, you’ll see where the hiccups lie. You’ll see that there were days where you didn’t complete your full workouts. You'd also see that perhaps there were only a handful of days where you were in a calorie deficit, but then you were over your calories for the rest of the week, causing your total weekly calories to become a net surplus. Which may be why you weren’t losing weight.
If you’re just tracking the days where you meet your goals, but discard the days where you fall short, all that’s gonna do is create a false picture that’ll lead to a lot of frustration. But if you can still track those “off days”, then you'll get a clearer picture and it’ll highlight any areas where you should improve upon.
3. You’re trying to speedrun the process
One of the most common reasons why some people fail their goals, especially with new year’s resolutions, is because they’ll try everything to speed up the process. You’ll have someone who hasn’t done intense cardio in nearly a decade, and they’ll start taking these intense classes 5 times per week. Or you might have someone who tries running everyday to burn as much calories as possible. But then you’ll have some who try to go on these ultra-restrictive diets that they heard about either from social media, or from the magazines they found in the checkout line.
15 minute abs, detoxes, “bellyfat” exercises, fat burning supplements, fasting, keto, Garcinia Cambodia, etc. All these are used to some extent in marketing a faster rate of fat loss. And not to knock keto or fasting, I think there's a time and place where both hold merit, but to be used as a “rapid fat loss tool”, I don’t think they’re as effective as people make them out to be.
No matter what you do with your diet or your workouts, losing bodyfat will ultimately depend on you being in a calorie deficit. It is impossible to circumnavigate this. However, the method you use to achieve a deficit can differ from person to person. With keto or fasting, both can help bring down your calorie intake. Keto enforces high protein, high fat foods which are often very satiating, so you're less likely to overeat. And all fasting really does is it just condenses the time you’re allowed to eat - Try eating 2500 calories in 5 hours, it’s hard. You can take all the fat burners you want, but if you’re not in a deficit, you’re not going to burn anything, besides your wallet.
The truth of what works is not flashy or exciting, but in reality, it’s actually kinda boring. You stick with the same workout plan for multiple weeks at a time, you eat similar meals day to day, making sure you’re in a deficit, and you try to reach your daily step goals. Those 3 things are the basis for you losing bodyfat, not some overpriced flashy supplement that some shirtless guy in a supermarket sells.
The reality of building muscle is boring. Stick with the same workout plan for months at a time with the intention of pushing yourself harder with every workout.
The reality of losing bodyfat is also boring. You’re eating fairly similar meals regularly to ensure you’re sustaining a deficit.
Even when everything’s optimized, building muscle takes MONTHS.
Even when everything’s optimized, losing fat also, takes MONTHS.
There’s no healthy way to speed up the process. Sure, you could hop on steroids to speed up your muscle gains, or eat as little as possible while moving as much as possible to lose weight - but lemme ask you this, does that sound sustainable to you?
Could you sustain eating the caloric intake of a toddler for the rest of your life? Could you continue doing 2 hours of intense cardio every single day for the rest of your life? Or do you wish to live with the detrimental health effects from taking gear?
For most people who aren’t masochists, the answer is probably a resounding NO!
The fact that losing fat takes time is honestly a good thing. Because during that period, you can learn new habits - habits that’ll follow you and support you for the rest of your life. Cause we don’t want to just lose weight, we want to keep it off forever. I often think back to the popular TV Show called “The Biggest Loser” where the whole premise was for morbidly obese contestants to compete against one another to see who could lose the most amount of weight. What transpired was a ton of high intensity/high impact cardio, ultra restrictive diet plans, and a lot of emotional agony. And sure, some of these contestants may have lost hundreds of pounds, but guess what?
If you look up the success rate post-show, a study following 14 contestants found that 92% of them either regained all the weight back, or they gained even more weight than when they first started! This is because, who the hell can sustain 2 hours of hiit cardio while only eating 1200 calories a day for the rest of their lives? Again, unless you’re into torturing yourself, probably not most people. For the majority of these contestants, some of whom surpassed 400+ lbs, they could’ve easily lost weight eating over 3000 cals per day. Which to the average person, might seem crazy; 3000 calories and you still get to lose weight? - Yea, it takes a lot of energy to sustain a body that weighs a fifth of a ton.
But a small deficit, reasonable/low impact cardio, and very traditional strength training isn’t what I'd call “entertaining” from a tv show perspective. As the show became more and more popular, the need to up the antics became louder and louder. So in the later seasons, the challenges and workouts these contestants were put through, no sane trainer would ever program.
So if you’re frustrated with your weight loss, ask yourself what is it that you’re currently doing? Are you trying to do everything as fast as possible? Are you doing something that’s sustainable? And are you spending a quarter of your paycheck on random supplements that you only heard about from your favorite influencer?
If so, then I’d highly suggest following this simple plan.
Set a step goal, we’ll say, 7,000 - 8,000 steps per day
Eat 1g of protein per pound of goal bodyweight
Try to lift weights between 2-3x per week
Throw in vegetables and/or fruit in every meal
Try to limit alcohol consumption and limit liquid calories
And try your damndest to get 7-9 hours of sleep per night
And a quick side note - don’t just stick to this for only a week, stick with this plan for at least 3 months at the very least. Switching up the plan constantly is not the path towards progress, which honestly carries over beautifully into my next point.
4. Are you sticking to the same plan, or are you changing things up all the time?
“Muscle confusion”, is the idea of changing up your workouts on a regular basis, usually every week or every other week, to elicit a new novel stimulus which will enhance muscle growth.
Which…two things. 1) will changing up your workouts provide a novel stimulus? Yes. And does novelty have an effect on muscle growth? Sure. However, and secondly, if you’re not spending enough time with the same exercises, then you’re not going to give your body the time it needs to adapt and reap the benefits of said exercise(s).
Your body works off of adaptation. When I expose my body to a stressful environment for long enough, overtime it’ll adapt in such a way that hopefully makes the same environment less stressful. Let’s say I want bigger biceps, so my exercise choice is a standard dumbbell bicep curl. By lifting that heavy dumbbell, that places a lot of stress on both the bicep itself as well as my nervous system. My brain recognizes this stress, so in between workouts, my bicep muscle will undergo a recovery process, where the muscle fibers themselves will both multiply and strengthen, leading to both a stronger muscle, as well as a bigger muscle.
But in order to get these benefits, I need to consistently expose my bicep to that same environment (dumbbell bicep curl). If I do the dumbbell bicep curl one week, then a hammer curl the next, followed by a cable bicep curl the week after that, then all I’m doing is creating tissue damage without the adaptations. And maybe at first, I might see a little muscle gain if I’m a beginner - but long term, you’ll get way gains if you just stick with the same exercises consistently for several weeks. I hate to say it man, but legit strength training is kinda boring. You’re not changing things up with every workout, in fact it’s quite the opposite. You’re doing the same routine for at least 4-8 weeks at a time. And even when you do change things up, the changes made are subtle. You might modify the rep range, your tempo, maybe you’ll try the same movement but at a different angle, or you might swap an exercise for a similar variation.
But when it comes to fat loss, you do have more leeway, though it’s more or less the same thing. What I mean is that since all you need is to just be in a calorie deficit to lose fat, then when it comes to cardio, you can choose whatever form you want, and you can certainly change it up if you want as well. Unless you have a sports specific goal such as running a marathon, then you can certainly have fun with your cardio. Just be sure not to overdo it with high impact forms such as running, jump roping, or HIIT. I would say that cardio should be used to enhance your heart health, blood pressure, cholesterol, and emotional state, and you shouldn’t have to rely on it purely for calorie burning. Cause truth be told, you don’t really burn a lot of calories from cardio.
So, when it comes to a routine, here’s a few guidelines I want you to follow.
Pick 4-6 exercises for a workout. The workout itself can be a full body, an upper body, or a lower body day. Give yourself a rep range to work with for each exercise (we’ll say 8-10 reps). Stick with the same selection of exercises for a minimum of 4-8 weeks.
Pick a form of cardio to do alongside your strength training. Make sure it’s appropriate for your level and not too overwhelming for your joints. Pick a couple times throughout the week to perform these exercises. Your goal is to enhance your endurance overtime. Start slow, and slowly ramp up your duration over the weeks.
Give yourself a reasonable step goal. Could be 6k steps, 8k steps, or 10k steps. Just make sure it’s something that you CAN achieve regularly.
5. How often are you reassessing? Are you only taking weekly measurements?
This is a question that weighs on the minds of a lot of gym goers. “Am I making enough progress?”
No matter how perfect you are, even if you followed the exact same workout routine, got the same amount of steps, ate the same foods at the exact same time, got the same amount of sleep every night, drank the same quantities of liquids, and wore the same clothes, your weight would still fluctuate both up and down.
The average person can gain as much as 5-6 pounds in a single night. And it’s not bodyfat - there’s quite literally dozens of factors at play that influence the scale number. But just to name a few:
Hormones
The time of day
The amount of carbs you consume
The amount of salt you consume
Whether you weigh in before or after a meal
The food sitting inside your stomach
Alcohol
Stress
Lack of sleep
Being sedentary
Health conditions such as edema
Intense exercise
Unpooped poop
Total food volume
Here’s a cool little factoid, you don’t have a single digit that your body sits at. Instead, your bodyweight is a range of numbers, and the size of that range could vary from person to person, and differ between genders. Women will typically have larger weight fluctuations than men, especially during menstrual cycles. But for the average person, they can expect to fluctuate both up and down as much as 2-3 pounds both ways.
For example, instead of just weighing 150lbs, your weight could be anywhere between 148 on the low end to 152 on the high end. And on any given day, you could step on the scale and be anywhere within that range. So, some days, you’ll weigh in towards the higher end and some days, you’ll weigh in towards the lower end. These are what we call “high days” and “low days”. And you’ve probably experienced this, where you’d step on the scale one day, then the next day you’re up a couple pounds, which is understandably frustrating. But hopefully, now that you know that your weight is a range of numbers, not just one, you’ll be able to put your mind at ease if you step on the scale and the number is a tad higher than you’d like to see.
Now for strength and muscle gains, that s*** takes time. Even when everything’s optimized, it can take months to see noticeable gains in the gym. And it can take many weeks to see substantial strength development. This is why I like to challenge you by recommending that with every workout, you try to accomplish something extra. Whether you’re able to add a couple pounds, or complete just one extra rep. Try to do something that you weren’t able to do previously. Even if for the whole workout, you only got one extra rep on a single exercise, that’s still a huge win. Because overtime, those extra single reps will add up to significant gains.
If you base your progress off of weekly measurements, then you’re only gonna set yourself up for disappointment, cause progress isn’t made within a week. Instead, I want you to expand how often you assess to monthly measurements. If month over month, your weight range goes down, you’re losing fat. And if month over month, you’re getting stronger, then that means you’re building muscle. I love the saying “a great temple isn’t built within a day”, meaning that true meaningful progress cannot be made within a short period of time. That it takes weeks and months of consistent hard work.
Conclusion - TL;DR
Not seeing the return on your investment is frustrating, understandably. But when it comes to losing weight or building muscle, there’s a few reasons why many fail to see the progress they desire.
They’re only doing what needs to be done on the days where they feel motivated.
They’re only tracking the good days
They try to speedrun the process
They’re constantly changing up their plan to “confuse the muscles”
They’re basing their progress off of weekly measurements.
The ugly truth about losing weight or building muscle is that what really leads to progress isn’t flashy or sexy. It’s what you’d consider to be basic advice that drives over 90% of the progress you’ll make.
1. Lift heavy, and do it consistently.
Whether you lift weights 2 times, 3 times, or 4 times per week is up to you. Pick 4-6 exercises to make an upper body workout, a lower body workout, and a full body workout. And give yourself a rep range, we’ll say 8-10 for this example. Stick with the same routine for a period of between 4-8 weeks, before switching things up.
2. If you’re tracking, track EVERYTHING.
By only tracking the good days and discarding the bad days, you’re only setting yourself up for future frustration by creating a false narrative. At some point, your progress will slow down, and if you’re only seeing perfect entries, you’re going to be sitting there scratching your head as to what’s going on.
3. Stop trying to speed up the process.
Real substantial progress can take many months to achieve. There is no way to “speed up” the process aside from taking physical enhancement drugs that each come with their own perils towards your health. The only thing carb blockers, fat burners, and metabolism boosting supplements will burn is your wallet.
4. Stick to the plan, “muscle confusion” won’t lead to more gains
Your body needs time to adapt to the environment it’s placed in. If you’re constantly changing up the exercises, then you’re not giving your body any reason to build bigger/stronger muscles. Stick with the same selection of exercises for at least 4-8 weeks to allow for proper adaptations.
5. When taking assessments, do so on a monthly basis.
If you reassess your progress on a daily or bi-daily basis, you’ll only feed your frustration as the average person can easily gain as much as 5-6 pounds within a single night. There’s over a dozen factors that can both affect your scale-weight and your strength in the gym. Some days, you’ll be a bit higher up on the scale, and some days, you might not be able to push yourself as much in your workout. But if you took measurements on a monthly basis, that will paint a more clear picture. What you’re looking for is 1) your weight range slowly going down and 2) your strength within several exercises going up over multiple months.
Weight loss is a simple concept that is unfortunately rooted in complexity. What I mean is that while there’s only one mechanism in which fat loss occurs (calorie deficit), there are tons of ways you can achieve it. But no matter which method you use, remember that the human body doesn’t work linearly; there will be periods where little progress is seen, which is normal. Think about it, it takes decades of consistent lifting to be able to bench press 405lbs. As you advance, your rate of progress slows down - and this isn’t meant to demoralize you btw, this is just to highlight the fact that even someone who’s “advanced” and has everything dialed in also may experience plateaus and off days.
And like every other article I’ve posted, I’ll end things off with this message.
There is no best way to go about losing weight. What it all boils down too is being in a calorie deficit. But how you achieve and sustain that deficit depends on your preference. What works for you may not work for someone else and vice versa. Just know that as long as you’re lifting heavy and are pushing yourself with every workout, are tracking everything nutritionally, understand and accept that progress takes time, are sticking with the same workout and aren’t changing it up every week, and you base your assessments on a monthly basis, you will make progress.
Keep at it, and don’t quit just because the momentum slowed down.
Keep grinding
Keep pushing yourself
Keep chasing great!
Talk soon,
-R
