Why you're not losing weight despite being in a calorie deficit (and how to fix it)

You’re in a calorie deficit… so why isn’t the weight coming off?

If you feel like you’re doing everything right but the scale isn’t moving, this episode is going to hit home.

In this episode, I’m breaking down:
✔️ The 2 biggest reasons you’re not seeing fat loss (even if you think you’re in a deficit)
✔️ Why lack of consistency isn’t a discipline issue
✔️ How weekends, “little bites,” and untracked meals are keeping you stuck
✔️ The hidden patterns causing you to start over every Monday
✔️ How to create awareness (without obsession) so you can actually see progress

Once you understand your patterns and build a system that fits for your life as a mom… everything changes.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey friend, welcome back to Stronger Within, the podcast for women who are done chasing quick fixes and are ready to build real strength and lasting change from the inside out. I'm your host, Christy Magri, and here we talk about becoming Stronger Within in your body, your mindset, and the daily habits that shape your life. If you're ready to build a body and life you feel confident in for good, you're in the right place. I don't really know how to say this, but I've been thinking about it for a while. As I am sitting here in my bedroom with the door closed, having to keep my kids entertained by the TV. Juggling a business while raising two kids has been a lot. I feel so stretched thin most days, and it never feels like I can give 100% to any one area. Can anyone relate to that? Especially my working moms, work from home moms, even stay-at-home moms, all of us. With that said, I've decided, I've made a very hard decision to take a step back from coaching with Christy for the time being. April Fools, haha, just kidding. I'm never leaving. I literally had to put an April Fool's joke in this episode because today's April Fool's. So let's get into it on a more serious note. I would never leave you guys. You're never getting rid of me. Um, today we are chatting about why you are not seeing consistent fat loss progress despite being in a calorie deficit. You feel like you're doing everything right. You're tracking your food, you're working out, you're getting in the steps, you're sleeping more, you're managing your stress, but the scale is not moving. And not to mention, you are exhausted, balancing, taking care of everyone else's needs on top of your own. Typically, you come last. You are questioning yourself in every choice you make. You feel like you have no motivation, no discipline. It feels impossible to show up most days. You're just stretched thin. And it's interesting when we think about this concept of like, I feel like I'm doing a lot right. Why are things not moving along? I'm being pretty consistent, I'm putting in all this effort. That's how I felt when I was in my weight loss journey and I was working out at the gym consistently. I was drinking a gallon of water a day. I was getting in plenty of steps, I was tracking my macros during the week. Key during the week. Uh, I was doing a lot of the right things, only I was fluctuating between the same two to three pounds every single week for years. And I'm like, what gives there has to be something off with my metabolism, my body, something is wrong here. Um, turns out that it was actually just me, and I wasn't actually being as consistent as I thought I was. So, you know, maybe you've never just been shown what the problem in your current approach is. So today I'm breaking down the real reasons you haven't successfully lost fat yet and what needs to change so that you can start losing fat and feeling amazing in your body, especially going into summer. Let's dive into the two most common reasons I see that someone is in a calorie deficit but not losing fat. Reason number one, you are not consistent because you keep falling for quick fixes that rely on constant motivation or unsustainable dieting methods. Now, what does this look like? It looks like doing really good all week, tracking your macros, eating clean Monday through Friday, but then falling off on the weekend. This was my problem. It could look like sticking to a really strict diet. Maybe it's low carb, maybe it's something like carnivore. You stick to that for weeks, maybe even months, but then eventually you can't sustain it and you end up reverting back to old habits. It's it's this problem with the swinging up and down and all around. You are chasing these quick results, but the problem is that that's leading you to burnout, and over time, you are also ruining your metabolism because your body does not know what the heck is going on, and it's worsening your relationship with food, exercise, and your body. And so all of this is leading to you're not building a lifestyle change that leads to the type of consistency that you need, not only for the short-term results, because so often we're just hyper-fixated on how can I lose fat as quick as possible? How can I drop as much weight before summer? But what if that's not where the focus should be? What if instead it's on the long-term lifestyle impact? I don't give a shit how much weight I can lose in two weeks. If I'm gonna be struggling two years from now with the same thing, no thank you. Now, reason number two is that you're not aware of how much you're actually eating. So again, maybe you're tracking partial of the week, but you're falling off on the weekends. You track perfectly Monday through Friday. Saturday, you start off with good intention, maybe you track your breakfast, but then your husband and your family want to go out to lunch, so then you're like, I'm not sure how to track that. And then it turns into, well, I already missed tracking this meal, I'm just gonna start tracking again on Monday, right? That might be happening. Maybe you are tracking, but you're not actually weighing things on a food scale, so there's something wrong with the accuracy of how much you're tracking, or worse yet, you're not tracking at all. You're not actually in a calorie deficit. Just because you're eating healthy does not mean that you're in a calorie deficit. So if you're eyeballing portions, you're eating bites, licks, taste from your kids' food, you're falling off every night or every weekend, this could be taking you out of that calorie deficit. And by the way, you can still eat quote unquote healthy and not be in a deficit. Fat loss requires a calorie deficit. There is no way around that. Now, this doesn't mean it needs to be anything aggressive. This doesn't mean you're cutting carbs or cutting certain food groups, but it does mean simply that you need to be intaking less calories than you're burning in a day. So now this is where you need to look at the data to see, okay, out of the last 14 days, what is my average calorie intake week to week? Where is my protein intake? What is my fiber intake? If you can't answer these questions, I can tell you right now why you're stuck. And no, this is not obsessive, it's not restrictive, it's about awareness so that we can break these toxic cycles and patterns that are continuing to keep you stuck. We need to create a lifestyle change. I'm always going to come back to those words, lifestyle change. That starts with rewiring the way that you look at food. And by the way, as moms, this is amplified times 100 because all of these things, these concepts, they're hard enough without kids. I mean, I've brought it back to my own journey many times, but I didn't have kids when I was struggling to lose weight. Now, as moms, it is totally amplified because life is not predictable anymore. We're not just managing ourselves. We are managing our kids, sports schedules, meals, toddler tantrums, interruptions every two seconds. Obviously, consistency is gonna feel hard in this season. But the problem is not that you lack what it takes. The problem is that you're trying to fit yourself and mold your life into an approach that does not work for you for your life as a mom in this season. So now that we've called out the problem, let's identify the fix because I want to fix this for you. So I'm gonna go through three examples here, and I would love to know if any of these resonate with you. Fix number one is identifying the problem. You need to identify your personal pattern. Most often I see moms say things like, Well, I just need to be more consistent, or I need to meal plan, I need to meal prep. You are not identifying what your pattern is. We know that you need to do those things, but why are you struggling to do those things? So instead of saying, I need to be more consistent, which is so freaking vague, you need to instead ask yourself questions like, where do I fall off most of the time? What what time of the day? Is it the weekends? Is it the evenings after the kids are in bed? What's triggering it? Am I stressed from work? Am I stressed from the kids? Am I hungry? Have I underfueled myself all day? Have I not planned ahead? Am I exhausted? Am I trying to fill an emotional void? Maybe it's a number of those things. And what does it actually look like? Right? What is what does my pattern actually look like? Does it look like snacking all day? Am I skipping meals? Am I overeating at night? Am I doing really good during the week and then falling off on the weekend? We can't fix what we haven't clearly identified. So the first step is figuring out that identification of what your personal pattern is of why you continue to hold yourself back. And then that brings us into number two, which is solving the real problem, not just the surface level one. For example, if you are overeating at night, the problem might be that you're actually under-eating all day. So now by the time you've sat on the couch and got the kids to bed, your body's like, oh crap, she has not fueled me today. I'm hangry, and now you're in the pantry just eating whatever sounds good. If you're constantly off track on the weekends, the problem might be that the plan and the approach that you're coming up with only works for your life Monday through Thursday. But how are you gonna handle weekends? How are you gonna approach weeks uh meals out if you're picking at your kids' food all day? The problem might be lack of awareness around how fast those calories add up, not just like you you lack the discipline, right? And then number three is you are winging it. You are guessing what to eat, you're tracking when you can or when it feels convenient, you're trying to be good during the week and hoping it balances out, you're starting over every single Monday, and it feels like you're trying really hard. You are putting in good effort, but there's no actual system behind any of it. So the second life gets busy or unpredictable, which is literally every single day as a mom, to be honest, you give up. This comes back to something I say all the time in my coaching. It really is about working smarter, not harder. Most moms try to fix their lack of results with more restriction, more food rules, more, more, more. But more, especially more restriction, usually just makes the real problem worse. So you need to identify the root cause of what is it you're doing that's making fat loss so inconsistent or unpredictable? Why does it feel so hard for you? And how do we fix that? Because really, fat loss is simple when it comes down to it, when you can break through the barriers of what it is that's actually holding you back. This is exactly what I do in my Forever Fit Mama method. Step one, when a client comes into my program, the first 30 days are all about problem awareness. So we really audit your current habits, your stress, your intake so that we can make adjustments to get your body primed to lose fat and take a look at those things we just chatted about, like figuring out the patterns and solving the real problem, not just the surface level one, because we need awareness without obsession. We need habits that fit your life and make sense for your life as a mom. Because fitness is meant to add joy to your life, happiness, quality of life, not stress. And it's not that you can't lose the weight, it's that you've never been taught the right strategy. And once you can understand these patterns, create that awareness, and build the system, everything changes. If you want help building this in your life, that is exactly what I help my clients do. You can DM me over on Instagram the word fit, and I'll walk you through what this could look like for you. My Instagram username is tagged in the show notes. Thank you for spending this time with me. If this episode resonated, I'd love for you to share it or leave a review. It helps this message reach even more women who need it. Until next time, keep becoming stronger within.