Why You're Not Losing Fat No Matter How Hard You Try

You've tried everything. The programs, the plans, the cutting back. And something keeps not changing.

In this episode I break down the real reason most women plateau and why working harder is often the exact wrong answer. We cover metabolic adaptation, what your body actually needs to change, the difference between fat loss and weight loss, and why having the right support changes everything.

If you've been doing all the right things and still feel stuck - this one explains why.

Apply for 1:1 coaching: https://77z9uh9ts6v.typeform.com/to/p3IrXlMi

Follow on Instagram: @jessica_tiana_

Transcript

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Welcome back to another episode of The Role Model You Never Had. I'm Jess, Trauma Informed, Strength and Identity Coach, Former Crisis Counselor, and the woman who rebuilt her body and her life from the ground up. Your body is the foundation of your healing. And today we're getting into something that I know was on a lot of your minds because you've been asking about it. Why is nothing working? Why have you been doing everything right and still not seeing results? Why do you keep plateauing? We talked a lot on this podcast about the nervous system, food relationships, identity work, and today we're going into the physical science of fat loss, not in a diet culture way, in a this is how your body actually works way. Simple so you can understand. Because understanding your body removes the shame, and that's always where we start. If you've been working hard and not seeing results, you're not broken and you're not failing. Your body is just doing exactly what it was designed to do. And once you understand that, everything starts to make more sense. Here's what most people don't know about plateaus. Your body is incredibly smart. It is constantly adapting to the signals that you give it. And one of the things it adapts to is how much you eat and how much you move. When you eat less and move more over a long period of time, your body starts to notice and it adjusts. It becomes more efficient. It learns to do more with less. Which sounds great in theory, but what it means in practice is that what used to create change in your body stops creating that change because your body has adapted. This is called metabolic adaptation, and it's one of the most common reasons women plateau and have no idea why. You haven't done anything wrong, your body just caught up with you, and now it needs a different signal. I want to talk about something that is incredibly common, especially for women who come from a diet culture background. That's the under-eating trap. I've fallen into this too. Diet culture tells us that we need to eat less and move more. And for a while, that does create change. So we eat a little less, see some change, eat a little less again, see a little more change, and we keep going. Until we don't. Because at a certain point, your body has fully adapted to that lower intake. It has downregulated your metabolism to match what you're giving it. So your energy drops, your workouts suffer because you don't have enough fuel to perform, your sleep gets disrupted, your mood is affected, you become really fucking irritable and depressed. Maybe you even look skinny fat and the scale stops moving. And here's the cruel part at that point, you can't just eat less. There is nowhere left to go because your body is already running on empty. What actually needs to happen is the opposite of what diet culture has been telling you. You need to eat more first. You need to bring your body back to a place where it feels safe and fueled. Let your metabolism recover, build some muscle, and then from that foundation, you can create sustainable change. I know that sounds counterintuitive and scary for many people. Eat more to lose fat. But this is how the body actually works. And it's why working with someone who understands this process is so important. Because doing this on your own without guidance is incredibly hard. And that's why a lot of people give up. Because they don't understand why eating more feels like it's going backwards. But it's not actually going backwards, it's just building you a solid foundation. I want to give you some other signs to recognize if your body is in this under-eating trap. Because a lot of us don't even realize that it's happening, and we'll blame it on other health problems. Stress. Jobs. Some signs that you're not getting enough fuel are chronic brain fog. That feeling where you can't think clearly, can't focus, can't make decisions. That's your brain running low. Your brain specifically needs carbohydrates and fats. Irritability that seems to come out of nowhere. Your nervous system is dysregulated because it doesn't have the resources that it needs. Fatigue that doesn't improve with more rest. You could sleep 12 hours and still feel exhausted because your body is trying to run on insufficient fuel. Maybe you've even looked up something like chronic fatigue syndrome. Because I know some of you in my audience are looking up all of the potential reasons that you're not feeling well instead of addressing the basics. Weakness in the gym, as I mentioned earlier. Maybe you pick up a weight you've lifted before and can't get through your reps anymore. Because your muscles don't have the glycogen to perform. That comes from carbs. Dizziness or blacking out during exercise. This is your body telling you loudly that it needed more fuel before you started moving. Now, these aren't signs of weakness, these are signs that your body is doing its best with not enough to work with. The skinniness trend that you're seeing on social media right now is not a foundation. It's a temporary state that is not sustainable and does not give you the body composition most women are actually after. You cannot build strength, energy, and a body you're proud of with no food. Fuel is not the enemy, it is your foundation. And building that foundation properly is where you need to start if you want to see change. Before I get into a little bit more detail, I do want to make a distinction that I think is really important, and most people in the fitness space gloss over. Fat loss and weight loss are not the same thing. So weight loss just means that the number on the scale is going down. That number includes muscle, water, and fat. When you lose weight through extreme restriction without training, you're often losing muscle alongside the fat. And losing muscle makes it harder to maintain your results, harder to perform, harder to achieve the body composition you actually you're actually after. Fat loss is different. Fat loss means you're changing your body composition. You're reducing fat while preserving or building muscle. And that requires a very different approach. It requires strength training, it requires protein, it requires fueling your body properly so it has the resources to build and maintain muscle while releasing that fat. That lean and strong look that most women are after, that's a body composition goal. And you cannot achieve it through restriction alone. You need muscle, and building muscle takes time, consistency, and eating enough to actually support that process. The scale is one of the least helpful tools for measuring this. Progress photos, how your clothes fit, your strength in the gym, your energy levels, all of your biofeedback are far better measures of what's actually happening in your body. So stop relying on the scale. Doing this alone is hard. And I want you to know it's not because you're not capable, and again, you're not broken, you're not failing. There are a lot of coaches who struggle with this themselves. It can get fairly complicated, especially when you bring all of your external life circumstances into play. And sometimes it's almost impossible to see clearly from outside your own experience. Your body is constantly giving you data, energy levels, sweet sleep quality, how you feel in workouts, hunger and fullness signals, which a lot of us become extremely detached from, especially if we're living in a state of chronic stress. Your appetite is frequently suppressed, and maybe you swing to the other side of emotional eating. Your mood against stress, psycho patterns, all of that is information about how your body's responding to what you're doing. But when you're in the middle of it, especially if you have come from a diet culture background, which again, there is probably something in your life that signals some sort of diet culture impact. Where you've been taught to override all of those signals that your body is giving you. It is incredibly hard to read that data accurately and know when to start, what to change. And you might push harder when your body needs rest. You might eat less when your body actually needs more, and you might confuse that adaptation for failure. Having someone who can look at the full picture, who understands the science, who can adjust the approach as your body responds, and who can walk you through the emotional and psychological pieces that come up in this process, that changes everything. And then there's the accountability piece. I've said this before on this podcast, and I'll say it again. When your nervous system is dysregulated, when you're stressed, overwhelmed, the first things to go are the things that feel non-essential. So for many of us, that is workouts, meal prep, sleep routines. Having someone in your corner who holds you accountable to your plan when your nervous system wants to abandon ship, that is not a luxury. That is a difference between making progress and starting over for the hundredth time. I had a client who was a single mom with three kids, working a crisis job. She came to me exhausted and she wanted to switch her career. We worked together on her training, nutrition, and her nervous system in a way that supported her with that current lifestyle. We kept things super simple, no aggressive food tracking, because she didn't have the time. And she completely transformed her body composition and went to fitness testing for her new career and outperformed candidates half her age at this testing. That didn't happen because she found more willpower. It happened because she chose to invest in support. Many of you probably sit there and wonder what it actually looks like to work with me. Because I think people hear coaching and think it's just someone sending you a workout plan. I'm gonna tell you it's absolutely not that. You can get a PDF online. It is not the same as coaching. And it's not the same as downloading a workout app. Everything we've talked about on this podcast, the nervous system work, the food relationships, boundaries, identity, body image, stopping self-abandonment, all of that lives inside my coaching program alongside the physical work. So here's what you get when we work together. A custom strength training program that's built around your life, your schedule, and where your body is at. This is not cookie cutter, it's not generic, it's completely yours. And it's updated every single week. Nutrition coaching that works with your psychology, your nervous system, and your relationship with food. No restriction, no punishment, a sustainable approach that actually fits your life. Nervous system regulation work and understanding your patterns. Because you cannot build the body you want when your body is in survival mode. We address the root before we address the results. Boundary and identity work because those patterns that have kept you stuck in the body that you're in are the same patterns keeping you stuck in all of your life. We work on both. Monday to Friday support, so you're never figuring this out alone. I am in your corner every single day. Bi-weekly calls, personalized check-ins to look at your data, adjust the approach, and keep you moving forward. This is fully customized support. And the women I work with don't just change their bodies, they change their lives. They become the role model they never had for themselves first and then for everyone that's watching. And if you've been listening to this podcast and you keep thinking, this is exactly what I need, I want you to DM me the word her on Instagram or apply with the link in the show notes. I only work with a small number of women at a time, so every client gets my full attention. If you're ready for that and you want to explore more about what that could look like for you specifically, come find me. Your body is the foundation of your healing, and you deserve to build that foundation with someone in your corner who actually understands all of it and who's actually lived it. And remember, every no to what drains you is a powerful yes to yourself. I'll see you next episode.