Not Losing Weight in a Calorie Deficit? | 3 Science-Based Reasons

In a deficit, but not losing weight? Find out why and what to do about it!

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A calorie deficit is key for losing body fat. If you consume fewer calories than your body expends in a day, your body burns fat for fuel. Now, you may have calculated your calorie needs online and started being consistent with eating at your calculated calorie deficit. But after a few weeks, you notice no change in your body weight. What gives? In today’s video, I will give 3 reasons for why you are not losing fat while being in your calculated calorie deficit and I will also explain why this is not always a bad thing.

First, it is important to make a distinction between fat loss and weight loss. Fat loss is the goal most people are aiming for. To get leaner while preserving the muscle you have. Typically, long-term fat loss is accompanied by some weight loss. But using only your scale weight as a measure of progress has its limitations. Your bodyweight represents much more than just fat mass. Changes in muscle mass, water retention, glycogen, etc. all influence your bodyweight development.

For instance, now that many people are back to the gym again after the gyms were closed, it is likely that you will experience some weight gain during the first few days of training. This is because your body stores more glycogen and this results in more water being stored in muscle. If you were to be overly focused on losing weight, the slight spike in bodyweight after getting back into training could leave you discouraged, but this is not fat gain.

This is why I suggest you track more progress measures than just bodyweight. You may be making good progress while in a calorie deficit, but your bodyweight does not reflect it. Next to weighing yourself, I suggest you take:

Waist measurement
Performance in the gym
Progress pictures

Now, say for example you are consistent with your calorie-intake but your weight, waist measurement, and just overall how your clothes fit is no different after a period of 3 weeks. Then it is worth looking into a calorie-intake. The first thing I would look into is how you track your calories and your consistency. We often underestimate how many calories we are consuming in a day. Having heightened awareness of the calorie-content whenever you eat out or have a snack is key to reduce the likelihood that you are making errors in your calorie-tracking.

The third and last reason you may not be seeing progress in a calorie deficit is that you are actually not in a calorie deficit. It is key to remember that calorie calculators found online are not 100% accurate. Typical calorie-calculators provide useful starting points, but there are always individual differences.

Let’s take my calorie calculation as an example. For people that train about 3-4x/week, I like to use this calculation: Take your goal bodyweight and multiply it by 11-12. This is your estimated fat loss calories. So if your goal bodyweight is 170 pounds, consume around 1970-2040 kCals per day.

As you can imagine, this is a very general formula. If you have a passive day job or all of a sudden you walk less because the weather isn’t as nice anymore in your area, this can influence how many calories you need per day to lose fat. So if you have calculated your calories online via any calculator and there are no measurable results after you stay consistent for 3 weeks, I suggest you change your calorie-target.

I hope this video was helpful and makes it clear why there can be cases in which there

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SCIENTIFIC REFERENCES:

Gaining Muscle While Losing Fat Example:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10838...

Inaccurate Calorie Counting:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20010...
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12396...

Restaurant Meals Calories:
https://www.researchgate.net/publicat...

Moderate Walking Enhances Fat Loss:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28794...

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MUSIC CREDIT
Music by Ryan Little - Think About You - https://thmatc.co/?l=9E7F175B