Three Secret Reasons You Can’t Lose Weight

If current trends continue, experts estimate that 42 percent of U.S. citizens will be sufficiently overweight to be considered obese by the year 2030. For the evidence of this development, just look around. Our continual increase in size keeps progressing like a slow-motion train wreck. Almost everybody seems to be gaining weight inexorably. Chances are, if you’re like most people, you’ve tried to lose pounds but, in the long run, have been unable to control your weight.

Remarkably, much of the blame for the fact that we are all becoming so thick around the middle (and in other unsightly areas) can be attributed to three major factors that are actually under our control. They’re pretty simple to rectify.

Alcohol On The Hips

You probably don’t realize it, but if you’re like many Americans, you consume, on average, 100 calories of alcohol every day of the year. And that’s only the national average. One of five men and about one of 16 women don’t stop there: They consume 300 calories of alcohol each day. (That’s the equivalent of about a pair of 12-ounce cans of beer or 2.5 glasses of wine.)

Since it takes about 3,500 calories to fuel the body’s production of a pound of fat, over the course of a year the average alcohol consumption represents enough calories to produce more than 10 extra pounds of body fat. Triple those calories to the widespread habit of 300 alcohol calories daily and you’re looking at more than 30 pounds worth of annual empty calories. And that doesn’t even count the chips, cheese and other noshes that people often munch with their beer and wine.

Of course, many folks are not aware that their alcohol habit is contributing to their weight problem. Samara Joy Nielsen, the lead author of the study of our daily alcohol habit and a nutritional epidemiologist with the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told The New York Times: “I think people may be aware that there are calories in alcoholic beverages, but I don’t know if people actually look at a beer and realize that it’s the same amount of calories as a soda. Or that a five-ounce glass of wine is almost as much as a soda.”

Sugar Drinks

Added to the liquid calories in alcoholic beverages, we’re also downing extraordinary amounts of sugar in soft drinks and fruit juices. That’s another reason our weight is so out of control. Every year, as a nation, we swallow 13.8 billion gallons of soda, fruit punch, sweet tea, sports drinks and other sweetened beverages, a mass consumption of sugar that is accelerating the obesity and diabetes rates in the United States.

A survey by the Gallup Poll shows that about half of us consume at least one soft drink every single day. The average amount consumed by these daily imbibers is 2.6 glasses, more than 300 calories every 24 hours. If you imbibe that much over a year, you’ve taken in enough sugar calories to help the body produce another 30 pounds hanging over your belt.

All that soda pop isn’t just necessitating the need for larger clothes. Research shows that soft drink consumption is also linked to an increased risk of problems like high blood pressure and stroke.

And don’t think that diet soda is a healthier alternative. Research demonstrates that diet soft drink users, as a group, experience 70 percent greater increases in their waist circumference compared to those who never touch the stuff. Scientists found that the most frequent diet soda drinkers, who said they consumed two or more diet sodas a day, experienced waistline increases that were 500 percent greater than those of non-consumers.

Diet soft drinks may also increase your risk for diabetes. Lab studies have shown that artificial sweeteners significantly increase your blood sugar.

“These results suggest that heavy aspartame (Nutrasweet) exposure might potentially directly contribute to increased blood glucose levels, and thus contribute to the associations observed between diet soda consumption and the risk of diabetes in humans,” says researcher Gabriel Fernandes.

Immovable Objects

A third reason for our weight gain is the fact that our bodies don’t move enough. And if you think that a 20-minute leisurely walk taken after work is enough to help control your weight after eight or more hours of sitting in front of your computer, you’re probably doomed to being too heavy.

Unfortunately, most of us seem to spend so much time sitting down at work that a simple physical activity like a short walk at lunch or at the end of the day isn’t sufficient to offset our sedentary time. Researchers now believe that you have to take about 6,000 steps a day to effectively control your weight and keep your health on the proper path. That means getting up more often from your desk during the morning and afternoon, possibly standing up while working, and fitting in more activity at the workplace.

Researchers in Brazil found that 6,000 steps a day are needed to reduce the risk of diabetes and control weight. They also pointed out that you have to do that much activity to lower your risk of heart disease and high blood pressure. Other researchers argue that we should be taking 10,000 steps every day. (On average, every 2,000 steps you take adds up to about a mile.)

Get Moving To A Lower Weight

In the struggle to keep your weight down, you have to resist the urge to drink sugary beverages or overindulge in alcohol and make sure you move around throughout the day. Those three changes to your lifestyle may not be the complete answer to weight control; but without them, the struggle to take off and keep off excess body fat is probably hopeless.