Why Aren’t You Progressing?

Typically when it comes to lack of results and progress, the individual in question is not putting their 100% effort into it or simply isn’t consistent. Countless of times I have run across people who claim they’ve tried everything under the sun and never see any results or progress. Well this is usually when I start asking them questions regarding workout frequency, consistency with nutrition, nutritional intake & how they are tracking progress.

From experience, it falls down to lack of consistency, dishonesty (or misdirection) with nutrition and inadequate ways to track their progress. One has to remember that there is no shortcut to reaching your goals (be it fat-loss or muscle-gain) it all takes time…Especially if you are working with me, we will do things in a controlled manner in order to not have to go to extreme measures (crash dieting). 

Consistency in Training
Be it with your weigh training or cardio sessions, you have to be consistent with your program. If you find yourself always skipping a workout session or two every week, it may be a factor on why you aren’t are seeing the results you want.

My suggestion for anyone in this predicament is to re-evaluate your program. Your options are to either re-commit to your program and push yourself to not skip any further workouts OR adjust your workout schedule to something more feasible (reduce the amount of workouts per week).

In my personal experience, you may want to reduce the amount of workouts per week, not only will it make it easier for you to commit, but also there is the mental aspect of feeling accomplished when you complete all of the week’s workouts vs feeling defeated that you skipped a few workouts. Though with that said, if reducing your amount of workout days, you may have to make an adjustment to your nutritional intake (depending on your goals). 

Consistency in Nutrition
This is the biggest game changer for most folks when it comes to reaching their fitness goals. I have run across many individuals that simply lack the consistency in hitting their nutritional goals and end up overeating most of the time that they end up spinning their wheels (see no fat-loss). Make sure to track your nutritional intake diligently and to not leave things to chance, the results are well worth the extra effort.

One thing a person in a fat-loss phase should remember is that restricting calories and being more active (increased cardio) is a temporary phase, life will not be like that forever. The sooner a person accepts this fact and adheres to their nutritional plan, the quicker they will begin to see progress, reach their goals and then eventually transition back to a maintenance phase (aka normal life). 

How exactly are you tracking your progress?
The final point I wanted to bring up is inadequate measures to gauge progression in fat-loss or muscle-gain phases. Most fitness enthusiasts simply watch the scale, they go to the gym, step on the scale and either are overjoyed or disheartened because they didn’t (or did) see the number they wanted to see. 
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Solely watching the scale (at different times of the day) to asses your progress is really doing a disservice to yourself because

1. The scale isn’t the best indicator of body composition (fat to lean mass ratio)
2. Weighing yourself at any other time beyond the morning upon waking is an inefficient manner to track your weight due differences in hydration levels & food content that may be in your stomach from an earlier meal. If you would like to read about the methods I recommend to track progress click here to read my article on 'How to Track Progress'.​

My suggestions:

• Be honest with yourself on your level of dedication to your workouts & nutrition. 
• Begin tracking progress in a more efficient manner (found here)  & asses from there before making any changes (typically you want to wait until there is a stall in progress for a 1-2 weeks). 
• If you’re goal is to lose body-fat keep cutting (dieting down) until your visually happy with your level of leanness and if you are in a muscle-gaining phase, simply keep gaining until you are unhappy with your visual level of body fat.