6 Reasons You Might Not Be Losing Body Fat

Understanding the Basics of Fat Loss

1. You're Not in a Calorie Deficit: I know it’s annoying, but a calorie deficit is non-negotiable. It’s fundamental. To lose mass (and fat is the mass you want to lose), we need to consistently use more energy than we take in.

   
   

2. You're Too Aggressive: Yep, we know we need a calorie deficit, which means less food. But most people go overboard and cut out too much. No, this doesn’t cause starvation mode (it doesn’t exist). However, hunger, bad moods, brain fog, and fatigue can end your motivation and diet before results arrive. Studies show that over-restriction can lead to overconsumption. Eating too little can negate that fundamental rule above.

   
   

3. Scale Focus: Thinking weight loss should happen on the scale every morning? It doesn’t work that way. The human body is complex. You can lose fat even if the scale isn’t moving. Your body constantly manages water, glycogen, sodium, and hormonal balance. These factors can greatly affect body weight. Eating even less is the most disruptive response to this. Also, don’t check your weight before and after training unless you’re trying to calculate how much the contents of your bottle weighed. It’s now in your belly, so you’ll weigh more, but that has nothing to do with fat or muscle.

   
   

4. Poor Sleep: Inadequate sleep disrupts everything! Hormones that regulate mood, appetite, and fat storage are affected. When I’m tired, hungry, and grumpy, I’d rather stick my fork in my eye than eat a salad. That makes things problematic.

   
   

5. Chasing Calorie Burn: Exercise is AMAZING! But just like a lack of food, overdoing exercise can lead to problems. Exercise is great because of what it provides, NOT what it takes away. I’m genuinely sorry to tell you this, but I don’t care how many calories you burnt training. I care about how productive you’ve been. And to be productive, you need energy.

   
   

6. Not Enough Strength Training: Building or at least maintaining muscle tissue while losing fat is crucial. Relying solely on cardio has its drawbacks. Find a balance between cardio and strength training.

   
   

6 Ways to Make Fat Loss Happen

1. Manage Sleep and Stress: Poor sleep disrupts hunger hormones (ghrelin and leptin) and increases cortisol, making fat loss harder. Try this: No caffeine after midday, a balanced evening meal with a bit of carbohydrate, and then get your butt to bed! You don’t need another episode of Love Island! Every hour before 11 is worth much more. Hot bath, Epsom salts, read some fiction, and get some...sleep. And no, alcohol isn’t useful; it’s just nice and detrimental. Wake up not feeling like death, and you give yourself a chance.

   
   

2. Foundational Meals: Keep it simple and create stability by nailing those three (usually) meals throughout the day. When you do that, you negate the need for satellite foods. Your body won’t shout at you for energy between meals or require caffeine and sugar just to make it through. Try this: Three meals of appropriate calories, protein-focused, and filling. This usually ticks the calorie deficit and protein boxes without much brain power.

   
   

3. Simple Tasting Volume Foods: When building those foundational meals, keep it simple and choose your foods wisely. Protein increases satiety and helps preserve muscle during a deficit. It also has a higher thermic effect, so make protein the focal point of your diet. Then add on simple tasting volume foods (read my article on volume foods) instead of density foods. Think more greens, root veg, beans, and lentils instead of pasta, bread, and cheese. And get rid of those nuts you snack on. They’re great for crossing the Arctic on foot but terrible for getting protein. Keeping foods simple stops us from consuming hyperpalatable foods we’re likely to gorge on.

   TIP: Try low-fat Greek yogurt and some fibrous fruit as a snack - high protein, low calorie, very filling, tastes good = dieting super combo.

   
   

4. Flow State - Stop Overthinking!: Honestly, I think you all know more than you realise. The waters get murky because we read so much information. Some is good; most is unnecessary. I’m telling you nothing revolutionary: eat good food, not too much, do some TOUGH exercise 2 to 4 times per week, and be much more active, especially if you have a sit-down job! Whatever plan you choose, it needs to be repeated consistently for weeks. If once a week you’re simply too tired and unmotivated, your approach is likely too extreme. So back off and create some flow. Being savage in your consistency beats extreme measures.

   
   

5. Practice Some Form of Tracking: There’s debate for and against tracking calories, but one thing is for certain: having some data can be eye-opening. Having the data won’t do a thing; it’s how you use it. Imagine you couldn’t see the price of anything or didn’t know how much was in your bank account. The same goes for calories. Try: keeping a journal or using some tracking software for a few weeks. It can be really insightful.

   
   

6. Incorporate Strength Training: If you diet without strength training, the majority of weight loss can be muscle. This means a weaker, smaller version of ourselves that doesn’t look much different because we haven’t actually lost body fat. By strength training, you’ll keep or even possibly build muscle. This means any fuel your body wants to take for energy will be fat, not your gains. Now you look WAY different! And you’re stronger, fitter, and faster! Obviously, we can help with that!

   
   

6 Reasons You Might Not Be Getting Stronger

1. Poor Form: Using improper technique (half reps or using lots of momentum) risks injury and prevents muscles from being effectively trained through the whole movement. This disrupts both muscle gain and movement efficiency, which are two of the four main pathways by which we get stronger.

   
   

2. Ego Lifting and Maxing Out: One-rep maxes are for testing, not training. We can all get drawn into the battle of pushing that extra kilo, but failing a lift or hitting a real deal one-rep max costs exponential energy for the mind, body, and nervous system. This can leave little energy for meaningful training, recovery, or adaptation.

   
   

3. Not Growing Muscle: All else being equal, bigger muscles have more potential to produce force. Better technical efficiency and more muscle are the foundation of getting stronger. Once you’ve learned how to use the muscle you currently have, some new muscle will only help.

   
   

4. Not Training Hard Enough: For muscles to get strong, they need an appropriate stimulus. Those little dumbbells aren’t going to cut it. It requires significant tension on the muscle to trigger a response or teach your muscles how to work under heavier loads. We’re talking tough but good sets, not ego lifting.

   
   

5. Not Consistent Enough: The best lifters and results are saved for the most savage. The most savage are the most consistent, not the most intense. Consistency of sessions, effort, and rep quality simply means more practice, more stimulus, and more adaptation, with less burnout or injury.

   
   

6. Insufficient Calories: A lack of total energy will impact function, recovery, and repair, as well as mindset—all of which will negatively affect strength. Protein is vital for repair and growth. Carbohydrates are a cornerstone for energy, especially for tough training and recovery, and fats support caloric intake, hormone production, and overall health.

   
   

6 Ways to Help You Get Stronger

1. Focus on Skill Instead of Strength: Strength is the specific skill of lifting a heavy weight in a particular way. So focus on getting very good at it. Master the movement to teach the muscles you have how to coordinate and contract together under a barbell. That’s why I stress “tough but good sets.” Grinding every set and rep ingrains poor form, as each rep isn’t a carbon copy. When water is concentrated on a small spot for long enough, a gorge is created. Your bar is the gorge; your reps are the drops. Practice robot reps.

   
   

2. Ensure Adequate Protein Intake: Consume sufficient protein to repair and rebuild muscle tissue, which is fundamental for strength gains. One gram per lb of lean body mass is sufficient in most cases. Is it a pain? Maybe, but it’s doable with a tiny bit of effort, and it’s impactful enough to make it worth it.

   
   

3. Get 7-9 Hours of Quality Sleep: Muscle recovery and central nervous system repair are crucial for strength. Let alone your motivation to get to the gym. Get your sleep!

   
   

4. Follow a Structured Training Program: Random workouts that are nothing more than a sweat fest really grind my gears! You need to repeat movements and weights, do the reps and sets over and over. Is it boring? Maybe it is, but is it more boring than wasting your time? Getting stronger definitely isn’t boring for long! Adhere to a well-designed program that follows the principles of progressive overload (read my article on Progressive overload) and includes the movements you want to get stronger in—or at least find a gym that will do that for you...ahem. We can help!

   
   

5. Incorporate Regular Deloads/Recovery Weeks: Periodically reduce training volume or intensity to allow your body to fully recover and prevent burnout. This gives your training process longevity and maintains motivation, leading to continued strength gains over time.

   
   

6. Be the Savage: The savage is consistent, disciplined, calm, and works very hard. Don’t skip sessions lightly; you just give yourself permission to do it again. That mentality bleeds into everything. How you train is how you do everything. Hit your sessions even when you’re feeling “meh.” Trust me, they’ll be some of the best ones. Eat your food, hit your reps and sets with skill, work hard, follow the plan, and don’t do a one-rep max because you got bored. The most savage isn’t the one making the most noise; the most savage is the one with their head down, doing the work over and over.

   
   

6 Reasons You Might Not Be Gaining Muscle

1. Not Eating Enough: You can't build a house without raw materials. Muscle growth is an energy-intensive process. Unless you're brand new to lifting or have lots of fat to lose, a calorie deficit will stop it in its tracks.

   
   

2. Insufficient Protein Intake: Out of those raw materials, protein is key! You are literally built from the stuff. Protein is the building block of muscle. You need to consume enough for repair and growth.

   
   

3. Lack of Intensity: Your muscles need a reason to grow. If you're not consistently challenging and stressing them more, they won't adapt.

   
   

4. Poor Sleep & Recovery: Muscle growth primarily occurs during rest. Inadequate sleep and recovery hinder this process.

   
   

5. Adapt, You Have, Adapt Your Training Must: What once challenged you now feels easier—not because the workout changed, but because you did. That’s the result of adaptation. If your training stays the same while you become more capable, progress stalls. To keep improving, your training must rise to meet your new level—with more load, volume, or intensity. Progress is a moving target, and staying still is falling behind.

   
   

6. Too Much Ego: Yes, you need stress to stimulate growth. But stop with the one-rep maxes. How much mechanical stress can you accumulate in one rep versus three sets of ten? And when you fail that lift, it costs even more! That’s lots of precious energy you could have used for development.

   
   

7. Inconsistent Training: Sporadic workouts won't provide the continuous stimulus needed for significant muscle gain.

   
   

6 Ways to Help Muscle Growth Happen

1. Eat Like It’s Your Job!: To build new tissue, you need to eat more calories than you burn, and it needs to be consistent. It doesn’t matter how good your training is. A high-carb, low-fat diet is the number one approach for muscle gain with the lowest fat accumulation. Expect to need to eat around 250 to 500 extra calories per day to build muscle at a decent rate. Pair that with adequate protein intake, and you’ll be on your way. Consume at least 1g of protein per lb. of bodyweight daily to support muscle building. If you work hard in the gym, eat a calorie surplus, and consume enough protein, you will build muscle.

   
   

2. Progressive Overload: What you did in session one doesn’t cut it now; you are a different animal. The goal of training is to create a stimulus your body isn’t fully prepared for. In response, your body adapts. What was once hard becomes easy; you need to find hard again. This is progressive overload in action. You lift heavier weights because you're stronger, so you must keep up with your new capabilities. We do this by following a program that plans it out. Over time, you need to move the needle slowly—bit by bit, an extra rep, a few kg, or another set only when you’re capable. Training is a glacier moving forward, not an avalanche crashing down. A well-thought-out program has this at its core.

   
   

3. Practice Muscle-Building Reps: Still bouncing the bar off your chest or half-repping those squats? Let’s fix that. The Perfect Muscle-Building Rep isn’t just about moving a weight; it’s a recipe with a few ingredients. It’s about a controlled stress that forces your body to adapt. This is what we call the perfect rep, broken down into three phases:

4. SLOW: A controlled, 1-3 second eccentric phase where the muscle lengthens under load. This maximises Time Under Tension and creates the micro-damage needed for growth.

5. STRETCH: Gently move into the full range of motion, feeling a loaded stretch in the muscle. This powerful stimulus, known as stretch-mediated hypertrophy, is key to building new muscle.

6. STRONG: Accelerate the weight back to the start. This powerful concentric phase recruits the most muscle fibres and builds the strength you need to lift heavier over time. By focusing on these three principles, every rep becomes a purposeful, muscle-building rep, ensuring you get the most out of your training.

7. 
   

8. Optimal Sleep & Recovery: As mentioned, get 7-9 hours of quality sleep nightly, as muscle repair and growth primarily occur during rest.

   
   

9. Master the Basics: Aiming to progress in the big basic compound lifts is the cornerstone of resistance training. It builds a great foundational base of good technique, strength, and muscle that will cover the main movement patterns and every muscle of the body. So practice the basics and make them a staple part of your training. The big basics = Squat, Deadlift, Bench Press, and Pull-Ups.

   
   

10. Maintain Training Consistency: Adhere to a structured workout schedule week after week to provide the continuous stimulus required for muscle hypertrophy. Finding a way to train that you enjoy—even love—makes this happen. But sometimes, you have to put the work in first, see the fruits of your labour, and then guess what? When you see progress, you begin to enjoy it. But be disciplined; don’t skip sessions lightly. Take some pride in your routine and yourself. As I describe above—Be the savage.

    
    

I’ll repeat: “The savage is consistent, disciplined, calm, and works very hard. Don’t skip sessions lightly; you just give yourself permission to do it again. That mentality bleeds into everything. How you train is how you do everything. Hit your sessions even when you’re feeling ‘meh.’ Trust me, they’ll be some of the best ones. Eat your food, hit your reps and sets with skill, work hard, follow the plan, and don’t do a one-rep max because you got bored.

The most savage isn’t the one making the most noise; the most savage is the one with their head down, doing the work over and over.”

Be the savage.

Have any questions you'd like answering? Just drop us a message.