The Biggest Obstacles to Weight Loss According to You

If you’ve ever spent an afternoon looking up weight loss on the internet, you will have heard how easy it is — cut this out your diet, buy that piece of equipment, take this pill — like magic, your weight will plummet. Every year, billions of pounds are spent on miraculous weight loss, and yet millions remain overweight. What’s going on?

If like thousands of others, you’ve ever been seduced by these ‘miracles’, you will have learnt the hard way that the fads and gimmicks simply don’t work. Even the sage advice of “eat less, move more” — “it’s simple science” — is not as ‘simple’ as it seems. It can feel like you’re eating the right things and working out yet still never within reach of your elusive goals. The result? Over 90% of diets and weight loss programmes fail.

We’re always looking to better understand our clients and improve our programmes. We know that there are many reasons why you might be struggling to drop the pounds — each weight loss journey is unique to the individual. It’s why we spend over 2 ½ hours with every client at the start of their programmes to understand their unique challenges, so we can tailor their programme.

But we wanted even more insight and so we recently conducted a survey that asked over 1,500 participants what they felt were their biggest obstacles to losing weight. We’ve broken down our findings below and explore how you can overcome them.

The Survey

Our survey posed the question, “what do you think is the biggest obstacle to weight loss?” Our respondents were offered several answers:

a. Unable to maintain results
b. Unable to fit a plan into lifestyle
c. Feeling deprived of favourite food and drink
d. Lack of support from family and friends
e. Unable to stay motivated

The results reveal that over 25% of people perceive their greatest obstacle to weight loss is motivation, with 14% saying they struggle to meet their goals because they feel deprived of their favourite food and drink. Just 1% of respondents say that their inability to lose weight and sustain it is due to being unable to fit fitness and dietary plans into their lifestyle.

Our Preoccupation with Motivation

So motivation is the number one perceived obstacle to weight loss. We’ve had countless conversations with clients who are frustrated, flustered and generally worn down by their lack of motivation — “It’s my fault, I just can’t seem to keep myself motivated,” they cry. For them, along with over 25% of people who took our survey, motivation is the secret ingredient to weight loss — with it, the lifestyle you crave can be yours, but without it? You’re destined to fail. It’s a familiar message, written on gym walls and touted by wellness influencers and fitness aficionados alike. But is motivation really the key to weight loss?

We’ve talked about the emotional wielding of motivation before in our blog, but in short, weight loss has very little to do with motivation. Sure, digging deep and persevering on days when you’re in need of a boost can be beneficial, but motivation on its own is not enough to sustain your progress. Life has a way of getting in the way — stress spikes, illness strikes or work intensifies — and motivation alone won’t help you through.

In short, motivation may be the biggest obstacle to weight loss not because you don’t have it but rather because it’s not as important as you may initially think.

Lifestyle Changes and Lasting Habit Resets

We don’t echo these motivation messages. In fact, we take it out of the equation. After all, if motivation is the greatest barrier between you and your healthiest, happiest self, then the best solution is to find ways around it. But if motivation isn’t the key to weight loss and the secret ingredient necessary for losing weight, what is? By understanding the root cause factors that help you to both lose weight and sustain it, we believe that you can leave motivational obstacles behind you and experience the kind of results you want to achieve.

Our pioneering approach to weight loss is based on four key pillars — eat beautifully, work out intelligently, think successfully and live well. Within these pillars, there are no quick fixes, no magic pills and no need for inhuman levels of self-restraint and dreaded motivation — instead, our pillars are built upon positive habit change. We focus on coaching lasting lifestyle change which results in body transformation. Or to put it another way, your physical change is the consequence not the goal.

With the guidance of our medically registered dieticians and experienced personal trainers, you’ll enjoy a holistic approach to your body transformation. No diet or exercise regime will work if it can’t fit into your life and be flexible to your particular needs, so we take the time to tailor a programme that works just for you and builds healthy habits into your daily routine that keep you on track to achieve your goals.

Recent studies reveal that habit change is the key to both transforming and sustaining change in your lifestyle and your body. And it’s not hard to see why. Habits are self-perpetuating. They don’t require endless amounts of grit, feel like a chore or start and stop. Instead, habits become part of your daily life and allow you to effortlessly incorporate nutritionally dense food, efficient workouts and successful thinking into your everyday life without it feeling like a slog. We call this process your “new normal”.

To overcome the motivation obstacle and learn more about building healthy habits, book a free consultation today with our expert dieticians and start living your healthiest, happiest life.