I pulled out from my home terminal in my semi last night at 12:40 am and backed her back in at 6:00 pm this evening. I’m home long enough now for a meal, hot shower and a quick blog post while my truck is getting reloaded in order for me to roll out again in a couple more hours.

I got home at 7:00 pm after downloading my scanner and checking on a couple agendas for tonight’s trip. Once home, I prepared a quick, healthy and inexpensive dinner to end my 16 hour fast. Being as we had some left over skinless boneless chicken breast, I sliced it up into bite size pieces and then reheated it in a skillet with taco seasoning. I prepared a pot of Spanish rice and heated a can of black beans which I had rinsed because of the sodium content. All of this was served up on a bed of ice burg lettuce and topped with black bean and corn salsa and guacamole for a quite delicious dinner for my wife and I. The total calories per serving worked out to 447 and a total Weight Watchers points for 6 Smart Points, although I have quit tracking points and only concern myself with calories and macro-nutrients. The total cost for this meal worked out to about $6.00 to feed my wife and I with enough left overs for her to have a wholesome lunch at her job tomorrow. Total prep time was only about 12 minutes.

Quite frequently I see folks posting that they are doing everything right and still can not lose weight despite keeping within their Weight Watchers smart point allowance combined with exercise. OK, here is the deal. None of this is rocket science, but there is a reality that many people do not have a clue in regards to what it is about nutrition and exercise they do not know. Watching your diet and exercising is not always enough by itself, and you certainly can not out run a bad diet. Or, you can not out run a bad diet for long. But, lets assume your diet for the most part seems to be on point on the surface and you still can not lose despite the fact you have worn out a couple pair of sneakers by now with walking and or running. What is the problem, you keep asking yourself and others.

First, what kind of exercising are you doing? If your run, are you doing long slow runs or are you going out and doing HIIT? Do you know the different results these two forms of cardo will give you? If you are sprinting your ass off by doing HIIT, not only are you increasing your lung volume, but you are also building leg muscles more so than you will on a long slow run. This in itself could add a little weight on the scale.

If you strength train, are you doing heavy weights and low rep sets or do you go light weight and perform multiple reps and sets? Do you know the difference in these styles? High weight low reps will first and foremost get you strong and toned without giving you bulk while a lot of folks take the easy way out and do light weights and high reps. Which is ok, except that you are causing sarcoplasmic hypertrophy which builds muscle mass more than strength. This increase in muscle mass will add to your scale number.

Are you under or over eating? If you are under eating, your metabolism can actually slow down which will result in a turtle race with the scale. If you are over eating, well then this is quite obvious what will occur. The problem a lot of people do to themselves is they underestimate how much they eat and over estimate the amount of calories they have burned through exercise. This is one reason why Weight Watchers Fit Points are not all there for you to use as Weight Watchers knows that most people over estimate their activity. This can be in total innocence as people new to exercise will see the calories burned on the treadmill readout out or the numbers on their Fitness Tracker and assume it is accurate. Your best bet is to only use about 60% of those calories instead of them all. That is unless you are truly accurate in your tracking. Odds are, if you are not losing when your diet is spot on, you are over rating your calories burned through exercise.

If you do not remain mindful of your rest by not giving your body adequate time to recover between strenuous exercise sessions your weight loss will slow to a crawl as you will increase your Cortisol levels which will prevent weight loss. If you have built a exercise regimen into your life, then you also need to ensure that you are getting at least 7 hours of sleep each night. Especially in weight training, your rest and nutrition are equally as important as the actual lifting of the iron in the gym.

Another consideration is how many carbs are you eating, whether simple or complex? Do you know that you actually do not need to fuel your body with cabs before exercise, and that protein will do just as good of a job? Do you know that carbohydrates require you to consume extra water in order for your body to process them. Do you understand how this carbs and exercise can result in water retention through not only an excessive consumption, but that your body actually gets inflammation as a result of exercise. This inflammation will cause you to retain water from the micro-damages that occur every time your feet pound down on the pavement or with every little microscopic tear in your muscle fiber which occurs during weight training. This retention of fluids in muscle is inflammation which causes sarcoplasmic hypertrophy.

Lastly, do not assume that just because you exercise your ass off that gives you free license to eat just what ever you please afterwards. If you go for a run and then assume this gives you a good reason to scoot on down to the Dairy Queen for a sundae, then you are only sabotaging yourself. Once you have consumed that sugar, you will only crave more which will keep that fluid retention up through inflammation. At the end of the day, you weight management all boils down to calories in verses calories expended. If you exceed your caloric needs you will gain weight. And if you undercut your caloric needs to far, you will slow your weight loss drastically when your metabolism has slowed.