Why Not Losing Weight Isn't About Willpower
The short answer
Why am I not losing weight despite eating less and exercising? Sleep, digestion, muscle, stress, and metabolism can shape weight beyond willpower.
Contents
"I've cut back, I've exercised, and nothing shifts. I suppose I haven't the willpower."
People say this quietly. They have been hearing it for years.
Here is what I say.
You can't order your own mind about either
When you're in a low mood, can you decide to be in a good one?
You can't. However hard you try. But see someone you're glad to see and it lifts by itself.
The mind doesn't move on command. It moves when the situation is made.
The body is the same. You cannot will your metabolism faster. But when the conditions are there for the body to run well, room opens up for it to turn toward spending energy.
So it isn't shifting not because your will is weak. The conditions aren't there yet.
Metabolism is settled by several things at once
How much energy a body spends isn't set by one thing.
How much you've slept, how much muscle is left, whether the gut is easy, what the thyroid is doing, how many years the stress has run — these settle it together. Which is why the same food and the same walk give different results in different bodies.
Modern medicine also treats obesity as a disease rather than a failure of will. It sees regulation gone awry. So "eat less, move more" isn't wrong, exactly — but in a body whose regulation has gone awry, it doesn't take.
Which is why there's an order
Make weight loss the first goal and it usually fails. You are pushing a body that isn't in a position for it.
And push it, and the body economises instead. Go hungry and it decides times are hard and turns down its spending. So it drops at first, then stalls, and comes back heavier when you let go.
So I change the order.
Sleep first. Short sleep skews the signals that set hunger. Tilted there, nothing after it works.
Digestion next. Whether what you eat is actually processed. Broken here, eating well brings no materials in.
Muscle next. Muscle spends energy sitting still. Lose it and the same food is left over.
Weight comes last. Not as the goal — as the result.
Weight is a result, not a cause
The number on the scale is the value that comes out at the end of what happened in the body.
Wrestle with the end value and it is hard going. Change the conditions that made it, and the value follows.
That is where my work sits. Not taking your weight off, but making the situation in which the body can take it off. (What herbal medicine actually does)
If you've been hearing about willpower for years, you can set that aside.
The mind doesn't move on command, and neither does the body. You make the situation.
Written by Dr. Heo Ji-young (PhD in Korean Medicine Pathology, Kyung Hee University · former Research Professor of Herbology, Kyung Hee University)
IF YOU NEED CARE
Have a symptom that's been on your mind?
Choose a time on Naver, or send your concerns before your first visit.