{"id":822,"date":"2026-09-21T08:33:24","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T08:33:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bgofit.es\/?p=822"},"modified":"2026-09-21T08:33:24","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T08:33:24","slug":"i-eat-very-little-and-im-not-losing-weight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bgofit.es\/en\/como-poco-y-no-pierdo-peso\/","title":{"rendered":"I eat very little and I&#039;m not losing weight: why this happens and what to do"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>\u00ab&quot;If I eat very little... why am I not losing fat?&quot;.<\/em> This is one of the phrases I hear most often in therapy. If you&#039;ve ever said to yourself... <strong>\u00ab&quot;I eat very little and I&#039;m not losing weight&quot;\u00bb<\/strong>, It is usually accompanied by something like this:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u00ab&quot;During the week I take very good care of myself.&quot;.<\/li>\n<li>\u00ab&quot;I hardly eat carbohydrates.&quot;.<\/li>\n<li>\u00ab&quot;At night I try to eat very little for dinner.&quot;.<\/li>\n<li>\u00ab&quot;There are days when I even skip a meal.&quot;.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But weeks go by and the belly is still there, the clothes fit practically the same, and that feeling of making a huge effort without getting results starts to drive you to despair. Then comes the conclusion: <strong>\u00ab&quot;My body is not responding&quot;\u00bb<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>But the problem probably isn&#039;t that you need to eat even less. The problem may lie precisely in... <strong>how are you trying to lose fat?<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<h2>You start Monday determined to do it perfectly<\/h2>\n<p>Monday arrives and this time it&#039;s for real. You have a &quot;good&quot; breakfast, eat a salad, eliminate bread, try not to snack, and have a light dinner.<\/p>\n<p>Tuesday is the same. On Wednesday you start thinking about food a lot more. And by Thursday you&#039;re tired of eating the same thing all the time, you&#039;re hungry, and you start craving chocolate, pizza, bread, or any food you&#039;ve been trying to avoid for days.<\/p>\n<p>And then the famous one appears: <strong>\u00ab&quot;Well, one day won&#039;t hurt.&quot;\u00bb<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>The problem isn&#039;t the food itself. The problem is that often that food becomes a &quot;since I&#039;ve already started...&quot; situation. On Friday you eat a little more, on Saturday you go out, on Sunday you take advantage of the fact that &quot;you&#039;ll start again tomorrow,&quot; and on Monday you&#039;re back to an extremely restrictive diet.<\/p>\n<p>And so it begins again.<\/p>\n<h2>You can eat very little from Monday to Thursday and not be in a deficit at the end of the week<\/h2>\n<p>To lose fat, your body needs to consistently burn more energy than you consume. This is what we call... <strong>caloric deficit<\/strong>. But there&#039;s something important: your body doesn&#039;t start over every night.<\/p>\n<p>Imagine that from Monday to Thursday you follow a very restrictive diet and achieve a 400 kcal deficit per day. You have accumulated approximately <strong>400 \u00d7 4 = 1,600 kcal deficit<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>But then the weekend arrives. Dinner out, some beers, appetizers, dessert, lunch with friends, snacking while watching a movie\u2026 You don&#039;t need to binge to make up for a good part of that deficit.<\/p>\n<p>That&#039;s why you can have the completely real feeling that you &quot;eat little&quot; \u2014because you actually spend many days eating little\u2014 and still not achieve the necessary deficit on a sustained basis.<\/p>\n<p>The problem isn&#039;t necessarily how much you eat on a Tuesday. <strong>What matters is what happens across the entirety of your days and weeks.<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<h2>And no, the solution is not to take away even more food<\/h2>\n<p>This is one of the mistakes I see most often:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u00ab&quot;I&#039;m not losing weight, so I&#039;m going to cut out breakfast.&quot;.<\/li>\n<li>\u00ab&quot;I&#039;m not going to eat carbohydrates at night.&quot;.<\/li>\n<li>\u00ab&quot;I&#039;m just going to have yogurt for dinner.&quot;.<\/li>\n<li>\u00ab&quot;I&#039;m going to lower the amounts even further.&quot;.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It might work for a few days. But if that diet leaves you constantly hungry, with low energy and an overwhelming craving for everything you&#039;ve forbidden yourself... how long do you think you&#039;ll be able to maintain it?<\/p>\n<p>Because losing fat isn&#039;t about starving yourself for 15 days. It&#039;s about finding a diet that allows you to maintain a calorie deficit long enough to achieve results.<\/p>\n<h2>You don&#039;t need to eat &quot;perfectly&quot; to lose fat<\/h2>\n<p>There is also the idea that to lose belly fat or reduce body fat you have to live on:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\ud83e\udd57 Salads<\/li>\n<li>\ud83e\udd66 Boiled vegetables<\/li>\n<li>\ud83c\udf57 Grilled chicken<\/li>\n<li>\ud83d\udc1f Fish<\/li>\n<li>\ud83e\udd5b Yogurts 0%<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And delete:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u274c Bread<\/li>\n<li>\u274c Pasta<\/li>\n<li>\u274c Rice<\/li>\n<li>\u274c Potatoes<\/li>\n<li>\u274c Chocolate<\/li>\n<li>\u274c Hamburgers<\/li>\n<li>\u274c Any food you really like<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But one food alone doesn&#039;t determine whether you lose or gain fat. You can include bread. You can eat <a href=\"\/en\/eliminate-carbohydrates-to-lose-weight\/\">pasta, rice or potatoes<\/a>. You can enjoy some chocolate. You can even go out to eat once in a while.<\/p>\n<p>The difference lies in learning what quantities you need, how to organize your meals, and how often to include certain foods so that everything fits within your goal.<\/p>\n<h2>What you eat matters, not just how much you eat.<\/h2>\n<p>Two diets can have similar calories and turn out to be completely different when it comes to following them.<\/p>\n<p>A diet rich in protein, fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, and other satiating foods can help you control hunger much better. And if you&#039;re also strength training, consuming enough protein and maintaining a proper diet will help you preserve muscle mass while losing fat.<\/p>\n<p>Because when you say you want to &quot;tone up&quot;, what you&#039;re usually looking for visually is precisely this: <strong>reduce fat while maintaining or building muscle<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>There&#039;s no single food that will specifically eliminate belly fat or cellulite. But improving your body composition, strength training, and maintaining healthy habits can produce significant changes in how your body looks.<\/p>\n<h2>The other problem: the calories we hardly count<\/h2>\n<p>There&#039;s something I see a lot in my practice. When we ask what you&#039;ve eaten during the day, you remember perfectly: &quot;a piece of toast,&quot; &quot;salad with chicken,&quot; and &quot;an omelet for dinner.&quot; On paper, it seems like very little.<\/p>\n<p>But then small things appear:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The oil you added to the salad.<\/li>\n<li>A handful of nuts while you were cooking.<\/li>\n<li>Two coffees with milk.<\/li>\n<li>A small piece of cheese.<\/li>\n<li>The three cookies in the office.<\/li>\n<li>The dinner sauce.<\/li>\n<li>Some potatoes that you took from your partner&#039;s plate.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>None of this means these foods are &quot;forbidden.&quot; The problem is that we tend to remember the main meals and forget many small extras. And some foods, even if healthy, can provide a significant amount of energy in relatively small quantities.<\/p>\n<h2>What if you do it perfectly during the week?<\/h2>\n<p>Then we must also look at other things:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Your amounts may simply not be suited to you.<\/li>\n<li>You may be moving less than you think.<\/li>\n<li>Your weight may be temporarily affected by fluids, menstruation, salt, intestinal contents, or recent changes in training.<\/li>\n<li>Or maybe you&#039;re just looking <a href=\"\/en\/weight-fluctuations\/\">the scale<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That&#039;s why we shouldn&#039;t judge your progress based on what happens in three days. It&#039;s much more interesting to observe the trend over several weeks, along with other indicators such as measurements, photos, clothing, performance, and adherence to the plan.<\/p>\n<h2>Your diet shouldn&#039;t make you wish for the day you can quit.<\/h2>\n<p>This sentence is important. Because if from day one you&#039;re thinking, &quot;When I finish the diet I&#039;ll go back to eating normally...&quot;, we have a problem.<\/p>\n<p>Your diet for losing fat should be quite similar to the diet you could maintain afterward. With more flexibility, of course. But there shouldn&#039;t be one world where you&#039;re &quot;on a diet&quot; and a completely different one where you&#039;re &quot;eating normally.&quot;.<\/p>\n<p>Because then you will always depend on your willpower.<\/p>\n<h2>Maybe you don&#039;t need more willpower. You need a better plan.<\/h2>\n<p>If you start every Monday super motivated and every Thursday you&#039;re itching to quit, maybe the problem isn&#039;t a lack of discipline. Maybe you&#039;re trying to follow a diet that isn&#039;t designed for your lifestyle.<\/p>\n<p>A good fat loss plan should allow you to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Eat foods you really like.<\/li>\n<li>Arrive at mealtimes with a reasonable hunger.<\/li>\n<li>Having the energy to work and train.<\/li>\n<li>Going out one day without feeling like you&#039;ve ruined the whole week.<\/li>\n<li>Learn what quantities you need.<\/li>\n<li>And, above all, being able to maintain it for months without feeling like you&#039;re constantly &quot;on a diet&quot;.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Because the best diet for losing fat is not the one that makes you lose the most weight during the first week. <strong>It&#039;s the one that ensures you can still do it three months from now.<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>So if you feel like you&#039;re eating very little but not losing fat, before cutting out foods again or reducing your portions even further, ask yourself: <strong>Am I eating too little... or am I following a plan that&#039;s too restrictive and that I can&#039;t stick to?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>That could be the difference between having to start all over again next Monday... or making sure you don&#039;t have to start all over again this time.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Do you want a plan you can actually stick to?<\/strong> I&#039;m Marina, <a href=\"\/en\/about-me\/\">Dietitian-nutritionist and online trainer<\/a>, And this is exactly what I work on with my clients: <a href=\"\/en\/switch-now\/\">Look at their results<\/a> And write to me whenever you want.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I eat very little and I&#039;m not losing weight: the problem is the weekly calorie deficit, the hidden calories, and an unbearable diet. Let me explain the real solution.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_angie_page":false,"page_builder":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[19,20],"class_list":["post-822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nutricion","tag-deficit-calorico","tag-perdida-de-grasa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgofit.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgofit.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgofit.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgofit.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgofit.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=822"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bgofit.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":826,"href":"https:\/\/bgofit.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822\/revisions\/826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgofit.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgofit.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgofit.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}