But I'm Eating Less Than Ever - Why Am I Not Losing Weight?
Let me tell you about Mik (not her real name, but her story is incredibly common). She came to me eating 1,200 calories a day, training six days a week, and hadn't lost a gram in four months. "I must be doing something wrong," she said. "Maybe I need to cut more?"
No, Mik, You need to eat more.
I know that sounds completely backwards. How can eating more help you lose weight when eating less isn't working? But here's the thing, your body isn't a simple calculator. It's a complex, adaptive organism that's exceptionally brilliant at survival.
The Calorie Deficit Myth We Need to Talk About
The fitness industry loves telling you that weight loss is just "calories in versus calories out." Eat less than you burn, lose weight. Simple maths, right? Long sigh….
Except your body didn't get the memo about simple maths.
When you restrict calories - especially for weeks or months, even years (like I did) on end - your metabolism doesn't just sit there passively accepting it. Your body adapts. It's called metabolic adaptation, and it's your physiology doing exactly what it was designed to do, protect you from what it perceives as starvation.
Here's what happens when you're in a prolonged calorie deficit:
Your metabolism slows down - and I don't just mean a little bit. Your thyroid hormone conversion decreases (less active T3 being produced). Your body temperature drops slightly. You fidget less. You move less spontaneously throughout the day without even realizing it. These non-exercise movements - called NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis) - can account for hundreds of calories daily, and they plummet when you're chronically undereating. For example, I burn 1725 calories just being alive each day..
Your hormones shift - cortisol goes up (hello, stress response and water retention). Leptin goes down (the hormone that signals satiety and maintains metabolic rate). Sex hormones get disrupted. For perimenopausal women already dealing with declining estrogen and progesterone, this is adding fuel to an already raging hormonal fire.
Your body becomes metabolically efficient - which sounds good in theory until you realize it means your body has learned to function on fewer calories. You've essentially trained your metabolism to run on less fuel. This is fantastic if you're actually starving. It's terrible if you're trying to lose body fat while maintaining energy and muscle mass and exercising at the same time.
The Stress You're Not Counting
Here's what really gets me about mainstream diet advice even in 2026 it treats calorie restriction like it exists in a vacuum. But a caloric deficit IS a physiological stressor. Your body experiences it as stress, full stop. Even when you have good intentions.
Now add that to:
Training stress (especially if you're doing high-intensity work or endurance training)
Work stress
Relationship stress
Sleep deprivation
Hormonal fluctuations in perimenopause
Life in general
You've got a cortisol situation that makes fat loss nearly impossible, regardless of how "perfect" your calorie deficit looks on paper. or that app.
Elevated cortisol causes water retention. It promotes fat storage, particularly around your middle. It interferes with thyroid function. It disrupts sleep, which further dysregulates hunger hormones. It's a cascade.
And the real kicker? Your body cannot tell the difference between "I'm trying to get lean for health" and "There's a famine and I need to conserve every possible calorie to survive.”
Why Women Get Hit Harder
Women are particularly vulnerable to this metabolic adaptation. We're more sensitive to caloric restriction than men. Our bodies are more protective of fat stores - thanks to biology and the massive energy demands of pregnancy and breastfeeding that our physiology still thinks might happen at any moment.
For perimenopausal women, this gets even more complex. We're already dealing with:
Declining estrogen affecting how we use nutrients
Changes in insulin sensitivity
Shifts in where we store fat
Disrupted sleep affecting hunger hormones
Often higher baseline stress
Then we're told to eat less and exercise more when our metabolism is already in chaos. Brilliant.
What Reverse Dieting Actually Is (And Why It Works)
This is where reverse dieting comes in, and why I often have to do something that seems completely counterintuitive which is increase someone's food intake before we can work on body composition changes.
Reverse dieting is the gradual, strategic increase in caloric intake to restore metabolic function. It's literally teaching your body that it's safe to increase energy expenditure again. I have had to do this several times before myself.
Here's what happens during a properly executed reverse diet:
Metabolic rate increases - slowly, carefully, we add calories back in (usually 50-100 calories every week or two), allowing your body to upregulate thyroid function, increase NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis), and restore normal metabolic processes.
Hormones normalize - cortisol comes down, leptin comes up, sex hormones stabilize. For my perimenopausal clients working on hormone optimization, this is crucial.
You get your life back - energy improves, training performance increases, you can think clearly again, your mood stabilizes, you stop feeling cold all the time.
Yes, you might gain some weight during this process. Usually water weight initially, sometimes a bit of body fat. But here's the thing, you were already stuck. Your metabolism was suppressed. That aggressive deficit wasn't working anymore anyway. And It can feel odd but you have to trust that it is going to improve your life in the long run.
The goal of reverse dieting isn't to stay at the higher calories forever. It's to restore metabolic flexibility so that when you do create a deficit later (if needed), your body actually responds to it.
The Data That Matters More Than the Scale
When I'm working with clients through this process, the scale is literally the least interesting piece of data (generally).
What I'm tracking for long term success:
Energy levels throughout the day
Training performance and recovery
Sleep quality
Digestion
Mood and stress resilience
Menstrual cycle patterns (for those still cycling)
Body measurements
How clothes fit
Blood markers - thyroid function, inflammation markers, blood glucose regulation, lipid profiles
Often, people are so focused on the scale number that they miss the massive improvements happening in metabolic health, body composition (losing fat while gaining muscle can mean the scale doesn't move), and quality of life.
So What Do You Actually Do?
If you're eating very low calories and not losing weight, the answer isn't to eat less. The answer is to work with someone who understands metabolic adaptation and can help you restore normal function first.
This might mean:
Gradually increasing food intake
Prioritizing stress management as much as nutrition
Potentially reducing training volume temporarily
Addressing sleep and recovery
Supporting your hormones properly (especially in perimenopause)
Being patient with a process that takes months, not weeks
I know this isn't the sexy "lose 10kg in 30 days" promise you see everywhere. But those promises are exactly what got you into metabolic suppression in the first place.
Your body is not broken. Your metabolism is doing exactly what it's designed to do. We just need to work with your physiology, not against it.
The Bottom Line
Your body isn't a simple math equation, and weight loss isn't just about willpower or eating less.
If you've been restricting calories for months and the scale won't budge, if you're exhausted all the time despite "doing everything right," if you're training hard but getting weaker instead of stronger - you're not failing. Your metabolism has adapted to chronic stress and undereating.
The solution isn't to restrict harder. It's to restore metabolic function first.
This takes time. It takes patience. It takes working with someone who understands that your body is protecting you, not sabotaging you. And it requires letting go of the idea that faster is better when it comes to fat loss.
I work with women every day who've spent years trapped in this cycle - eating less and less, exercising more and more, getting more and more frustrated as their bodies refuse to respond. The relief they feel when they finally understand what's actually happening, when they can finally eat more food and feel better, when their metabolism starts working with them again instead of against them - that's why I do this work.
Your body is not broken. But it does need support to recover from the stress you've put it through - even if that stress came from genuinely trying to be healthier.
If this resonates with you, if you're ready to stop fighting your metabolism and start restoring it, that's exactly what we do in the Sérenité Women's Wellness Program. Because you deserve to feel energized, strong, and capable - not exhausted, frustrated, and stuck.
