Dodging common fat loss mistakes can be difficult. Too often people start on a weight loss program, believing they’re doing everything right only to fail or slow their progress. The most common mistake when losing weight is to go on a super low calorie diet or fad diet. Sure the weight comes off quickly, but it doesn’t stay off. Extreme diets can’t be maintained for a long period if you want to remain healthy and when you quit and go back to normal or even moderate eating patterns, the weight comes back with a vengeance. If a diet is below 1000 calories a week, it can actually slow your metabolism and make you lose muscle mass not fat, making it more difficult to keep weight from returning.
You don’t combine diet and exercise for weight loss.
Exercise will not only help maintain muscle mass, it also burns extra calories and helps build muscles. The more muscle tissue you have, the more calories you burn, since muscle tissue burns more calories than fat. Even though it’s important to exercise, you can’t out exercise poor eating habits. What you eat and how much you eat is important for weight loss.
You choose strictly aerobic exercise to shed pounds.
While running and other aerobic exercises can help you lose weight, you really need all types of workouts to get fit. If you don’t have strength building as part of your workout routine, you’ll be sabotaging your efforts. Strictly sticking to running or other aerobic workouts can reduce the amount of muscle tissue in your body, but if you add strength building exercises to your routine, you’ll be building muscle tissue and boosting your metabolism to help shed pounds faster.
You faithfully stick with a low fat diet and skip higher calorie protein.
You need both protein and fat to be healthy. Remember, not all fat is bad. There are healthy fats, such as those found in avocados or fatty fish. Many of the “low fat” foods you find in the stores also use sugar to make the food more palatable, adding more calories and leaving you feel less full. You also need protein for maintaining muscle tissue. It also leaves you feeling more satiated and less likely to grab a quick snack or higher calorie foods.
- Not having enough healthy fiber in your diet can sabotage your weight loss efforts. Fiber not only keeps you going, it also leaves you feeling fuller and reduces the number of calories you absorb.
- You’re using a ketogenic diet, but add too much fat. No matter how good the diet, calories still count.
- People often eat, not because they’re hungry, but for some emotional reason, such as boredom, anger or sadness. Watch that mindless snacking and pay attention to what your body tells you before you eat.
- While eating too much is part of the cause of overweight, what you drink makes a difference, too. If you drink three 8-oz containers of a soft drink each day, in less than two weeks you’ll gain a pound.