Shedding pounds isn’t easy and fat loss mistakes along the way make it even harder. You’ll often find diet advice on the internet that not only doesn’t work, but can be extremely bad for your health. For instance, fad diets like the cabbage soup diet or grapefruit diet, may take weight off initially, but as soon as you go back to normal eating, put it right back on again. These diets often cause you to lose water weight, rather than real weight or lose muscle mass over actual fat. Sometimes they’re such low calorie diets, that when used over a long period, not only leave you malnourished but put you in starvation mode, which slows metabolism.
Omitting specific types of food from your diet can be a problem.
While you definitely don’t want fried foods or sugary treats, you do need healthy carbohydrates and healthy fat. You notice the keyword is healthy. Vegetables are carbohydrates, just as fresh fruit is. Fruit also contains sugar. You should always have an abundance of fresh vegetables in your diet and at least some fresh fruit, even if they are carbs. Fat isn’t always bad, either. Healthy fat, such as that found in avocados or salmon, needs to be included in everyone’s diet for healthy weight loss.
Doing the same exercise routine will slow your progress.
The body is amazing. It’s not only self healing, it also finds ways to conserve energy and not work as hard. When you do the same routine repeatedly, the body becomes efficient at doing it. While efficiency is normally good, in this case it isn’t. It means the body burns fewer calories and makes weight loss more difficult. Varying your routine helps you keep the furnace at high and shed pounds faster.
Avoiding weights or strength building exercises could be your biggest mistake.
You may be a whiz at cardio and it may be quite fashionable to be a runner, but nothing helps you take pounds off quickly like strength building exercise. Many women avoid it because they worry about building bulging muscles, but that’s not going to happen unless you work very hard and supplement with the right type of nutrients or other substances. Even then, it’s doubtful. Strength building exercises also provide the benefit of helping to prevent osteoporosis.
- You may be surprised to find that working out longer than a half hour to 45 minutes may actually put on weight, according to one study. The conclusion was that the shorter time left enough energy for more activity following and less hunger.
- While exercise is a very important part of weight loss, you still need a healthy diet to shed those pounds. Eating healthy and not exercising or visa versa, is a huge mistake.
- Focusing just on the scales and not looking at inches lost is a big mistake. Muscle tissue is denser than fat tissue, so one cubic inch weighs more. You can lose inches by shedding fat and replacing it with muscle tissue. Your scales might not reflect the loss but your size will.
- Steer clear of “diet food.” Low fat foods will leave you feeling hungry and many times it may have more calories because of added sugar.
