Are You Making These 9 Weight Loss Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them?)

Losing Some Flab Is Not as Hard as It Seems!

Overweight or obese people try a lot of things, often out of desperation. One of the most common mistakes among them is going all out on a dieting spree (and it usually translates into starving themselves). They could also go on a morning walk or a gym-based workout session for a few days and resolve to make it a habit, only to give it up at the first sign of trouble.

It is also not uncommon to find disheartened weight-loss enthusiasts going back to a junk and alcohol-based diet, and this only sabotages what little they had accomplished with their hard work. Add to it a habit of a poor sleep cycle and chronic stress symptoms, and you would understand why so many people quit within the first week of joining a gym.

We do not imply to make fun of them, but we are rather writing this article to offer our take on some of the most common weight loss mistakes that they all make. There is nothing wrong with dieting or working out, but what is almost always missing from such unplanned schedules is a personalized plan of exercising and eating, and along with it a mention of all the bad habits that are keeping you away from getting the desired results.

“Why Am I Not Losing Weight?”

The mistakes mentioned above may seem silly at first but they soon grow into king-size blunders. You would almost always find people trying all unproven and even potentially dangerous activities that often backfire and cause serious health problems. We are looking into some of those inappropriate ways that you need to stay away from.

Consulting an expert for your weight loss and fitness requirements is important. We are all unique in our special ways and so are our fitness requirements. What’s sauce for the goose is certainly not the sauce for the gander, and that’s why you should always insist on getting a personalized fitness and dietary plan from your trainer.

To manage your weight better, you should make some smart, incremental changes to your lifestyle like starting your day with green tea, detoxing your liver every weekend, warming up before the workouts, consulting a health and fitness expert virtually, and exercising indoors in the wake of an epidemic.

9 Weight Loss Mistakes Almost Everybody Makes (and How to Avoid Them?)

You could be looking forward to a family get-together, or a grand ceremony, or even a college program, but nothing would excite you as much as being comfortable in your skin. Some common terms you can use to describe your disappointment are obese, overweight, flab, fat on lower body and belly, etc. and they all lead to poor self-esteem and disappointment.

Our fitness experts advise that if your weight loss results are not as per your expectations, it isn’t always due to a lack of willpower or dedication. Sometimes it is also because of following wrong information or starting on the wrong foot. So many people give up on their fitness goals midway every day because they keep on making some fundamental mistakes and still expect themselves to get positive results.

Here are 9 common mistakes that may stop you from losing some extra flab:

Unplanned dieting (or starving yourself by skipping meals)

Most people believe that if they deprive their bodies of food, they will become slimmer or fitter. It is one of the most common and most harmful weight loss mistakes that people make every day. You should note that we all need food to maintain our biological functions and any deviation from this rule can lead to health issues.

No one has ever lost weight properly by simply giving up on food. When you deliberately refuse to eat, the body signals the organs to slow down the metabolism process. This can cause a slower rate of fat burn and can also affect other vital biological processes like BP and blood circulation.

Persisting with this mistake can cause vomiting, tiredness, hair loss, skin problems, and may court various illnesses too. It may also damage your metabolism beyond repair in severe cases.

Caution: As an exception, some thyroid patients might find this article useful.

Avoiding exercises

Exercise is one of the most successful ways that help to stay in shape. You may take a brief rest if you have injured or overworked yourself (and your fitness trainer would be the best judge of it), but that’s no excuse for giving it up altogether.

Also read: 5 Mistakes to Avoid in a Gym

Persisting with a good diet plan and engaging in regular aerobics sessions would always help you get the most of your fitness regime. We recommend you start with no equipment workouts at home if you are not yet prepared to set your fitness goals. Doing yoga too would help you focus and channel your energies in a better way, provided you stick to it.

Diet foods and supplements

Losing weight is a near-impossible task if you are relying on some miracle or some magical quick fix. It is so because you could be fatter for a large number of reasons like eating too much junk food, drinking too much alcohol, living in a stressful environment, or a combination of them.

You should note that weight loss supplement manufacturers, unlike medication drugs, do not guarantee that their products are safe. Touted as natural safe-top-use, such products may not necessarily be good for you. It is best to stick to natural ways to lose weight by controlling your dietary and lifestyle practices. Staying regular and disciplined would help!

Tip: With regards to taking any health supplements, it is best to consult your healthcare specialist and fitness trainer first.

Even if you are taking a healthy diet, you should not overeat. We advise you to replace the big bowls, plates, and containers with small sizable plates for all your meals. Portion control is a natural reflection of your willpower and determination and it can help you reduce your food portions with small sizable plates to check overeating.

Experienced fitness trainers do not ask you to give up on your indulgences in a go because they know it could backfire. They thus advise you to follow the Pareto Principle- you could follow 80% of the diet plan and indulge yourself for the remaining 20%. The key is to be very cautious around it because it is not always easy to calculate what you are eating, especially when you are on a fitness diet.

Not chewing the food properly

Some of the major side-effects of not chewing your food apart from weight gain include poor absorption of vitamins and nutrients, constipation, abdominal spasms, and bloating. Chewing food could prevent a number of these daily discomforts and also aid in the proper transport of nutrients in your body.

A natural weight loss process always takes into account your dietary practices and their timing. No matter how nutritious food you are eating, if you are eating uncontrollably or at improper times, it would only hurt you. Gulping down huge amounts of sweets is just as harmful.

Lack of sleep or insomnia

Nutrition and exercise do play a pivotal role in the weight loss journey, but you won’t gain much from it if you don’t give your body enough rest. Sleeplessness can cause hormone imbalance and this can actually cause you to gain more flab instead of losing it.

A medical study highlighted that when dieters slept for only 5.5 hours per night, they lost 55% less weight from fat than they did when sleeping for 8.5 hours. This was despite all the candidates following the same dietary and workout habits during the experiment.

Too much stress on cardio workout

Focusing on cardio workouts leads to many benefits but often fat loss isn’t one of them. Cardio exercises don’t help you burn calories after you have stopped working out. For that, you should choose strength training exercises because they result in excess consumption of oxygen in the post-exercise period, thus increasing metabolic rate.

You could always experience a higher rate of calorie burn with targeted exercises. We recommend doing high-intensity exercise sessions with low-intensity on alternate days, but you should take the seventh day off. This would help your body’s tissues repair themselves in a better way.

Obsession with weight scales

Weight is not the only measure to assess your health. If you are too obsessed with the weighing scale, you are likely to get demotivated with not much change in numbers every day. It is recommended to limit weighing yourself to once a week and consider other factors like how your clothes fit, your body-fat percentage, how you feel, and your overall lifestyle to measure your progress.

A healthy and natural weight management process is always linear over a certain time period. It is for this reason that fitness and wellness experts advise you to stay disciplined for months so it sinks in as a routine. Mental therapists also agree that compulsively checking your weight every now and then would only make you paranoid and obsessive.

Taking a ‘low Calorie’ or ‘weight-loss friendly’ diet

If you reduce calorie intake, you also lose out on a significant portion of your daily energy requirement. If there is too much calorie deficit in the body it is likely to enter starvation mode which results in fostering an unhealthy relationship with food. If you drastically reduce entire food groups from your diet, you might end up with lower energy levels and reduced metabolism rates.

You should also know that there’s a huge difference between low-calorie and nutrient-rich foods. The quality of your calories determines your satiety, blood sugar levels, hormonal patterns, and overall health. If you persist with this mistake, you might end up inviting several health risks and this might even increase your medical bills.

Tip: A serving of diet soda does not offer any nutrition but it will spike your blood sugar levels. Go for nutrient-rich foods instead of obsessing over the low-calorie ones to lose weight faster.

Expert Tip: Slow and Steady Wins the Race

Going all in at once takes you away from your weight-loss plans. You should rather start by cutting 500 calories from your daily intake, eating five servings of fruits and veggies per day, working out, etc. It might be difficult at first but you can do it with some self-discipline. You can always make things more interesting for you if you achieve the small goals first to stay fit.

It would be best to slowly integrate healthy habits into your routine in manageable chunks to master each change. Your fitness trainer and discipline shall help you get to the other end faster. We also advise you to check against the above-mentioned 9 mistakes to know where your weight management routine is possibly faltering.

Weight Loss Plateau

“Why Can't I Lose Weight No Matter What I Do?”

You could be doing everything right and might be getting visible results too. However, you should stay away from the dreadful phenomenon called the Weight Loss Plateau. It refers to a rapid increase in your weight and lowered fitness levels immediately after you have made your fitness plans a bit lenient.

It would be advisable to go back to the drawing board to figure out how you can correct your eating and workout habits. You can use it as a stepping stone to come back even stronger than the last time by not repeating the same mistakes.

Consulting a Fitness Coach Is the Best Way to Lose Weight Faster

It is not easy to form a habit for fitness workouts, especially if you have never done it. What could be a better way to get going with it than to consult a personal trainer and a wellness expert for the same? The former would help you with a set of personalized workouts and exercises that you could do at home, while the latter could provide you with a diet plan as per your energy requirements.

The good thing is that you do not have to go looking for such experts near you. You can rather consult these experts online using your smartphone, and you could choose from the best experts from around the world sitting in your living room. You can book their services for an on-demand live video or audio session to get personalized assistance with your health or fitness issue whenever you want at very nominal fees.

Try it now on your smartphone!

We welcome you to explore this new and revolutionary mode of consultation. You can use it to schedule your first live interactive online session with an expert of your choice to discuss with him how you can manage your weight properly through exercising and taking a proper diet. These are the world’s best experts right now and you can avail of their services at a fraction of the fees of your local service providers, as and when you like!

The key is to do the basics right and to persist with them. With proper persistence and discipline, losing some extra flab would just be a matter of time!