Diet
5 Dieting Mistakes That’s Keeping You from Losing Weight
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Dec 20, 2017 - 6:06:55 PM
(HealthNewsDigest.com) - Are you on a diet, but not seeing any weight loss results? Starting a diet to lose weight can be challenging.
There is nothing more challenging and frustrating than you doing everything by the book but just not losing any weight. When no result is showing up on the scale despite your best efforts, it can feel hopeless.
It’s normal to feel like giving up, but don’t. Don’t make the mistake of giving up now.
In the evermore conflicting world of dieting and weight loss, there are countless misguided pieces of diet advice that may well be sabotaging your weight loss and causing the progress to stall.
Some, if followed diligently can even sabotage your efforts in the kitchen and gym by slowing your metabolism and causing your hormones to be off balance.
Asides not being helpful to your weight loss, it also makes it that much harder for you to lose weight and burn the excess stubborn fat.
Luckily, these 5 common diet mistakes many dieters make are easy to undo once you identify them.
So let’s get started.
Here are 5 of the most common diet mistakes that may be sabotaging your weight loss.
A popular diet like Military Diet which claims you can lose 10 pounds in one week does a good job of convincing dieters that weight loss is all about losing pounds. https://fitwirr.com/heal
However, this can be far from the truth. A scale is just one measure, and many other aspects of your weight loss success should be measured elsewhere.
Sure, the number on the scale still holds importance, but things like your muscle mass, body fat percentage, and metabolism efficiency don’t show up on your scale. In other words, it’s not just about your weight. You may well be getting leaner by increasing muscle mass without seeing any changes in your weight. This can and does happen often since the weight of lean muscle mass is far heavier than fat.
If you only rely on stepping on the scale to measure your progress, you could miss a similar sign of fat loss and increased metabolism.
So, how else can you measure your dieting success?
You can use simple methods like dress sizes, caliper for body fat percentage, and even an old-school tape measure. All these tools help you track changes in your body and bring many other insights on the real progress you are making with your efforts.
Yes, one of the main purposes of dieting is to limit your daily calorie intake and the control portion. So, it may sound contradicting to say failure to eat enough can stall your weight loss, but it’s true.
And here is how.
Many people overeat in terms of calories, and that’s partially as a result of eating a bigger portion than they should.
So it’s only natural to put a limit on what to eat and how much to eat to bring the weight to equilibrium. But going too low can negatively impact your weight loss and cause cortisol to go up and muscles to break down, which inevitably leads to a slower metabolism.
When repeated, you can unintentionally develop a bodily system where you don’t burn as many calories.
It’s simply a formula for ineffective weight loss.
To clarify, it’s not about of having a calorie deficiency; It’s your calories dipping too low that can cause your weight loss to stall and hurt your overall health. After all, you need sufficient calories every day to support your essential and basic bodily functions like pumping of blood, food digestion, and beating of the heart just to keep you alive.
When your body does not get enough energy, it’ll also attempt to store them up.
According to USDA Food Pattern, women need anywhere from 1,600 to 2,000 calories a day depending on the age, height, weight, and activity level.
If your diet is lower in calories than that, you may need to take a look at your daily needs and revise your meal plan.
3. Not Drinking Enough Water
If you have a good habit of drinking water throughout the day, you may find it surprising, but according to a report, 43% of people only drink 4 cups of water or less a day. 36% drink 1-3 cups and 7 % drink none.
If you are avoiding water for fear of gaining water weight, stop it. In weight loss, proper hydration is a key, and not drinking enough water and dehydrating yourself hurts your dieting success.
Drinking plenty of water prevents overeating and increases your fat loss by upping lipolysis (3).
Dehydration can also leave negative impacts on your overall health. Some of those impacts include:
Decreased blood flow
Weaken muscles
Loss of endurance
Loss of energy
Fewer vitamins and nutrients reaching different parts of the body
Less stable emotional health
Decreased kidney function
Also, if you have any difficulty being regular, check to see if you are drinking enough water throughout the day.
The food industry is a clever, progressive industry always finding their way into people’s diet. When many began to realize how unhealthy and sugary juices and sodas really are, they discovered just the perfect way to sell you something similar in taste, but healthier.
The only problem is that they really aren’t any healthier. And they really aren’t weight loss friendly like they claim.
Professor Yang from Yale warns of the danger of those drinks. He states calorie-free drinks put individuals at risk of gaining weight. Despite those drinks being free of calories and sugar, they contain artificial sweeteners, which are enough to cause sugar dependency and cravings in drinkers.
To avoid developing a taste palette that makes you crave sweets, cut back on all sweet drinks including no-calorie, no-sugar diet drinks.
Stress is inevitably part of every person’s life. It’s almost unavoidable. But the magnitude of your stress can have an impact on your weight loss and dieting. In fact, it may not be an overstatement to say stress is the secret controller of your weight.
As much as you like to think that your eating patterns, the level of motivation, and self-control are independently controlled by your conscious self and brilliant mind, the truth is your hormones, especially when you are highly stressed, take a stronghold of much of your decision making surrounding your weight loss efforts.
It influences everything from what you eat, to how much to eat, and how you feel about eating them.
It’s no coincidence that after a hard day at work, you always seem to reach for the chocolate ice cream tucked all the way inside the freezer. It’s a pattern that’s caused by your stress hormones. It’s the craving for comfort and pleasure. And the food is distress what gives people an immediate pleasure. You get the idea.
While everyone’s idea of comfort food may be different, it surely involves sugar, fat, and excess sugar.
While we all need a certain level of stress to get things done and get our bottoms off the couch, failing to take care of yourself and relieve the heavy stress in life can end up ruining your diet and even increase your stress level.
If you find yourself craving comfort foods often, take a good look at your stress level and find a way to manage and distress.
In weight loss, the most difficult thing is to not see any results when you put all your efforts.
It’s easy to feel like giving up but don’t until you go through this checklist. It may well be that common misguided diet advice that’s stopping you from losing weight and making progress.
These 5 mistakes are more common than you think and almost every dieter falls for them. Are you making any of these mistakes? If so, it’s time to undo them and kickstart your weight loss the right way!