Many men and women know how difficult it is to shed a couple of pounds. Theoretically, losing weight should be simple—just burn more calories than you take in. However, in practice, it’s much harder than that. There are those that put so much effort into dieting but even after a few weeks, they see absolutely no change in the scale. Eventually, many dieters give up since the effort would deem fruitless. There are many reasons why people can’t seem to lose weight. During their period of dieting, these people often make dire mistakes that may not only prevent them from losing pounds, but also cause them to gain more pounds than when they initially started. So before you begin or give up your efforts in achieving the weight you want, here are three weight loss mistakes you should avoid.
1. Holding back the protein
Dieters often disregard the benefits that eating protein can give them. Protein can help you regulate your cravings and help you stick to your diet without being scarce in nutrition and fulfillment. Not only that, but protein can help speed up your metabolic rate too. This is because it takes a lot of energy to metabolize protein. Thus, a high protein diet can increase the calories you burn by as much as 80-100 calories per day.
Protein is the most fulfilling nutrient by far. Studies show that people who ate more protein automatically ate fewer calories per day. This means that you won’t have to keep track of every calorie you eat if you have a high-protein diet because you will unconsciously have less cravings and less tendency to have late-night snacks. Protein is definitely the most effective way to lose weight with minimal effort.
2. Skipping meals
For some reason, people thought that skipping meals would help them and maybe even speed up their process of losing weight. It is true that skipping meals will significantly reduce your calorie intake but it is definitely not an effective method in the long run and it may even cause detrimental damage to your overall health.
People who follow this method of losing weight often skip the most important meal of the day—breakfast. When you skip breakfast, or any meal of the day for that matter, you’ll end up eating more calories throughout the course of the day in the form of small snack portions or larger meal servings. This is one of the reasons why you see an increase in weight instead of the opposite while dieting. In fact, studies show that people who skip breakfast tend to weigh more than people who do eat breakfast. Always aim for three meals a day, starting with a healthy breakfast containing both protein and fibre. Choose your meals wisely. Even low-fat muffin can have as much as 400 calories and 5 grams of fat.
3. Too little or too much physical activity
To lose weight, you should be mindful of the amount of activity you do too, not just of the amount of calories you take in. After all, losing weight is all about burning more calories than you eat. That’s why it’s important to sweat out all those calories instead of just holding yourself back from them. If you don’t work out, consider starting. If you do work out but still see no change, rethink you’re routine.
Beginners, most especially, tend to exercise with high intensity for long periods of time. Eventually, they don’t see a change in the scale and give up. Long, high-intensity work out sessions actually has its drawbacks. Since you’re not giving your body some time to heal, your body will not be as stimulated as it can be with short bursts of training. That’s why interval training is more effective than high intensity training. By changing up exercises between each intervals and giving your body a few minutes of rest, you can improve both your endurance and speed. This way, your body can reach its total maximum capability and burn more calories than it would otherwise.
