Mistake #1: Skipping Breakfast
After a whole night, your body is going to be quite reasonably, hungry. For one, your body systems are working to keep you alive throughout the night. By skipping breakfast, you’re going to be more likely to load up on high calorie meals later in the day. Having a good morning breakfast would help quash that hunger and keep you from reaching for that midday chocolate chip cookie, or an extra dense lunch. So first step to losing weight is to have breakfast!
Mistake #2: Eating Less
When you severely cut down your calorie-intake, your body is unable to adapt properly. It feels wronged and starved and instead of losing weight, your body reacts by slowing down your metabolism. By inappropriately cutting down calories, you also risk losing out on important macronutrient needs too. You might not taking in enough proteins for muscle-building or carbs to fuel your next workout. If you continue to keep your body nutritionally starved, it is going to respond by sending hunger signals and telling you to keep eating. What you should do instead is to keep your calorie deficit at about 500-calories – nothing too severe.
Mistake #3: Bad Fats, Bad Carbs
Diets have evolved from blaming it all on carbs to blaming it all on fats. This has caused people to severely try to cut out either of these two from their diets. What we don’t realize is that not all fats are equal and not all carbs are equal. Some high fat foods like avocado, nuts and olive oil are among the healthiest foods. They make it easier to absorb fat-soluble vitamins such as vitamins A, D, E and K. As for carbs, refined carbs cna cause your insulin levels to spike, but good carbs that are fibre-rich help with satiety (feeling full) and with fuelling the main body processes. So, another tip for weight loss is to eat better, not just less.
Mistake #4: Thinking that NO mistakes are allowed
We eat into a whole bag of chips while binge watching on Netflix, AND then forget to work out. Dejected, you slump on your couch ready to throw away all your efforts. The thing is, we slip up. Humans err. We want to have desserts, eat peanut butter for lunch and sometimes we want to sleep away the day. That’s okay! We need to accept that fitness is a lifestyle. Having a bad dieting day or bad workout day is no reason to give up on your healthy lifestyle habits altogether. So instead of forcing yourself to make a radical transformation, try cutting down one soft drink per day and add 10 minutes of exercise per day. Little changes done each day add up to a lifetime of health.
