Making mistakes when it comes to weight loss can slow your progress or halt it completely. Here’s a list of the worst weight loss mistakes and how to avoid them.
You’ve probably asked the question before: “Why can’t I lose weight?”
Have you ever stopped and wondered why you have been working so hard and still haven’t lost any more fat off of your belly?
There may be some things that you are unconsciously doing that are sabotaging your fat loss progress.
In this article, we’re going to take a look at 7 ways that you may be keeping your progress at a halt. We’ll also provide you with useful action steps that you can take to start your way to your ideal body fat percentage.
1. Being Inconsistent
When it comes to making progress at anything, whether at losing weight or building muscle, consistency in your efforts is the name of the game.
This means that you need to make sure that you are sticking to a well-balanced diet chock with fat-burning foods as well as getting to the gym and exercising on a regular basis.
You cannot expect great results at anything if you are not doing your part and putting in 100% of the effort that is required to get the job completed successfully.
Even for someone who has above average genetics, they will still need to put some effort to reach their weight loss goals.
You cannot rely on your own metabolism to do all the hard work, because it obviously can’t handle the load or you would lose weight while still eating everything you wanted.
So make sure that you are following your program consistently and not skipping any days with your diet and training sessions.
2. Doing The Same Routine Over And Over Again
Monitoring your consistency is a great way to make sure that you are making progress but when it comes to your personal routine; change is good.
But if you are doing the same workout over and over, again and again, every time that you work out, your body will adapt to the system and will not have any reason to make improvements.
This means that you will hit a plateau and stop losing weight.
You need to challenge your body in order to make progress.
So every time you work out, set higher and higher standards for yourself to meet. This will help to push your body to the level that it needs to make the progress you want to see.
3. Skipping Important Meals
One way that you may be sabotaging your weight loss is by skipping important meals that are crucial to boosting your metabolism and keeping it going.
Breakfast is one of those meals that you don’t want to skip.
Actually, this is one of, if not the, most important meals of the day.
Skipping breakfast will not only slow down your metabolism, but it will wreak havoc on your hunger.
When you don’t fuel up in the morning, you will start to crave anything that resembles food because you are so hungry.
You’ll literally find yourself grabbing the first thing that you see and start eating it without even thinking if what you are putting into your mouth is a good choice.
And even if you are able to hold off your hunger pangs for a while, you will most definitely have the tendency to overeat on your next meal.
So, while your metabolism has slowed down and you have eaten more than what you should have in that meal, instead of losing weight, this will help you to go in the opposite direction and gain pounds.
4. Only Doing Cardio Exercises
This is one bad weight loss habit that you can see at the gym every day.
And the results speak for themselves.
So many people waste so much time on the treadmill and elliptical, only to see absolutely no change in their body fat percentage after months of struggle.
So aside from doing cardio exercises, you also need to so do some strength training.
You will need to build and strengthen your muscles so that your body could burn more calories.
More muscle mass equals a higher caloric requirement for the day so the more muscle mass that you have, the more you will be burning fat for fuel.
5. Neglecting to Bump Up Your Weights
Okay, so maybe you are one of the smart ones who have been pumping iron in order to trim your waistline.
This is great because resistance strength training is among the most effective way of burning fat while at the same time gaining muscle tone.
But the problem is that most people get lax with their training and stop making the gains that they should.
This is why progress will come to a halt, in both strength and fat loss.
You need to keep slowly progressing with your weight training poundage and volume of training.
Increasing your poundage will help to stimulate more muscle gain for an increase in both muscle tone and metabolic response to help burn more fat.
6. Rolling Solo at the Gym
No matter what level you are at, there are going to be those times when you are feeling a bit lazy and unmotivated.
The real fix to this is to always have a training partner that keeps you motivated and who holds you accountable.
When there is someone who has the same goals as you and who wants to see you succeed as much as you do, you will be more inspired to stay on track with your diet and training.
Training with a partner also helps to bring some fun into an activity that can tend to be brutal at times.
7. Judging Your Progress by the Scale
Let’s get this straight once and for all: the numbers on the scale are nothing but arbitrary numbers.
The truth is that when you start to put more muscle on your frame, you may or may not lose any weight per se.
But even if you don’t see the numbers go down on the scale, it definitely does not mean that you are not losing fat.
On the contrary; you probably lost some fat and gained some muscle.
Remember that muscle is much denser than fat and takes up less volume.
So if you lose a pound of fat and gain a pound of muscle, the scale won’t change but your clothes size definitely will.