You may be shocked to hear that you may be sabotaging all your hard work to get healthy without even realizing it. You've probably seen several lists already in 2012 on how to loose weight in the new year. You may be shocked that many of these and other tips you have been following throughout your life are actually hindering you from loosing that stubborn weight! Here are six well-intentioned weight loss tips that can have the opposite affect than you attend.
1. You Save Your Calories for a Big Dinner
Eating less calories is necessary to loss weight, but spreading those calories throughout the day is important for fueling your body throughout your daily activities. If you save all your calories for the end of the day, your body goes into starvation mode early on and then latches on to all those calories you finally give it at the end of the day which makes your hunger hormones go crazy which will make you eat more! A study done at the National Institute on Aging showed that people who ate most of their daily calories in one large dinner produced more ghrelin (a hormone that causes hunger) than when they ate that same number of calories throughout the day in 3-5 smaller meals.
Smarter Move: When you over eat at night, you aren't as hungry at breakfast. Try to eat a breakfast of at least 400 calories to get your body fueled at the start of your day. This way you won't continue to become more hungry throughout the day which may lead to eating a large dinner and start the whole cycle over again. You should be eating every 3-4 hours to keep yourself from getting to the starvation state during the day.
2. You Graze instead of Eating Regularly Scheduled Meals
Like I said above, you need to plan on eating every 3-4 hours...3 meals and 2 snacks. You need to allow your body to digest and process the food you eat before eating again. You start to burn more calories several hours after eating, but then your body looks for more fuel. If it doesn't get it, it may go into starvation mood and hold on to the fat as it's fuel (preventing you to loose that fat!). Grazing is also hard to keep track of and may lead to over eating because you aren't sure how much you've actually eaten.
Smarter Move: Keep a food journal to see when you are actually eating. You may not be aware that you are grazing or going to long without eating. When you journal your food, make sure you write everything down. Even a little piece of chocolate your friend gave you. You may realize that you are eating more than you think or even not enough throughout the day! You may be shocked at what you see after one week of journaling!
3. You Assume Calories from Healthy, Natural Foods are Low
People always underestimate the calories that are in nutritious foods, such as yogurt, fish, grilled chicken, fruits, nuts etc. Just because a food is healthy, doesn't mean you can eat as much as you want of it. A serving of yogurt can have 200 calories and 30 grams of sugar! If you eat several servings a day without cutting calories elsewhere it could cause you to not loose weight.
Smarter Move: Measure everything you eat and count the calories in everything you eat! Once you release that you are actually eating two servings of yogurt instead of one and it has 400 calories in those two servings you will pay attention to how much you are taking in your serving.
4. You Eat Like a Bird For the Month Leading Up to a Big Event
Cutting calories drastically might seem like the quickest way to loose weight, but it can actually hinder your weight loss. Depending on your gender and size, you should never go below 1,200 - 1,500 calories a day. If you lower your calories below these numbers for even two weeks, you can slow your metabolism down and start loosing muscle. Which causes the same diet plan to slow your weight loss down until you are no longer loosing weight. Like I said above, your body will hold on to fat to feed your starving body! Muscles are calorie burning machines. If you continue to eat to few calories, you will continue to loose muscle and your metabolism will continue to slow down.
Smarter Move: It is healthiest to loose 1-2 pounds a week. You can do this by cutting between 250-500 calories from your diet and burning that same amount with exercise. You also need to increase your muscle mass, so you can use it to burn more calories! Every pound of muscle burns an extra 50 calories a day!
5. You Set Short-Term Weight Loss Goals
It's alarming to hear that only an estimated 20% of dieters keep their weight off for more than a year. That's because after the weight loss goal is reached, dieters go back to their old eating habits. Those who continue their healthy eating habits after they have reached their weight goal are 1.5 times more likely to keep the weight off in the long run than those who start of by relaxing their diets on the weekend which turns into their old eating habits.
Smarter Move: Consider the changes you are making as a lifestyle change and not a diet. You should be choosing to eat healthy because you know it's the best thing for your health and your future and not just to get into a bikini this summer or that special dress for a certain occasion. Try to set small goals to your lifestyle change instead of changing all bad habits at once. If you are eating cookies before bed each night, try and change that snack into something more healthy like a small handful of nuts. If you make small steps towards changing the way you think about food, you will be more likely to keep them going into the far off future..
6. Your Splurge Foods are "Low Fat" and "Sugar Free"
Research shows that we are more likely to over eat on foods that are labeled "diet" than those that aren't. Many times these foods will have equal or even more calories than their "regular" counterparts. "Low Fat" doesn't necessary mean less calories even though most make that assumption. To make a food "low fat", manufacturers will usually add more sugar to make up for the lack of taste from the less fat. The same is true for "low sugar", they will add more fat to compensate. I challenge you to read the labels of these foods. I bet you will see high fructose corn syrup or hydrogenated oils. Both which are processed sugar and oils which are horrible for you.
Smarter Move: Read all food labels before you eat it. Check the number of calories and the ingredients that are in the food. Many times if you are craving a sweet, it is better to eat the "regular" version because they didn't need to add unnatural ingredients to make up for the lower fat or sugar. Just make sure you check the serving size and eat them in moderation!
No comments:
Post a Comment