March 29, 2022 in Uncategorized, Weight Loss

10 Bad Habits Keeping Weight Loss At Bay

Losing weight can be complicated for some.  You workout five days a week, give up most of the snacks that are bad for you, and at the end of the week , you do not lose any weight.  Seeing that, can make the best quit. What’s the point of working hard and disciplining yourself if you are not going to see any results?  Well don’t give up, let’s discuss some of the things you may be doing wrong, with a little improvement weight will drop off you like sweat. 

Bad Habit #1: Going “on a diet” in the first place

The word “diet” in todays modern times means starting a way of eating for a temporary time and then quitting when you reach your goals.  It implies that the new way of eating is not something you can maintain for a long period of time.  What happens is you do extreme diets to lose large amounts of weight in a short period of time but you can never keep the weight off. The reason is the “diet” is not sustainable.
 Smart Fix: If you plan on losing weight for good, then you must find a way of eating that you can stick with for good.  You have to get out of the short term mindset of a diet.  You must find ways to eat, that fits your lifestyle and taste buds.  Also find ways to control and limit the sugary and savory food, that are detrimental to your eating habits.

Bad Habit #2: Overhauling your eating habits overnight

Many people try to lose weight by cleaning out their whole house of unhealthy foods and going cold turkey eating only fruits and vegetables.  How long can you keep up this diet? Maybe two weeks, the longest a month, but then you go back to binge eating and gain all the weight that you lost.  There are many reasons that you find it difficult to overhaul your bad eating habits. It could be you are dealing with addiction, boredom, poor planning habits, lack of discipline, etc.  You must identify and address these problems, and then discipline yourself to eat healthier.   
 Smart Fix: Eating healthy is not about totally eliminating food but replacing the regularity in which you eat them with healthier food.  So instead of eating sweets everyday, replace the sweets with fruits for six days out of the week.  Also you may need to focus the majority of your energy with replacing a specific food, like snacking on chips, or cookies, etc, before you tackle the other eating issues you may have.  Attacking one issue at a time may be helpful and feel more like a step by step process.

Bad Habit #3: Giving up certain foods altogether

Some foods are so ingrained in the culture it is difficult or nearly impossible to give up that food forever.  There is no food that must be eliminated forever but there are foods that need to be controlled. So don’t think of food as a forever no no, but a no no for this week or limited to once a day.

Smart Fix: All unhealthy foods should be eaten in moderation, but also you must take into consideration the foods that you find it difficult to eat in moderation, one bit turns to the whole package.  The foods that you binge on you need to eliminate those foods for two weeks to month, then you can indulge in the food for one sitting, then eliminate the food again.

Bad Habit #4: Only caring about calories

Calories are important in weight loss success.  It’s about burning more calories than you put into your body.  But some foods are healthier even though it has more calories.  For example wheat bread has more calories than white bread, but the fiber in the wheat bread positively effects the digestion of the bread and the processing of the energy in your body.  There are healthier fats, such as avacados, that have more calories but has way more nutrients and provides more fullness, than unhealthy non nutritional snacks, like pretzels.

Smart Fix: Even though paying attention to calories is very important, but also look at nutritional labels, to look for the amount of fiber, or protein that a food has, which factors into how healthy it is.  Also look at the vitamins and minerals that is contained in the food.

Bad Habit #5: Focusing on the scale

The ultimate goal you have is to lose weight, so that is why you are always on the scale.  That makes sense right?  Not necessarily. Weight loss is important but it is not always the most important.  Always the most important is to lose fat.  Fat loss can be seen primarily, in the inches you lose, so always pay attention to how your clothes are fitting.

Smart Fix: The scale can be deceiving depending on the time you ate, how much water you drank, etc.  You should weight yourself once a week, at the same time every day, on the same scale.  But the best way to see fat loss is to take a picture of yourself every two weeks.  You may not see drastic changes but you should have visible changes.

Bad Habit #6: Only dieting and not exercising

When you eliminate exercise from your lifestyle, losing weight greatly increases in difficulty.  Yes it is true that weight loss is 80% your diet, but exercise boost your metabolism and allows your body to be constantly burning calories.  Also people that do not consistently exercise find it difficult to consistently eat healthy because exercise helps remind people that they are working towards something, and you are less likely to let food mess that up.
 Smart Fix: Never give up exercise, even exercising 20 mins a day will go a very long way in your fitness journey. 

Bad Habit #7: Trying to eat as little as possible

Having portion control is super important, but starving yourself is not sustainable for long term weight loss.  You need to understand how much you need to eat to be a functional happy human being, but still loss weight.
 Smart Fix: One way of not just guessing how much you need to eat is use a calorie tracker.  It will tremendously help you in eating the right food at the proper amount to lose weight. 

Bad Habit #8: Giving up too easily

The person that never reaches their weight loss goals is the person who quits.  Losing weight is not a easy process it requires a lot of breaking bad habits and forming new ones.  With anything in life, nothing is perfect and if a lack of perfection will make you quit, then you will have a hard to completing anything.  So have a understanding that messing up is part of the process but quitting is not.

Smart Fix: Know that the most important thing to do when you mess up is to learn from your mistake.  You are essentially trying to learn a new you, so you might make some mistakes about learning the new you.  Do not take more than a week to get back on the train, always get back on train quickly, it will be easier to stir the train back in the direction it needs to be going.

Bad Habit #9: Confusing “healthy” with “low-calorie”

Food is a billion dollar industry, so there are big companies that spend millions of dollars to put buzzwords on their package to make you think that it low calorie.  Companies put words such as gluten free, organic, natural, etc to make you think it is low calorie, but these words have nothing to do with the calorie content.

Smart Fix: Look at the nutrition label and compare the calorie amount to other packages, also always consider the serving size.  Also look at the ingredients and see if it has a significant amount of oil, or sugar in it’s content.


 Bad Habit #10: Unrealistic expectations

We live in a society in which we want everything fast, even our weight loss.  In order to loss a lot of weight fast, you will have to a more extreme makeover of your life.  A extreme makeover of your life may work but it is not sustainable.  A slower makeover of your life, will not yield you faster results but it will be a lot more sustainable.

Smart Fix: Change your expectations and your mindset.  The most important factor in weight loss is having consistent weight loss from week to week.  Even if you lost 1 pound a week, if you keep that consistent you will have lost a lot a weight over a period of 6 months to a year.




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