How many times have we tried and failed at losing weight?
‘Lots!’, I hear you cry!
How many times have we lost a bit and then put it all back on with more?
‘Yep, been there!’
It can be so frustrating, but there will always be a reason why it hasn’t worked. It might be that we aren’t following the plan right, or maybe we just don’t have a plan at all and we are winging it!
When it comes to losing weight there are some common pitfalls, that I bet we have all experienced at some point or other. We have listed some of them here, so if it isn’t going right for you, maybe one of these is the reason why. And if we can identify where we are going wrong, we can take steps to change it.
1. Skipping Breakfast
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, they say, and ‘they’ are right. Eating breakfast, means that you break your fast. Overnight your metabolism (your bodies ability to burn calories) has slowed right down, if you eat a good breakfast, especially one with some protein in it (eggs, 0%fat greek yogurt, lean meats, tofu, quinoa) you fire up that metabolism, so it can get on with burning calories all day. Also, the earlier you eat in the day, the longer time your body has to burn it. People trying to lose weight often skip breakfast thinking that they will miss a meal and therefore eat less, but it will more often than not leave you reaching for a sugar fix mid-morning. Not only that, I think there is an element of kidology involved, in that you kid yourself into thinking you can eat more later in the day, because you didn’t eat your breakfast. And missing a 250-300 calorie breakfast might result in you eating 500-600 calories in additional snacks, all because you think you can.
2. The Binge-Starve Cycle
The Binge-Starve cycle can be really damaging, and it will more than likely see that you don’t achieve your weight loss goals, but may even see you gain weight. Because whilst a person doing this won’t eat much one day, they will eat a lot the day after, and the likelihood is they will eat far more calories over the two days, than they should be doing.
Not only will you more than likely, eat more calories than you should be doing over the period of time that you are bingeing and starving, but you will be confusing your metabolism. Studies have shown that bingeing and starving causes metabolic dysfunction, to the point where it can damage the body’s chances of metabolising food. During the starve part of your ‘diet’ your metabolism is essentially working very ineffectively, as it needs food to keep it firing. When you binge, your metabolism can be slow to react, because it hasn’t been working at its most efficient, therefore won’t burn the calories as effectively. The result, food isn’t burned off and it is stored as fat.
We sometimes get people saying to us, ‘I don’t eat much, honest, I must only be eating less than 1000 calories a day’. Well to be perfectly honest, if you are overweight by a good few stones, there is only one way that it got there – and it wasn’t from eating 1000 calories a day. What these people probably mean is that they starve themselves, or eat very little one day and then eat tonnes the next. Again, it’s that kidology of allowing yourself to believe that you can have that cake and that mars bar, because you missed lunch and tea yesterday, but then what you eat in total throughout the day, is far more than 2 days worth of calories.
The best way to lose weight is to eat regular meals, with regular healthy snacks in between, and get your calorie deficit.
3. Buying Diet Food
I have had chats with a couple of people about this lately. Diet foods definitely have their place. Diet drinks are a great alternative to full sugar varieties, and as long as you can tolerate the sweeteners, if it helps you to reduce your calorie intake, without feeling deprived of your favourite drinks then carry on. However there are certain ‘diet foods’ that aren’t what they make out to be. There are plenty of foods out there described as ‘low fat’ or ‘low sugar’ that whilst they are exactly that, what they don’t advertise is that they have as many calories as the full fat or full sugar version because they have just replaced those ingredients with something else to make it taste nice, and it bumps the calories back up.
Then there are the low calorie versions of the foods that you really want to eat. Low calorie crisps, are a really good example. You have to ask yourself, why you are buying these foods. Is it because they will help you succeed in achieving your calorie deficit? Or, is it because you can have two (or three) of them? Defeating the object of trying to get a deficit. I know the people that I have spoken to have admitted that it’s because they kid themselves into thinking they can eat more of them. Not only that, these foods are often a poor substitute for the foods you really want to eat, and you never enjoy them quite as much as the real thing.
What we would encourage is for you to look at foods that are going to fill you up more, and use your calories on that, and then on the days when you have eaten a little less and can have a treat, have the proper version – not the diet version, and savour every calorie!
4. No Self-belief
Having no self-belief, I think, is one of the biggest reasons for failure. Not believing in yourself, easily becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You think you are going to fail, therefore you will!
This goes hand in hand with thinking you’ll always be fat. Again it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you think you will always be fat and you are happy with that then crack on, but if you think you will always be fat and it makes you feel sad, it is time to make some changes, time to develop some self-belief.
Look back in your life at what you have been successful at, draw on these successes and the skills or qualities that you exhibited when succeeding and apply it to losing weight. When focusing on weight-loss, just because you have failed before, doesn’t mean you will always fail. Learn from your mistakes, understand where you went wrong and do something different this time.
5. Eating boring food
Eating salad is a great way to increase fibre, and reduce your calories. But if it’s bores you, you are soon going to get bored of eating it every day. When you eat your mind needs to get some satisfaction from what you have just eaten. You need to look forward to every meal. We don’t gain weight because we don’t like food, so make sure that you enjoy the food you are eating, make every eating occasion one that you enjoy. It is possible to eat delicious food, that you love, within your calorie allowance, you just have to get smart about it.
6. Always starting on Monday
Why put it off? – All you will do is eat really badly until Monday – Why can’t you start now?
7. Too embarrassed to exercise
Taking the plunge and exercising was one of the hardest things we ever did. I was always worried that people would be staring at me or laughing at the fat girl sweating and unfit. Rick really thought he was simply too big to exercise.
We think that you should do it now! And at every opportunity – it will make you feel better, without a doubt. Both Rick and I can’t live without exercise now, and take every opportunity to do more. I know that when I see a bigger person trying exercise, I think, ‘Good on them.’ They are doing something that is going to change their life. I feel proud of them, even if I don’t know them. So just get up off the couch and get on with it, let your body decide if you are able to do it rather than deciding that you can’t from in front of the TV.
8. Setting unrealistic goals
Setting long term goals is great, but these goals always seem too far off. You need to set smaller, more attainable goals that you can regularly meet to keep your motivation high. Set yourself weekly, monthly and three monthly goals. Once you meet one short term goal set a new one for next week. Achieving goals boosts your self-confidence and self-belief and, before you know it you will think you can take on the world.
9. Not tracking what you eat and drink
Eating healthy and nutritious foods is a good weight loss strategy, but you won’t lose weight if you don’t know how many calories you are eating. The only way to lose weight is to get that calorie deficit. And whilst you might be eating healthy foods, if your portion sizes are too big, you will not lose weight. Tracking (honestly and accurately) gives you an accurate picture of your calorie intake as well as providing you with accountability, and making you think twice about what you are eating.
10. Drinking your calories
11. Not Reading Labels
12. Not exercising enough, exercising too much and over-estimation of exercise
Our HIIT Sessions make ideal aerobic exercises, whilst our lower impact exercises are good for gently building strength.
If you are currently relatively inactive, our advice is to start slowly, start by one session a week then as you get fitter increase it over time. The worst thing you could do is to go straight in at the deep end, exhaust yourself and give up. Take your time, and your fitness levels will increase.
Finally in the whole exercise conundrum is over-estimation of exercise, and it can be more damaging than you think. In a study, participants in an exercise session that burned between 200 and 300 calories, believed they had burned over 800 calories. Because of this belief, people believe that they have ‘earned’ a treat or a big meal, when in fact they really haven’t.
Exercise is great for your wellbeing and mental health- releasing happy hormones every time you exercise, that make you feel better in yourself. This in turn will spur you on towards your goal, so there is no denying that exercise is something that we should all be doing, but in conclusion, it is really important to keep perspective on exercise – do some, because it will aid with weight loss, but it won’t be your reason for weight loss.
Keep it separate – exercise gets you fitter, eating less calories than your body needs, makes you lose weight. Once you get your weight to where you want it, exercising will definitely help you maintain that weight.
13. Not Eating Enough Protein
14. Not Eating Enough Fibre
15. Only Focusing on the Scale Weight
The scales are only a measure of one thing – the relationship between your body and the mass it exerts on the earth. When we are trying to lose weight it can become a bit of an obsession to want to see that number reducing.
The rate we lose weight is individual, and our weight can fluctuate day by day, and even from one time of day to another, depending on how much we have eaten, whether we have been to the loo properly, how much fluid we have taken on that day, and even the stage of a woman’s cycle.
Don’t use the scales alone as a gauge of your progress. You can measure and record the body parts you want to reduce, and record them on the weight tracker. You might also want to reflect on how much you are growing in confidence, or how your skin is clearer and your eyes are brighter.
When I was losing my weight, I would go for a couple of weeks without losing any weight on the scales, but noticing that I was changing shape and my clothes would get looser, then another couple of weeks would go by and I would lose a couple of pounds but wouldn’t feel any different. Everyone’s journey is different, so don’t get too hung up on seeing the number on the scales change every week.
Take Action
Tell us your weight loss mistakes and how you have learnt the error of your ways. Have you recognised any of your mistakes in this article? If you have, do something about it, don’t repeat it. Make some changes and success will come your way!