If you’re struggling to lose as much weight as you’d like, as many people are these days, you may be wondering why. Perhaps by correcting a few of the mistakes you’ve made along the way you can put yourself on the path to more success. Read on to find four the most common reasons why people aren’t losing weight.
Skipping breakfast
It may seem to make sense: Generally, if you eat less, you lose weight, so why not skip one meal entirely? But the truth is that trying to lose weight by skipping breakfast can be fatal to your whole plan. Eating breakfast in the morning gets you off to a day full of energy, and makes it easier for you to skip temptation, like those donuts in the office, that you may encounter during the course of the day. If you eat breakfast, you’re also less likely to be starving by lunchtime, which is when you tend to overdo it by eating more than you should.
Not confronting your emotional eating
Emotional eating is a much more widespread problem than many people realize. If you, like many of us, eat when you’re tired, or sad, or bored, or lonely, or stressed, you may have a tendency to eat according to your emotions. This is very common, as many of us find food a comfort from the days when our parents used to prepare us food to make us feel better. But this can be a real problem when you’re trying to lose weight. The healthiest way to approach eating is to eat when you are hungry, and only then. Your body will let you know when it is ready to process more food, and if you give it any more than it can handle, that food will end up as extra fat that you don’t need.
Weighing yourself too often
When undergoing a new diet or weight loss plan, many people take to tracking their progress by weighing themselves every day. This can pose a problem to your weight loss efforts, however, because your weight can fluctuate on a given day without regard to how hard you’ve been working. The real measure of your weight change is your average weight over a longer period of time, like several weeks. From day to day, your weight can change a great deal due only to how much water or salt you are retaining, and this has nothing to do with real weight loss.
If you can avoid these three common errors in your own weight loss plans, you will be one step closer to real weight loss!
You may have heard before of people claiming how important metabolism can be when it comes to weight loss. Maybe someone you know claims to be eternally thin due to a fast metabolism, or someone who can never seem to lose enough weight has said that their troubles are the result of being cursed with a slow metabolism. But what is the truth about metabolism and weight loss, and how can it affect your own attempts to lose more weight?
What is metabolism?
Metabolism, put simply, is the way that your body takes the food and drink that you give it, and turns it into the energy you use to do everything from staying warm to brushing your hair in the morning. Even activities that may feel like nothing to you, such as breathing or even sleeping, use the energy you make with your metabolism.
Metabolism is a very complex process, involving the interactions of many different chemicals in your digestive system and bloodstream. How fast you turn your food into energy is also very for different people, and it can vary depending on their size, how much muscle they have, their sex, and their age. For instance, someone who has a lot of muscle mass will be able to burn many more calories, even when they’re not doing anything, than someone with less muscle mass. So it makes sense that different people will have different speeds of metabolism.
How can metabolism affect weight loss?
It may seem logical to link your troubles with losing weight to your metabolism, but this often is not the case. The truth is that your body adjusts your metabolism according to your needs. For instance, if you haven’t eaten anything in a long time, your body will try to conserve energy and will burn calories more slowly.
Since you can’t control the rate at which your body burns calories, the only thing you can control is how many calories you give you body, and how many calories you force it to burn during physical activity and exercise.
It works just like trying to get a balloon to deflate: You can’t control how fast the air leaks out of a balloon, the hole at the end is only so big. What you can do to get a balloon to deflate faster is to either stop filling it up with air, or to squeeze it so that more air escapes. Losing weight is exactly the same: Your choices are either eating less or exercising more to burn calories. Your metabolism cannot be changed, but now that you know the truth, you are much more prepared to work with your body to lose weight.
Is it possible to lose weight by eating more? That question may sound crazy, but it’s a technique that many fitness experts have been using for quite awhile now to manage how their bodies take in food. This reduces the amount of fat they retain and helps them stay thin. So it’s not a crazy dream, but an effective strategy in your work toward losing weight.
Eating six meals a day makes it easier for your body to process the food that you are giving it. By giving your body time to digest the protein as well as the fat and carbohydrates in your food, you make sure that the important parts of the food, like the protein, are absorbed for building muscle, and the parts which you don’t want much of, like the carbohydrates and the fat, have time to be burnt off. By giving your body smaller amounts to digest spaced further apart, you are making it more efficient at processing foods and leaving less to be stored as that fat you are trying to lose.
When you only eat three times a day, you often find yourself overly hungry, or “starving” by the time mealtime comes around. This can easily cause you to overeat and miss your daily calorie goal. By eating more frequently, you can help keep your hunger cravings under control.
Additionally, if you are eating healthy foods more often, you will be less tempted to grab a donut or a bag of chips when you need some extra energy. There will be no reason to break your diet and snack when the next meal is only 30 minutes away.
Unfortunately, this does not mean that you can eat a full meal of fried foods six times a day and expect to lose weight. First of all, each of your six meals per day will be substantially smaller than what you were previously eating as a three-time-per-day meal. Second, it is still vital that you are eating healthy, balanced meals to lose weight. Some lean protein, a few carbohydrates like rice or noodles, and a lot of vegetables make for a balanced meal that will have you losing weight in no time.
Losing weight by dieting can be a hard task. It is just so easy to break your diet and put back on the pound when junk food is everywhere and so cheap to buy. It only becomes more difficult when the people around you are not dieting and have no interest in eating healthy. You may have eaten well all day, but when it comes time to cook together with your family or go out to eat with your friends, temptation will abound as your loved ones eat without a care and you are left to be miserable stuck on your diet. That’s not to mention the times when your loved ones actively pressure you to eat like them. It can be a lot to handle as you’re fighting your own temptations. It all begs the question, “How can we lose weight when everyone around us eats junk?”
First, realize the reasons behind this tension. The fact is that dieting isn’t just a change in eating habits, it’s a change in your lifestyle. Eating is so central to how we operate socially that dieting often means changing the way you live. It’s important to recognize the times when your family and friends frequently have junk food in their lives, and try to mitigate this. Does everyone like to pig out in front of the TV during dinner? Why not suggest a healthy meal together at the table as a change? In some ways, the newness of the whole experience may be enough to change some habits.
Second, realize that this is your decision, not anyone else’s. It would not be fair to your family if you started to resent them for continuing to eat junk food while you are on a diet. The fact is that you decided to lose weight, not anyone else, and it is the right of your friends and family to make their own choices about how their eating habits.
In the same way, don’t expect that your family will support you by changing their lives to fit your newfound needs. It’s ok to expect emotional support during your challenging time, but to expect a change in everyone else’s diet would not be fair.
Now that you have covered some basics and the root causes of tensions that may exist while you are on your diet, you are ready to take the most important step of all: communicating with your loved ones. Make it clear to them why you want to lose weight and why it is an important goal to you. Ask them to be aware of the fact that you may be tempted to go off your diet and that they try to encourage you to stay on it and not provide you with any extra temptations. A little bit of understanding in this sense will go a long way to reducing your temptations caused by loved ones and keeping you on your diet.
Many people are struggling to lose weight these days, and it brings many people to the internet in the hopes of learning how to lose 10 pounds or more. The fact is that it can be difficult to lose any amount of weight, since many of us work in offices sitting down, drive home sitting down, and then watch TV sitting down in our free time. Add to this the endless supply of delicious and cheap but very unhealthy snacks we have to eat in the modern world, and it’s a wonder that anyone ever loses any weight! But it is possible to lose the weight you need if you stay focused and stick to your goals.
Diet
Yes, it’s a dreaded word but it will be necessary to meet your goal. To lose weight, it’s important to measure the number of calories you are taking in to your body. Try reading the number of calories per serving of everything you’re about to eat just before consuming it. This will help you to think twice about indulging and losing sight of your goal. Also, eliminating foods that kill your calorie goals like soda and fast food is crucial. Try to find replacements for your old cravings. Discover new foods. Could you get to liking a simple homemade iced tea instead of your daily Pepsi intake? You’ll never know until you try.
Exercise
Another dirty word in the weight loss gain, exercise is absolutely necessary to lose weight. Doctors recommend 20 minutes of cardiovascular most days, if not every single day. This will not only help you lose weight, but also feel healthier. Plus, it will give you a new activity to do that you might enjoy. Rather than spending your 20 minutes alone on the treadmill, why not make a daily ritual of taking a brisk walk with family or friends? It would let you explore your neighborhood and get some fresh air, too. Other fun exercise activities that anyone can do are swimming, skating, and biking.
And finally, don’t forget the little things. Taking the stairs instead of the elevator every chance you get is an easy way to slip some extra physical activity into your busy daily routine. Put together, these activities will get you well on your way to losing 10 pounds!
The six pack of abs could easily be called the holy grail of losing weight and looking better. Nothing is more attractive than a cut set of abdominal muscles, and that is why everyone wants their own. But it can be a long and difficult process to build them, especially if you don’t know the best methods of going about it. But exercising your abs to the point of having a six pack can be as simple as doing ten minutes of exercise a day, and if you couple these tips with a good diet and some dedication, you could find yourself with a set of six pack abs sooner than you think!
Our ten-minute exercise will consist of three different actions.
The first is the crunch. Lay on a carpeted floor with your feet flat on the ground and your knees bent upward. Lightly rest your hands behind your head and lift your head and shoulders up toward the ceiling. Do not bend your waist like you would in a sit up, but rather push your shoulders straight upward. Do as many of these as you can and then quickly transition into the next exercise.
The next exercise is the bicycle move. You will want to stay in the same position as with the crunch, but raise your left elbow to meet your right knee, and then alternate with the remaining knee and elbow. You should feel this in your abs. Do as many of these bicycle moves as you can and then quickly move on to the next exercise.
Finally, move to the hanging leg bends. For this exercise you will need some kind of pull up bar, perhaps the kind that goes over a doorframe without leaving a mark. Grab a hold of this bar and raise your legs while bending at the waist. For a beginner’s position, only raise your knees. For a more advanced technique, lift your entire legs without bending your legs and with your toes pointed forward. Now do as many of these leg bends as you can and then take a 60 second rest.
After your rest, immediately resume with more crunches and start the whole process over again. Do three sets of these total, and that will be your ten minutes of exercise. As you can see, it’s easy to pack a ton of work into those ten minutes, and with some persistence you’ll be in the six pack hall of fame in no time.
Losing weight can be an intimidating task, especially if you’re substantially overweight, if you’ve failed in the past at losing weight, or if you’ve never tried a weight loss program before. The truth about losing weight is that the hardest part is getting started with your new lifestyle. Many people simply cannot find the motivation to begin a weight loss program, and continue being overweight and unhappy. But if you can just remove the mental block that’s keeping you from losing weight, you can stop procrastinating and get started today.
Realize that it’s possible
If you’ve been overweight for a long time, you may not believe that it’s really possible to lose weight at all. You see ads on TV all the time featuring people who have lost a ton of weight, but they’re all trying to sell you something. What about real life? The fact is that people can and do lose significant amounts of weight all the time in real life. They just know how to set realistic goals and stick to them.
Have patience
It’s certain that you’re eager to lose as much weight as possible right away, but it’s important to temper your expectations to make sure that you will stick to your weight loss plan in the long term. The normal rate of successful weight loss for most people is 1 to 2 pounds per week. That may seem slow, but it’s highly preferable to lose weight at such a slow rate, since that’s the most likely way to keep the weight off in the long term. People who go on crash diets and lose a ton of weight quickly tend to also gain it back quickly.
Be positive
Many people struggle with weight loss because they associate eating and being overweight with feelings of guilt. You may feel bad about yourself because you are overweight and turn to overeating to make yourself feel better. You may even feel that you do not deserve to be thin. The truth is that being overweight or not is simply a matter of deciding to do something to change your situation. It’s not a matter of morals or judgment or who deserves what. Rather, it’s a simple scientific equation that has nothing to do with morals.
So simply decide that you are going to work to be thin until you have results, and you will have successfully overcome your mental block enough to get started on your new life.
