5 ways you’re sabotaging your diet
You feel like you're doing everything right, but the kilos just won’t come off.
Picture: iStock
Losing weight looks deceptively simple sometimes: just eat fewer calories than your body burns and you should lose weight.
What if you think you’re doing exactly that, but the weight is not falling off?
Here are a few things that could have crept into your daily routine that are sabotaging your diet efforts.
1. You skip breakfast
Skipping breakfast may seem like a really convenient way to cut calories – especially if you’re someone who isn’t keen to eat in the morning anyway.
But the problem with skipping breakfast is that it will almost certainly lead to you eating more at lunch and dinner, and possibly even having between meal snacks that you would not have had otherwise. So in an effort to cut calories, you’re actually increasing hunger and eating more.
7 reasons why it’s important to eat breakfast
2. You’re trapped in the low-fat section
Low-fat foods are often considered the right option for dieters because they have low fat, which is what you think you need to get rid of right Unfortunately, low-fat foods are actually pretty similar to full-fat foods when it comes to fat content (milk is only one or two percent different), but the low-fat one has added chemicals to replace the fat they take out.
These chemicals are very likely less healthy than the thing that nature intended to be in the product in the first place – and chemicals your body doesn’t like are stored in fat cells, so go full-fat if you are using these products.
3. Setting silly goals
If you’ve committed yourself to losing 10kg in the first two weeks of your diet, you’re pretty likely to fail and possibly even go in the other direction in the longer term.
Setting unrealistic goals just leads to disappointment, which leads to self-loathing and then comfort-eating. A realistic goal may be 1kg per week for the first two months. The key is to make the goal a slightly longer-term thing, and measure your progress with the long-term in mind.
What’s a realistic weight loss goal?
4. You fail to plan
Failure to plan meals for each day of your diet will lead to convenience-eating, like going to the drive-thru for take-outs. The food you’re going to get there is never going to be comparably healthy to the food you should be eating, plus there are all sorts of little extras that you may fall prey to once you’re there.
Plan your meals, and only go for convenience if you’re really in a bind.
5. You don’t count all your calories
If you’re tracking your calorie-intake you need to count all the calories you eat: meals, snacks, drinks, midnight trips to the fridge, cappuccino after gym, etc.
If you think you’re eating the right number of calories but not losing weight, then you need to think carefully about whether or not you are actually counting your calories properly.
Brought to you by All4Women
For more news your way, follow The Citizen on Facebook and Twitter.
