Everyone makes mistakes, right? Yep, and, when it comes to weight loss, most of us make the same ones. Here, nutritionists, trainers and weight-loss physicians reveal the biggest flubs in their clients’ slim-down, shape-up strategies. Learn from their mistakes, because, chances are, you’re making some of them right now.
Ignoring Your Body
“Your body is always telling you something to help you live in balance. When we ignore our bodies, we set ourselves up for disaster. Focus on listening to your body and nourishing it well. When you are eating a meal, listen to your body and try to honor your body when it tells you, ‘Please stop eating, I am full now.’ When your body tells you, ‘I am hungry,’ honor that too, and go ahead and eat to nourish you. We are always trying to dictate and tell our bodies what they need to eat more or less of, or that we couldn’t possibly be hungry — we just ate two hours ago. Maybe your body really is hungry, or maybe you are just bored or stressed. Ignoring your body leads to disaster. It took me years to learn this for myself and it is truly invaluable to my health.” – Florida-based registered dietitian Jaime Mass
Eating ‘Diet’ Foods
“So many people have a ‘diet’ mentality, gravitating toward any foods that are advertised as ‘healthy,’ ‘low fat,’ or ‘low carb.’ They eat sugar-free snack bars, but those bars are filled with artificial ingredients. They eat veggie chips, but most are actually made of potato, corn or rice flower, and just have a little bit of veggie powder thrown in for flavor. They eat fat-free ice cream, but it’s typically higher in sugar and calories than the original version. And, since people think these foods are actually healthy, they eat more than they would have if they ate the ‘unhealthy’ version. Most people won’t sit around and eat a bag of potato chips, but they will plow through a bag of veggie chips and think that’s actually healthy. The answer is turning to real food over fake, processed foods. Even if they say they are healthy. It’s just a marketing tactic.” — New York City-based registered dietitian Keri Glassman, author of “The New You and Improved Diet”
Changing Everything at Once
“The human body does not like drastic and rapid change. While our brains and lives are modern, the human body is actually quite archaic and resists change, as any drop in calories or increase in exercise ‘seems’ like a threat to preservation. Your body likes slow and gradual, consistent changes. While it might feel like it takes longer, small progressive baby steps are way more effective in the long run. Small changes are also so much easier to tolerate and don’t create the fallout that often comes with extreme weight-loss measures. My tip: Make one substantial exercise or dietary change each week. If you keep adding up new actions, you’ll keep seeing changes in your body.” — Certified strength and conditioning specialist Holly Perkins, author of “Lift to Get Lean”
Getting Hung Up on Details
“With weight loss, a lot of people get lost in the sauce. They think, ‘I need to eat a lot of mustard seed because it’s rich in antioxidants.’ ‘I need to drink caffeine to speed up my metabolism.’ They worry about details and forget about the basics: eating fewer calories than you are taking in. After all, you can’t become overweight unless you are consuming more calories than you are burning. It works in reverse, too. Focus on that, not the latest superfood or elimination diet.” — Christopher Ochner, weight loss and nutrition expert at The Mount Sinai Hospital in New York
Cutting All Carbs
“All carbs are not created equal. True, cutting out pastries, desserts and white pasta is going to help people get healthier and likely skinnier. That said, complex carbs like sweet potatoes, corn, beans, quinoa and brown rice provide the B vitamins we need to metabolize food into energy, as well as fiber to keep us full, and even protein for building lean muscle mass. The fix: Include complex carbs at least twice per day — more if you’re exercising. Make it easy: Cook a big pot of whole grains at the beginning of the week to have on hand to throw on salads, mix into soups, scramble into eggs or eat with cinnamon and dried fruit and vanilla extract as a sweet treat.” — Registered dietitian Anna Rossinoff, co-founder of Zest Nutrition in Portland, Oregon
Eliminating Foods You Love
“When you deprive yourself totally of something you crave you will only want it that much more and eventually overeat it. If you crave chocolate on a regular basis, then make sure to include it in your daily diet. One small square of chocolate or one small cookie can go a long way in the scheme of things. Pizza lover? Don’t swear off it, but rather try and have one slice with a salad every other week. Want french fries? Have them with your burger but lose the bun, or with your omelet instead of toast.” — New York City-based registered dietitian Keri Gans, author of “The Small Change Diet”
Focusing on the Finish Line
“So many people just want to get weight loss over with. They want to find the diet that will help them lose the weight as fast as possible so that they will [be] the size they want by the time they want. But those diets aren’t doable over the long term. So, when they finish their diet, and go back to normal eating, they gain all of the weight back. Instead, people who want to lose weight need to look for a new, healthy, comfortable [way] of living. Because once you step on the scale and see the long-awaiting goal number, you’re not done. That next day, you have to do everything you did the day before. And you have to do it for the rest of your life. Any eating plan needs to be something you can slowly build into your life and think, ‘I could do this. Forever.'” — Lisette Cifaldi, director of behavioral health at Hilton Head Health weight loss center in South Carolina
Not Establishing Your Motivation
“I believe successful weight loss starts with getting your mind right. You’ve got to establish the ‘why’ before moving to the ‘what’ and ‘how.’ If your ‘why’ or motivation behind the weight loss is strong enough, you’ll find the ‘what’ (weight loss) and ‘how’ (the method you choose) will be successful. That being said, I believe the most common mistake people make is their lack of commitment to the process. Their ‘why’ isn’t strong enough. I like to say that fitness is a journey, not a destination. You never ‘get there,’ but rather are always navigating your way throughout the journey. You may hit a speed bump, or stray off course every now and then, but your GPS (why I lost the weight and desire to stay healthy) will get you back on course pretty quickly.” — Exercise physiologist Greg Justice, founder of AYC Health & Fitness in Kansas City, Kansas
Eating Too Few Calories
“Our bodies have a minimum amount of calories needed to support simple functions, pumping our blood, brain activity, etc. This amount, called our basal metabolic rate, is based on how much lean body mass or muscle you have. It is not uncommon to see clients cut calories so much that they consume fewer calories than what their bodies require, and they begin to enter into a state of famine. Their intention: To eat so few calories that they lose weight. The reality: Their bodies learn to ‘store’ fat and reset their metabolic rate. The outcome: Yes, you may lose weight but as soon as you stop starving your body, you will gain even more weight than you lost due to the fabulous training you just gave your body to store fat. Ever heard of yo-yo dieting? Now your metabolism is set to a lower caloric need than before you started, and it is very easy to not only gain weight, but your body will hold onto it for as long as it can for the next time you decide to starve it.” — Personal trainer and wellness coach Tammie Dubberly, co-owner of Whole Body Fitness Personal Training in Portland, Oregon
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Weight-Loss Experts Share the Most Common Mistakes Clients Make originally appeared on usnews.com
