5 Behaviors Stunting Your Weight Loss

For many effective weight loss is never going to be easy.  One basically has to completely alter the way that they live their life.

Nutrition is a major factor of effective weight loss.  Your lifestyle has to change too. And although it might sound straightforward to just eat different things, it’s a real struggle for most people.

To lose weight as efficiently as possible, you need to take a very strict, regimental approach to your weight loss plan.

And there’s a lot of things that you could be doing which are actually getting in the way of your meeting your weight loss goals.

We tend to just think about the dietary choices and the exercise regimes, but there’s a lot more to those things than meets the eye.

Some minor things that you’re doing which may seem harmless could potentially stunt your weight loss, without you realizing what the problem is.

Here are five common behaviors people exhibit when trying to lose weight that actually have the opposite effect.

Experimenting With Fad Diets

It seems like there’s a new diet every single week that’s plastered all over your Facebook timeline or on your Twitter feed.

Several of these diets may have started as fads and do actually work.  There’s no point in starting one unless you know that it’s reputable.

If you see a diet that’s being described as ‘ground-breaking’ or some other buzzword, all that means is that it’s new.  The fact that it’s new means that it hasn’t been around long enough to determine if its actually effective.

What you’ll notice is that a lot of diets that are heavily advertised will disappear relatively quickly because people realize how ineffective they are.

And if you’ve taken that diet on yourself then you’ve just wasted an awful lot of your time thinking you’re progressing towards weight loss.

If you are going to go for a specific diet, pick one that has been around long enough that you can actually research the results.  The keto diet is one that I think you could check out.

It’s not for everyone, and there is some valid criticisms of it but there’s also a lot of positive response.

You could have a look at this article on Complete Home Spa about the keto experience and see if you like the sound of it.

Overdoing it With Snacks

If you are overweight, then chances are your snacking habits are a big contributor.  Eating food like chocolate bars and potato chips between your meals is a recipe for unwanted weight gain.

When people try to alter their diet to lose weight, they will often find themselves looking for replacements for these snacks.

If you are in the habit of eating during the day then it’s tough to change that habit, so it’s more desirable to change the snacks then remove them completely.

Many people turn to low calorie snacks or ‘skinny snacks’.  While these food may be low-calorie, they’re not calorie free.  You can still eat too much of them.

They’re not going to fill the void of the snacks that you’re used to. They’re going to be less satisfying by nature unless you eat a lot of them.

You might be changing your meal plans, but if you are just piling these low-calorie snacks in between meals then you aren’t going to lose weight any time soon.

Drinking Too Much Alcohol

Alcohol is consumed purely as recreational for some people.  You do need to consider it as a part of your diet.  Why?  It’s packed with calories. 

This white sands alcoholism rehab facility says alcohol has a lot of calories and if you drink too much you will gain weight.  There are other ways in which alcohol gets in the way of your weight loss, some which might not be so well-known.

Alcohol will be used as a source of fuel, a role which is normally played by something like glucose.

If you’re not burning up the glucose in your system as fuel, then it is being stored as fat. And all glucose really is is sugar.

More sugar in your system is just going to lead to weight gain.  There’s a bunch of other reasons why alcohol prevents productive weight gain too.

So if you’re going to change up your diet, you should also think about cutting back on your alcohol intake.

Starving and Binging

While this practice is common among people who have eating disorders, it does happen with more general weight loss attempts too.

Essentially people will starve themselves for a portion of the day and then go through their normal eating routine for the rest of it.

The assumption is by spending a significant portion of time not eating, that you will lose weight.

If you’re going to follow this up by binging then that’s not really the case. You are still taking in too many calories, but doing it in a very ineffective way.

All this will really do is sap your energy.  It will also make your more likely to gorge late at night, making it difficult to sleep.

Don’t skip on any meals, just change the amount of calories that you take in with each meal. This is a much more doable method.

Taking Weight Loss Pills

This is similar to what I said earlier about the allegedly low-calorie snacks that people buy for weight loss.

Supplements are appealing because they are marketed as miracle solutions to your weight problem.  The truth is very few of them actually work.

In fact, a lot of them can cause serious health problems.  The Sibutramine supplement has been found to cause heart disease.

Two of the more popular drugs prescribed to obese patients are phentermine and fenfluramine.  Both of these can cause serious lung and heart problems.

Throughout history, there has been numerous different pills and supplements that have all been promoted as helping with weight loss and they’ve all come with health hazards.

There is no way for your body to shed weight besides a caloric deficit so weight loss pills are trouble.

Conclusion

With all of your hard work the last thing you want to hear is that there is more stuff you need to consider.

Unfortunately, there are just some actions that are counter-productive and that you need to put a stop to.

You’ll be surprised how quickly the excess weight will fall off when you stop these behaviors.  

Which of these 5 behaviors do you plan to discontinue or modify?