5 Ways You Are Sabotaging Your Weight Loss

Weight loss comes down to more than just eating your veggies. But if you really feel like you’re doing all the right things, and still not seeing results, it can be a frustrating process. Unfortunately, the reason behind your stalled weight loss could be anything from overestimating your calories burned at the gym to not getting enough sleep.

There are many little ways that people undermine their weight loss. If you think you’re guilty of a little self-sabotage, find out how you can fix the problem with these tips.

Eating Too Few Calories

Many dieters make the mistake of thinking that if they cut more calories, they’ll lose weight faster. Although, I warn that the opposite is almost always true. Trying to maintain a diet that is very low in calories leads to sabotage in the form of binging and, ultimately, giving up. Plus, cutting too many calories stalls your metabolism — possibly for the long-term. In general, women shouldn’t eat less than 1,200 calories and men less than 1,500 calories a day, and even these levels are pretty tight.

Skipping Breakfast and Slowing Metabolism

A healthy breakfast isn’t just a tasty way to start the day, it can actually help you maintain your diet and weight-loss commitments. Study after study has confirmed that eating a breakfast that contains both protein and carbohydrates helps overweight people lose weight and normal-weight people maintain weight over time. So the next time you have a wild night out, resist the urge to skip breakfast the next day as a way to “make up” from the night before. Instead, consistently aim for balanced nutrition: wheat toast, an egg, and a serving of fruit should do the trick.

Guesstimating Portions and Overeating

If you’ve lost a few pounds by tightening up on your diet, it can be easy to get a bit lax about portion sizes — and that’s the perfect opportunity for those extra calories to creep back in. Even if you’re eating healthier overall than you were pre-diet, too-large meals can easily push you off-track. A classic example is salad dressing, There’s nothing wrong with salad dressing, but if you’re not careful with how much you put on the salad, you’re undermining your diet. Go for low-fat, low-calorie salad dressings, and measure and track all portions for consistent weight loss.

Binging on Weekends

Your weekends may mean time off from work, but it’s not time off from your diet. After all, the weekend does make up more than a quarter of your month — and that’s way too much time to spend being lax about your eating habits. While we’re all for enjoying yourself on the weekends, if your habit is to indulge a little (or more) Friday evening through Sunday night every week, that’s diet sabotage. Stay on top of portion sizes Friday through Sunday while also taking advantage of additional time of the weekends to try new healthy recipes and squeeze in more calorie-burning activity.

Overeating After Workouts

The No. 1 commandment of weight loss is calories in vs. calories out, right? But if you’re allowing yourself to end each workout with a high-calorie sports drink or a huge meal, you’re almost instantly eating away the calories you just burned. Sugary sports drinks may be the biggest culprit in this regard. Your best bet is to stick to water to rehydrate after exercise. Keep post-workout snacks small — a stick of low-fat cheese, reduced fat chocolate milk, or half of protein bar that has both protein and carbohydrates.