Many people struggle with their weight, and with all the products and diets on the market, it’s hard to know where to start. Not to mention that every person is going to react differently to different diets, supplements, and exercises.
The key to knowing the difference is balance. Losing weight is going to take equal efforts of eating right and exercise. Use these common unhealthy dieting mistakes as a guideline to know what to avoid.
Not eating enough, or skipping meals is probably one of the most common unhealthy dieting mistakes. Surely you have heard about putting your body into starvation mode. While that is true, also consider that a significant calorie cut or going below 1200 calories will “appear” to work at first, but after a short time your metabolic rate will drop.
Then, you will be right back where you started from, except more hungry. Once this happens, it is going to take almost double the workout to burn off what you used to be able to burn off before by doing nothing. 1200 calories is considered a very low calorie diet.
Beware of things that say fat free, sugar free, or low fat. These “free” items are chemically infused, ample sugar amounts, and refined carbs. This is a sure fire way to fill open and expand fat cells, so the next time you do have any fat, ANY, being the key word, the fat will have a nice big home. Not to mention, all the chemicals that lead to other diseases and illness.
Fad diets and going overboard does more harm than good in most cases. Avoid going to extremes such as cutting out dairy, carbohydrates, or fat. When you cut a certain nutrient out of your diet (carbohydrates/fats) your body loses the proper enzymes to break it down. In other words your body will lose the ability to break it down and process it, therefore, your body will most likely not be converting this stuff to energy and maybe storing most of it to fat.
Lastly, one of the biggest common unhealthy dieting mistakes is cheat meals. Cheat meals can be beneficial if they are eaten in moderate amounts. However, people generally let cheat meals, become cheat days, that become cheat weekends. Then you are basically undoing all the good things you did throughout the week. If that is not bad enough, most dieters tend to feel extremely guilty afterwards and stress about it. They then counter their mistakes over the weekend by counting every single morsel, also unhealthy.
Do you let yourself have that fast food burger or your favorite dessert because you “earned it” with a great workout? If you do, you could be placing yourself at risk of weight gain instead of helping to promote your weight loss. This is by far one of the biggest unhealthy diet mistakes. Many people assume that they’re burning far more calories than they actually are.
It doesn’t help that many fitness trackers greatly overestimate the number of calories burned, as do many gym machines. Using those devices as guidance can make you feel as though you have room to consume a far larger treat than you actually can. Be sure to know just how many calories you’re likely to have burned before you make your food choices. Also make sure to remember that it is very unlikely that you will have burned enough calories from a workout to justify a fast food meal, particularly if your goal is to lose weight and not just maintain it.
To avoid these and other common unhealthy dieting mistakes, the key is to balance. Keeping unhealthy foods in moderation, keeping away from fat free, low fat, and sugar free. Be sure you are eating enough of the right foods and not drastically cutting calories. Also, stay away from drastic fad diets, and stop going overboard by counting any one nutrient out of your diet. It is also helpful to listen to your body and know when you are hungry and when you are full, it’s best to eat slowly to determine this.