8 Activities That Are Sabotaging Your Weight Loss Efforts

A lot of people find that they cannot lose weight continuously. The primary reason for this could be mental blocks that are getting in the way of one’s weight loss efforts. Once these mental blocks have been addressed, one has to further identify daily activities that could be sabotaging one’s weight loss progress. Most people may not even be aware of these saboteurs.

Here are 8 daily activities that could be affecting your weight loss progress ;

1. Calories Consumed are More than Calories Expanded
Most of the time, people who cannot lose weight are breaking this fundamental law. You may not even realize that you are consuming excess calories. Your daily meal consumption starts becoming all to familiar. To create awareness, you can start keeping a food diary. Writing everything that you eat in a food journal for a month will allow you to identify areas where there is excess calorie consumption.

2. Fad Diets
Fad diets may allow you to lose weight temporarily but the results are never sustainable. Fad diets just don’t work. The weight loss usually comes from muscle and water loss and will eventually result in rebound weight gain. The main reason for someone to try a fad diet is because he or she lacks of basic weight loss knowledge. Basic knowledge about losing weight correctly is essential so that you do not waste time and energy on programs that are not able to give sustainable weight loss.

3. Starvation Response Initiated
Some people cannot lose weight because they have initiated their starvation response. The starvation response is initiated when you go on an extreme calorie reduction. The body fears that it is starving and holds on to its fat reserves harder than ever. Once the starvation response has been initiated, no amount of dieting or exercising will yield in any extra weight loss. You have to make sure that the calorie reduction is gradual. The calorie reduction should not be more than 10% of your regular day to day calorie consumption.

4. Weekend Weight Gain
Another reason that you cannot lose weight is weekend weight gain. It would be interesting to note that most people are disciplined on the weekdays. It’s the weekend that sets them back in their weight loss efforts.

5. Alcohol Consumption
Alcohol consumption has been known to completely halt fat burning. It also increases appetite. Most people who drink alcohol cannot lose weight. It would make sense to abstain from alcohol until you have reached your weight loss goals.

6. No Strength Training
Strength training is essential to lose fat and build muscles. Women should not be too concerned about building big muscles. This is because they have very low levels of testosterone. What ever effort goes into strength training yields compact muscles and a shapely body.

7. Too Much of Steady State Cardio
Most people do steady state cardio as their main form of exercise to lose weight. Steady state cardio provides results but its effectiveness reduces with time. Depending on your fitness level, you should gradually start doing high intensity interval training. This provides rapid weight loss. Do note that this type of training can be very intense and strenuous so do proceed with caution.

8. Same Exercise Routine
Some people do the same exercise routine day in and day out, The body is highly adaptive. As the body adapts to an exercise routine, it becomes more and more efficient at doing it. Changing the structure of the program and the exercises will keep the body guessing. This helps provides continuous results.

9. Missing Breakfast
People who skip breakfast have been shown to carry more abdominal fat. Skipping breakfast is harmful to your weight loss efforts. It is the most important meal of the day.

10. Increasing Calories Instead of Tapering Calories
Effective weight loss is achieved by tapering calories consumed in any given day. This essentially means that breakfast should be the largest meal and dinner the smallest. This allows the body to more effectively use calories across the day.