So your goal for January is weight loss. I thought it would be prudent of me to spend some time indicating the worst ways for you to go about this so that you don’t do yourself a disservice in the long run!First off, there is NO quick fix. I tell my clients that it’s really all about developing new habits and removing old habits that aren’t serving you. This change doesn’t happen overnight! Stripping away unhealthy habits takes time, effort and support. So please, do yourself a huge favour and eliminate these 5 common weight loss strategies listed below and change your focus to changing your lifestyle, one habit at a time!
The 5 Worst Ways to Lose Weight:
1. Skipping meals
I cringe when I see people skipping meals in an effort to lose weight. All this does is make your body think you are in need of calories so it holds on to whatever it has available. Skipping a meal will also create the urge to binge later on when you are feeling ravenous. It’s much healthier to offer our bodies a steady stream of nutritious calories throughout the day to provide it with the energy it needs to sustain all of our organs and bodily functions.
2. Cutting carbs completely out
Removing carbohydrates from our diet completely or even minimally will cause us to feel extremely lethargic, and not allow our brains to function well. Carbohydrates are necessary to provide us with energy for daily activities and allow the neurotransmitter serotonin in our brains to be released giving us “good feelings”. This is why people often turn to a bag of chips or bowl of ice cream when they are feeling down. Serotonin is the “feel good” hormone which regulates our moods.The key here is to choose carbohydrates that are not processed so that our body is getting the best nutrition possible and inflammation is kept down to prevent diseases such as cancers and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). For instance choosing sweet potato fries over regular french fries, or brown rice instead of white rice reducing the amount of sugar and increasing the bioavailability of nutrition available to our bodies at the cellular level.
3. Doing only cardio
For years I have been working within fitness facilities where I see mostly women come and go spending all of their time on a treadmill, bike, elliptical or in a low impact fitness class. Most of these women if not all have not reduced their body fat as they’ve aged if they haven’t picked up a weight. The key to weight loss or more specifically body fat loss is resistance training. Increasing your lean body mass is going to make you a better fat burner!
4. Smoking Cigarettes
Shockingly in today’s society, people are still smoking cigarettes despite the education available, not to mention the monetary cost! Smoking may be known to enhance your metabolic rate and suppress your appetite but at what cost to your health?
5. Taking fat burner tablets
One of the features of fat burning tablets are the increase in your psychological and neurological energy levels. The idea is to get you strung out so that you exercise harder and more thermogenesis takes place within your body (burning of calories). There are significant downsides to pumping in this chemical concoction some of which include possible liver inflammation or negative side effects to your heart. One of the main ingredients is typically a diuretic which causes you to pee often resulting in lost pounds of water, NOT body fat.
Here’s a great article on the dangers of fat burners.
If you are looking to change your habits, I can help! Long lasting weight loss is what I promote through changing unhealthy habits into healthy ones! Join me in our 30 Day Jump Start Program and get on your way to better health and awesome lifelong habits that will serve you for life! Our studio also offers personal training in a non-intimidating private setting if you are uncertain how to lift weights and want to incorporate resistance training into your program!
