Disclaimer: I am not a medical professional. For personalized dietary and health advice, please consult with your healthcare provider.
1. Going on a diet
This might sound crazy but going on a diet is actually one of the worst things you can do for sustainable weight loss. Many people go on extreme diets to lose weight and then go back to their old, unhealthy eating habits once they reach their goal weight. But once you go back to your old ways of eating, you gain all the weight back.
Diets are unsustainable and most people end up doing “yo-yo dieting” where they go back and forth between losing a lot of weight and then gaining it all back.
If you want to lose fat and keep it off, you need to take a healthy, sustainable approach that you can stick to and feel happy doing. Keep reading to find out how to lose weight successfully and sustainably.
2. Not getting enough sleep
Sleep is so underrated.
While you sleep, your body does many things to help you burn fat. It lowers stress hormones, boosts metabolism, and helps your muscles recover. All these actions work together to help you lose fat.
When you don’t get enough sleep, you prevent your body from carrying out these important tasks that make weight loss easier. And this leads us to the next bad habit.
3. Stress
Ah, stress. We’ve all felt it and we know its bad for us. But do you really know how bad stress is for weight loss?
When you’re constantly stressed, you’re body subconsciously believes you’re in danger. Even if it’s just an exam or a problem at work that’s causing your stress, you’re body can’t tell the difference. Stress causes your body to hold onto fat as stored energy because it doesn’t feel safe in its current state.
When you let go of stress, you’re body will have a much easier time losing excess fat.
4. Obsessing over how your body looks
It’s easy to obsess over your body when you constantly compare yourself with other people. It’s also easy to magnify every imperfection on your body and feel discouraged by your slow progress.
But when you obsess over every little thing about your body, you’re basically telling your subconscious mind that there’s something wrong with you and that you aren’t good enough. When you keep confirming these thoughts in your mind, it can actually cause your body to hold onto the weight you’re trying so hard to lose.
The lesson here is don’t obsess over your slow progress. A phrase that I really like is “the amount of time it takes you to lose weight is the same amount of time it’ll take to regain the weight”. Healthy and sustainable weight loss is a long term journey and you shouldn’t be trying to rush the process. Love yourself and your determination to change for the better.
5. Restricting certain foods
When you restrict certain foods by saying they’re “good” or “bad”, you end up binging on them. We all want the will power to resist certain foods. But if you enjoy eating something, don’t refrain from eating it.
When you eat everything without restrictions, you’re never going to obsess over food or feel anxious around something because it’s “too unhealthy” or “too high in calories”. Eating everything doesn’t mean overeating or binging. It means giving yourself the freedom to eat everything in amounts that make your body feel good.
Remember, successful weight loss is achieved through sustainable habits. So if you know you love a food, don’t restrict it in the first place.
6. Not eating enough
The typical diet is all about eating as little as possible and exercising a much as possible. But eating less can actually cause a lot of harm to your body and lead to more weight gain.
When you suddenly shrink the amount of food you eat, you’ll lose some weight because your body isn’t used to eating so little. But once your body’s metabolism adjusts to the smaller amounts of food you eat, you’ll end up gaining weight when you eat even just a little more than those small portions.
Not eating enough will only slow down your metabolism and force you to eat less. If you want to lose fat without having to eat less, focus on eating foods that are nutrient dense and will fuel your body and keep you full. When you eat like this, you won’t have to obsess over “calorie counting” or gaining fat.
Losing weight can feel frustrating and hard. But the last thing you want to do is try to follow standard diet advice that will only leave you more stressed and hungry. Look back and see which of these 6 bad habits you’ve been following and eliminate them from your life one by one and see how easy and fast weight loss becomes. I wish you all the best during your health journey; may it be a time of growth and self-love 🤍