#253 Weight Loss Mistakes You’re Making

I will admit that I’ve made a lot of weight loss mistakes myself. I’ve also seen a lot of other mistakes being made by women who want to lose weight quickly. These are the most common mistakes that I see and that you may be making or may have made in the past.

1. Working Out To The Extreme

I’ve had women tell me that they run 10kms every day and I’ve also seen women in the gym doing super intense workouts morning and night, 7 days per week. This is just not necessary and will likely do more harm than good.

• You will probably mess up your hormones and this will make it more difficult to lose fat
• You will burn out by going too hard too soon, and then you’ll fall off the bandwagon
• You’ll injure yourself!

When you’re trying to lose weight, diet is the most important thing so focus on that rather than putting your body until all of this stress!

2. Going On A Cleanse Or Detox

A detox is not going to give you any long term weight loss. It doesn’t matter if it’s a juice cleanse, taking supplements, or cutting calories. It’s not sustainable and you’re actually likely to end up doing damage to your body. Have a read of this blog post on how a 3 day juice cleanse put someone in hospital! Focus on the long term rather than a quick fix.

3. Severely Cutting Calories –> Binging

I should have put this one first because this is the number issue that I see. Severely cutting your calories is NOT sustainable. It may help you lose weight initially but then it will actually work against you as your metabolism slows down (if you manage to stick with it). If you can’t stick with it, there is a high chance that you will end up binging and consume a huge amount of calories – more than you would if you just ate normally for the day. This is an unhealthy behaviour and can lead you down a bad path of starve -> binge -> starve etc.

To lose weight, you do need to reduce your calorie intake but not so much that you are starving yourself and feeling deprived. Don’t put yourself through this. Reduce your food intake by a little bit and focus on eating mostly healthy foods, rather than going to this extreme.

4. Cutting Out Entire Food Groups

I often hear people saying they’re going to completely cut out carbs or not eat any sugar. Cutting out carbohydrates entirely is not good for you. Your body needs these to function. And cutting out sugar forever is unrealistic. Again this will lead to binging. It’s all about having a healthy lifestyle and this means both having a healthy body and a healthy mind. Do not label any foods as off limits as they will make you feel deprived and you will crave them. You can eat anything you want, just in moderation!

5. Skipping Breakfast

I know you’ve probably heard this one before, but it’s so important! When breakfast comes around, usually you have been asleep for the past 8 hours or so and haven’t eaten for at least 8-10 hours. So if you skip breakfast, you are putting your body in a semi-starvation mode which means it will slow down your metabolism to conserve energy, and this means storing fat. DO NOT SKIP BREAKFAST.

If you don’t get hungry in the mornings, that is because you have a slow metabolism and your body is used to this but you can change it. Start by eating something very small and slowly increase your food intake. Over time, your body will crave a healthy meal first thing in the morning. Eggs are my go to breakfast!

6. Giving Up On Weekends

You can do a lot of damage in 2 days and ruin all of your hard work in the week. You’ll also be more likely to give up on weekends if you’ve been going too hard with exercise (your body might be exhausted) or if you’ve been depriving yourself from Monday to Friday. This is why balance is so important.

You can definitely relax a little on the weekends, but still make sure that you keep active and eat healthy most of the time. If you know you’re going out for dinner and drinks on Saturday night, don’t sit at home and pig out all day on Saturday. Eat healthy and do some exercise and then Saturday night won’t make much difference. One bad meal won’t do much damage, but 2 days of binging and not exercising will!

7. All Or Nothing Attitude

This type of thinking can cause issues in the long run. Instead of depriving yourself of foods that you can’t live without, try to incorporate them into your diet in a healthier way. If you absolutely can’t live without chocolate, you shouldn’t have to! Choose a good quality dark chocolate and eat a small amount (no binging) a few times per week to get your sweet fix. Same goes with any food!

I always like to think of things using the 80:20 rule. Eat healthy 80% of the time and then eat the more unhealthy foods the other 20% of the time. This way, you can enjoy the foods you love without feeling guilty about it.