Trying to lose weight is challenging. You won’t get it right the first time, but you might have to re-evaluate your process if successive tries still yield the same results.
Here are some of the things you might be doing wrong:
You are thinking too much about what you cannot eat
While there are certain foods you have to cut out of your life in order to lose weight, being too focused on what you can’t have can have the opposite effect of what you want to achieve.
To avoid falling into this trap, try thinking about all the things
While there are certain foods you have to cut out of your life in order to lose weight, being too focused on what you can’t have can have the opposite effect of what you want to achieve.
To avoid falling into this trap, try thinking about all the things you can eat – and there are a lot of them. You can put them all in a list and try to read more about them or look for delicious recipes that use them.
There is also a difference between cutting out certain foods and completely eliminating it from your diet. Yes, it helps to cut out certain types of food from your diet but what if you really love them? Cutting them out completely will just make you crave them more. What you can do instead is incorporate the foods you love for healthier meals. Or, you can try looking for a healthier alternative.
For instance, you love baking cookies but most of the recipes you know specifically ask for the use of white flour. You know that white foods – also known as “bad carbs” – have been blamed for the obesity epidemic in the U.S. But it gets confusing since you also know that carbohydrates are essential for your health since they are the body’s preferred form of fuel. So what is the best thing you can do?
– and there are a lot of them. You can put them all in a list and try to read more about them or look for delicious recipes that use them.
There is also a difference between cutting out certain foods and completely eliminating it from your diet. Yes, it helps to cut out certain types of food from your diet but what if you really love them? Cutting them out completely will just make you crave them more. What you can do instead is incorporate the foods you love for healthier meals. Or, you can try looking for a healthier alternative.
For instance, you love baking cookies but most of the recipes you know specifically ask for the use of white flour. You know that white foods – also known as “bad carbs” – have been blamed for the obesity epidemic in the U.S. But it gets confusing since you also know that carbohydrates are essential for your health since they are the body’s preferred form of fuel. So what is the best thing you can do?
There are different options. First, you can try to look for an alternative to white flour. This might necessitate changes in how you bake cookies or the amount you should use. You can find out about the best low carb alternatives to white flour at Mylowcarbmeals.com and even look at the different low carb meals you can try. You don’t have to completely give up on a guilty pleasure; you can find ways of making it healthier. However, just because you have used low carb flour doesn’t mean you can make this a regular affair. A bit of moderation is still needed.
Another option, which is particularly useful if you decide to completely cut out bad carbs from your diet, is to replace your source of carbohydrates. Instead of getting them from foods that are high in sugar like cookies, you can create dishes and desserts that use a lot of fruits and vegetables instead.
You didn’t create a realistic plan
It takes time to develop a habit. This is very important to remember when setting out a weight loss plan. It’s easy to write down “lose five pounds in two weeks” but how are you going to get there? What makes you so sure that you are going to lose that much in the amount of time you specified?
The best thing to do is come up with a small yet actionable goal. For Instance, you could try incorporating more vegetables to your meals for one week. Once you’ve successfully managed that, you can try adding on more to your plan.
You are substituting meals with liquids
The key ingredients to feeling full are fiber and protein. These two, sadly, aren’t available in so-called green juices that have become so popular over the years. Again, no one is judging you for consuming them, but don’t use them as meal substitutes.
The same can be said for smoothies, another popular drink being used to replace meals. Fruits are high in sugar and smoothies often have lots of them. To that is added sweeteners and too many calories in the form of nuts and seeds (both of which are actually sources of healthy fat but tend to be used in great proportions for smoothies).
You are avoiding calories
Restricting your diet to just a certain amount of calories per day puts your weight loss plan in jeopardy. Doing so puts you at risk for not feeling too full. The key to a successful weight loss is to eat right, and that isn’t achieved by counting calories. It’s not about how much you eat, but also what you eat.
Setting out on a journey to lose weight is a process that will take time. Expecting too much can lead towards frustration if you don’t meet your goals. The key is to always start small, form a habit, then build up from there.