Losing weight isn’t easy and losing fat is even harder. There is a difference. If you’re shedding pounds, those pounds aren’t always from fat. It can be from muscle tissue, making it even harder to lose additional pounds. You may be working your hardest and staying true to your path but still see slow or no change. You may be making fat loss mistakes that are setting you back. It’s time to make changes and turn your weight and fat loss efforts into a success.
Are you just focusing on a diet without including exercise?
Eating healthier will help you lose weight, but it won’t give you all the progress you may desire. By creating a calorie deficit, the body gets calories from burning both fat and muscle tissue. Muscle tissue requires more calories to maintain than fat tissue does, so the less you have, the slower your metabolism. Include strength training in your workout and build muscle tissue as you burn fat. The more muscle tissue you have, the higher your metabolism, the easier it is to lose weight and the more success you’ll have.
You may cut your calories too much.
If cutting your calorie intake by 500 is good, then would cutting it by 1500 be three times better? In most cases, the answer is no. Cutting calories too severely can make weight loss harder. A severely calorie-restricted diet can cause the body to go into starvation mode. That’s when it slows metabolism so there are calories for vital life functions or organs. Keeping your metabolic fires burning is vital. It’s one reason people include cheat days in their diet plans.
You might be eating low-fat diet food.
You’ll find diet foods in every grocery. They’re low-calorie or low-fat alternatives. If you want to lose fat, eating less fat sounds sensible. It doesn’t work that way. First, you need fat to burn fat. That has to be healthy fat. Second, when manufacturers remove fat, they replace it with something else to maintain taste and texture. That something else is often sugar that is far worse than fat.
- Only doing cardio is a big mistake. Include strength training to build muscle and burn fat. Cardio burns calories from both muscle and fat.
- You may think you can exercise away those extra pounds of fat, but that’s not enough. You can’t out-exercise a bad diet. Combine a healthy diet with an exercise program to burn fat.
- You focus too much on counting calories and don’t focus on eating healthy. Eating healthier means eating lower-calorie foods like fruits and vegetables and cutting out highly processed food or food with added sugar.
- One big mistake is burning the candle at both ends. Too little sleep affects your hormones. It causes the body to create too much ghrelin—the hunger hormone—and too little leptin—the one that makes you feel full.
For more information, contact us today at Wellness On A Dime Coaching