9 Fat Loss Mistakes
If you’ve had a successful start to your fat loss journey but its come to a grinding halt after a few weeks then you are probably making one of the major dieting and exercise mistakes. These fat loss mistakes are a common occurrence amongst dieters and are one of the main reasons they abandon there fat loss goals and revert back to there old habits. These mistakes can be avoided by sticking to a good diet plan and taking onboard the advice in this article.
Read below to find out about the 9 Fat Loss mistakes.
No Diet Plan and / or Restriction of Calories
Plan your meals in advance, aim for 5 – 6 small meals a day with protein being the main item consumed in each one, add carbs in the morning and fats in the evening. Make sure you are filling your body with healthy and nutritious food that it can use to good effect.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, are the dieters who think that eating less is going to shift more fat. Unfortunately your body doesn’t work like this.
Caloric restriction = muscle starvation = fat loss grinds to a halt.
It's really important that you feed your system so it can grow and maintain its level of function. Your body requires food for muscle repair, concentration, heart health, and digestive health. Cutting too many calories will only hinder your progress further. Follow the above advice for a successful plan.
Under no circumstance should an active female eat less than 1300 calories or an active male eat less than 1500 calories when trying to lose weight and burn fat.
Too Much Cardio And Not Enough Resistance
For some reason aerobic exercise continues to be branded as the be – all, end – all for fat loss. Whereas it has its place for some people, it is certainly not the most effective answer to fat loss.
If you take a look at a marathon runner, they will be lean and have very little fat on them but they also have very little muscle mass and some look dangerously thin. Compare this with a sprinter who has a far more athletic physique, has greater muscle mass and a better overall body composition. Personally ive never seen or heard of a sprinter that spends hours on a treadmill, cross trainer or bike in the gym. They use resistance training alongside cardio to maximise there performance and body composition.
Resistance training not only burns a ton of calories when done at an intense level, but it can actually raise your metabolism so that you can still burn calories after you are done exercising. Not only that, it also stimulates muscle growth. The more muscle you have, the better your body will be at burning fat.
A perfect exercise routine would be a balance of resistance training incorporating big compound movements such as: Squats, Deadlifts, Presses, Pull Ups and Rows for 10 – 12 Reps. Try to avoid machines as they move in a set way – something the body does not. The next part of the routine should be cardio. Forget about a steady speed for 45 mins. Alternate between high and low intensities, on the high intensity it should be maximum effort and use the low intensities as recovery. If your at a gym use the treadmill, bike, x-trainer and rower, if you’re not a member at a gym then you can do it outside using your own two legs.
The more muscles you use in a workout the more calories you will burn. Remember to exercise at a high intensity.
I believe muscle soreness following a fat loss workout should be a 5 - 7 (on a 0 to 10 scale), most of the time, where:
0 = no pain whatsoever, no muscle soreness
10 = extreme muscle soreness, emergency level
This is a big wake-up call for a lot of people, but it may just shed light on why you're not seeing the fat loss results for which you were hoping.
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| Which one do you want to look like? |
Lack Of Intensity and No Progression
If your idea of an active fat burning workout is walking on the treadmill while watching TV, then its time for you to step up your game. You can’t lose anything if you don’t push yourself beyond your limits.
If you walk away from an exercise session not sweating, out of breath or you feel like you could of done more then you haven’t worked hard enough. You have to step out of you’re comfort zone in order to see any changes – the results will be worth it but you have to work for them.
Your workouts need to be intense and cause you to go beyond your limit every time. The equipment that you use needs to be high quality and built to make you sweat. Hire a trainer if you struggle with motivation and don’t think you will be able to push yourself to the required limit.
Workout progression is very important as the body adapts to new things very quickly, so what’s making you work and feel sore now, wont necessarily do the same in a few weeks time. Remember your body wants to keep hold of the fat so you need to outsmart it. As soon as you feel you can do more then do more – remember you want to walk away knowing you had nothing else left to give.
Cardio wise – work longer at high intensities and reduce the rest. Resistance – increase weight, decrease reps, put two exercises back to back with no rest, and try new exercises that make the body move in different ways. Again if you are unsure then talk to a fitness professional about how to take your workout to the next level and ensure your progress doesn’t stall.
The bottom line is that every workout should challenge you, the moment it stops challenging you then you need to change it. Use the soreness scale as a guide to how your body is adapting.
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| If this is how you spend your time at the Gym - then things need to change. |
Your Too Short Sighted
We are all trapped in the belief that we need to see changes right away. We try a programme for a few weeks, giving it all our effort but we don’t see the results we want, instead of carrying on we back off and look for alternate solution whether that’s an alternate nutritional plan, training plan or supplementation. The first programme you attempted may have been the best one, but as you didn’t see it through – you will never know.
It’s obvious that you didn’t pack on that extra 30 or 50 pounds in just a matter of weeks. So don’t expect to be able to lose the weight in the same amount of time. Be realistic with your weight loss goals. Receiving positive results in the end requires hard work, dedication and plenty of patience. Even a pound a week is a pound closer to your goal.
Here are a few tips to help bide time:
Take monthly pictures (See next tip)
Take monthly measurements
Buy a pair of trousers that are one size too small, then make it your goal to fit into them. Once you get into that pair then buy the next size down.
Put reminders of why you are doing this all over the house, pictures on the fridge, cupboards etc
Remind yourself how long it took to gain the weight and don’t expect to lose it any faster.
Don’t give up – focus on your progress, however slow it is, it’s a step in the right direction.
You Didn’t Take Before Pictures
This is something I encourage all my clients to do, when the going gets tough and motivation starts to waver, they can refer to this as a measure of how far they have come.
Even if you have no plans of sharing the picture with anyone else. Take one anyway and put it somewhere safe. You may not look at it for months but you will pull it out when you hit roadblocks and start to struggle. It will remind you of how trapped you felt before you began the journey of fat loss and it will motivate you to continue. Someone who is making great progress can also reflect on the picture and vow to never return to that physical state. The picture is not just for the here and now, it can be used as continued motivation for a healthy lifestyle.
Weather you take a picture or not is entirely your choice but wouldn't it be great to look back and be able to show others how far you have come. Some people won’t believe it is possible until they see it with there own eyes, and your picture could well inspire them to take the journey themselves, as you are a walking success story.
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| Take before / after pictures and notice dramatic changes. |
You think expensive supplements are the only way to lose fat.
How many times have you heard someone talk about the next big fat burning pill and how its results are unbelievable, you read the reviews and rush to buy it. You feel something from it and assume it must be working. Supplements are big business, they are branded in such a way that you think they are the only way to lose fat.
I can tell you this: Supplements are not the solution; merely tools that can help you achieve a solution along with high intensity exercise and a good diet plan. You cannot be drawn into the mentality of thinking it will work wonders and you can be lazy whilst taking them. By this I mean, you don’t change any of your eating habits and you do no exercise and expect the supplement to by pass all of that and still work.
Whilst I don’t doubt any of the supplements and what they can achieve along with proper diet and exercise, a lot of fat burners are surrounded by hype. They are based on the ‘I feel it ‘syndrome. Most of the consumers do not keep detailed food logs, weights and measurements and are just looking for a quick fix and don’t want to put the work in. So in reality they have no clue if this is working for them or not as they have no record of progression – they only have their emotions to go by.
When taking fat burners, you will hear of a lot of people talk about a buzz or a kick they got. This makes them believe they can ‘feel’ the fat burning and sense the supplement working. While this makes a great sales pitch, it does little to help you move closer to your goal. Feeling a buzz is very far away from burning fat.
By all means use these with intense exercise and a detailed nutrition plan, but the amount of fat loss down to the supplement would be minimal compared to how much fat you will lose with good exercise and nutrition.
You rely on Abs training thinking it will burn off stomach fat and “Tone” your midsection.
For some reason, the misconception of spot reduction continues. No argument has ever convinced me that you can lose fat in a specific area by contracting the muscle in that specific area. Fat loss just does not work this way. Yet for some reason, we see hundreds of people every day at the gym doing hundreds of crunches and situps and thinking that they are somehow burning fat from their abdomen, when in reality, they're just wasting time!
Fat loss is a systemic effect that takes place as your body morphs into a healthier you. Fat storage patterns vary person to person according to hormonal levels, genetic fat storage patterns etc. Reducing body fat in those areas through exercise is only done if you are working to modify hormonal levels that have related fat storage areas.
There has yet to be convincing evidence that you can do tricep presses, for example, and lose fat in the back of your arms... Just doesn't work that way. The same is true with your abs. In this case, even if you do 3000 sit ups per day, you wouldn’t be doing much for fat loss – just giving yourself a bad back.
The goal of a fat loss exercise routine is to tire as much of your body as possible, to a safe extreme. This is referred to as momentary muscular failure, and it’s when lactic acid onset takes place. Remember, lactic acid, which is what makes you sore, is a very good thing. It means your body is working hard to reduce inflammation and repair. You’re well on your way to rapid fat loss. You’ll see incredible results when you accept this, so axe the sit-ups and do some high intensity full body workouts if you want a “toned” physique.
Not leading an active lifestyle.
This point is common sense and is often overlooked. Don’t think that the only exercise constituting to your fat loss are the things your doing in the gym or when exercising intensely. Working out at the gym is important, but you need to live an active lifestyle in order to make major gains in weight loss. Whether it’s walking, taking the stairs, or playing a sport, you need to keep moving on a regular basis. Avoid being a couch potato outside of the gym and you’ll reach your goals in half the time!
Remember its often the smallest changes that make the biggest differences.
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| Being active in your spare time can accelerate fat loss. |
Thinking exercise will burn it off.
This is a very common and often fatal mistake when on a fat loss journey. There will always be occasions when you want to eat a bit more than you know you should, be it at a family meal or another social occasion. You then tell yourself that you will work these extra calories off when you next exercise to make up for it. This is a terrible mentality to get into; thinking you can you consistently overeat and fix it through exercise.
If a person is performing an intense sprint interval session, they will burn approximately 200 calories every 10 – 15 minutes. So that’s fine if they had a chocolate bar after dinner – that would be realistic. However if youre indulgences were an extra plate of spaghetti carbonara, cheesecake for dessert, all washed down with a bottle of red wine then believing that you can burn this off with an extra 20 minute jog is very unrealistic to say the least.
Following an eating episode of this calibre, most people then decide to starve themselves the following day as they assume it will balance it out. Unfortunately that is the worse thing you can do. Your body is continually adapting to your calorific intake and the amount of exercise you are doing. If you have a bad day then the best thing you can do is eat healthy meals and drink LOADS of water to flush out the body.
Nutrition is by far the major component that determines success or failure of fat loss. Eat clean most of the time, and allow yourself occasional cheat meals – once a week should be fine. Adding exercise to compensate is not a problem. If you overeat everyday then no amount of exercise is going to account for those additional calories.
One of the most important things to consider is the mentality behind all this. The ability to exercise off any excess calories is only giving you an easy way out, a back door and an excuse to overeat. It is keeping you from committing to a healthy lifestyle because in the back of your mind you know you can slip up and burn it off.
Instead of looking at burning off the foods you eat, eat to fuel your body so you can perform intense workouts that will help you build a better body and burn off unwanted fat.
EAT TO LIVE, NOT LIVE TO EAT !!
Conclusion
In my opinion these are the biggest mistakes people make when starting to lose fat – there is nothing worse than thinking your making progress, then you realise you’ve been doing it wrong and haven’t gone anywhere.
Follow the advice and avoid the mistakes and you will be well on your way. Good luck.
Check out my Facebook and Twitter page for daily fat loss tips and advice.
Follow the advice and avoid the mistakes and you will be well on your way. Good luck.
Check out my Facebook and Twitter page for daily fat loss tips and advice.
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