Diet Mistakes We All Make

I think we all start out the same way. We are driven to succeed so we stick to the program and it generally works and you lose your first 10 pounds or so and then you stop losing or the losing slows down to a crawl and you get discouraged and quick.

Everything your going threw is normal; it happens to everyone, we just don’t talk about it. When you go on a fad diet like the grapefruit diet or the cabbage soup diet all you’re really doing is purging your body of all the pended up food in your system. Most people don’t realize that your digestive system holds about three days worth of food. Everything you ate for the past three days is still in your digestive track being digested; it really does take that long.

When you feel sluggish it’s because your digestive system is backing up because you may have eaten too much or your may have eaten the wrong thing and you slowed down the digestive process so now you have more than three days worth of food in your system.

When you go on a fad diet you’re just cleaning out your system or, in some cases you’re drastically cutting your calories and starving yourself. That will generally lead to malnutrition from the lack of necessary vitamins and minerals. These starvation diets are popular. They try and tell you that all you need to do is cut you calories and exercise. That will only work for a short period of time. And why is that?   It only works for a couple of weeks or maybe about a 10 pound loss because your body will think you are starving and cut your calorie burn by reducing your energy. It slows down the amount of energy it creates for you. That’s one of the reasons that dieters lose the energy to exercise. All this will happen over several weeks, but no matter what fad diet you choose, you will generally only lose about 10 pounds before you start to cheat on the diet or get so weak that you start to binge on whatever food you can find.

Another classic mistake is to cut calories by skipping breakfast. I know it might sound crazy but you can’t skip meals and lose weight, it doesn’t work.  The best way to cut calories is to eat fresh, natural foods that are naturally low in calories. Fresh fruits and vegetables, lean protein like poultry and fish, low-fat dairy and snack on nuts and seeds. Don’t eat beef, especially hamburger. When I was dieting to lose weight, I was eating 6 small meals a day and drinking lots of water.  I kept my meals under 300 calories and stopped eating after 6 pm. I’m here as living proof that it works, I was never hungry and I do the same thing today to maintain my weight. You can’t go back to the old way you were eating; if you do the weight will come back and come back fast.

Stop eating fating snacks like chips or everything fried. Don’t eat any pastries, no cake, no muffins, no donuts or bagels and only eat a small amount of whole-grain bread each day. But not snacking at all will only cause you to binge when you get a chance. Nuts, seeds and fruit are good snack food. But nuts and fruit do have calories so only a handful between meals. When I was on the six-meal a day plan, I didn’t have to snack; I was eating every three hours. I’d eat about 300 calories at every meal and that would hold me for 3 more hours.  The trick is not to skip any meals; you have to eat every three hours but only 300 calories.

Don’t drink your calories. This is another classic mistake. We all do this, we got the meal plan down and we are sticking to it and then we think we can reward ourselves with a Latte or something else just as sinful and we blow 300 or more calories on a few minutes of pleasure. Not Good!! Losing weight is a battle and you can’t win the battle if you think it’s o.k. to cheat.

 Next mistake the beginners always make is eating low-fat foods. They think that eating low-fat meals of just low-fat foods or snack won’t hurt weight loss but manufactured food will hurt your weight loss effort. It might be low in fat but they have to put some taste back in the food so they add more sugar or some other sweetener. Low-fat doesn’t mean low-calorie. You can find low-calorie, very nutrius prepared fresh meals in a supermarket. The store by me carries a good selection of small meals, some salads and some sandwiches with salads and some hot meals, all ready to eat. These meals are made fresh every day and great for a dieter.

 Drinking lots of water is essential for a dieter. Your body will retain water if you’re not drink enough. Just like hoarding food calories, your body will retain fluid if it thinks you can’t find water. Your body’s one single most important function is to preserve life. So your body has the power to regulate the amount of energy it provides for you by restricting calorie burn and by retaining fluids to keep your system working until you find more water.

Another mistake is to cut out dairy because of the fat content. Yes, dairy has fat, but it also has calcium and the body needs calcium so you want to eat low-fat plain yogurt or cottage cheese. I’d lay off the milk. If you want milk, I’d buy low-fat Almond milk, it has all the essentials you need.

One more things is don’t go thru the window at the fast food restaurant. Anything you order will put weight on you.  Stick to the food in the supermarket.  

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