5 things people get wrong about losing weight

21 February 2018

It's an all-too-familiar story for many of us: we resolve to lose weight, imbue ourselves with confidence, and then get our regime underway... only to fall off the wagon depressingly early. What's going on? You are probably just buying too readily into various myths about weight loss. Sadly, this can easily happen if you source your diet tips from the grapevine rather than weight loss gurus. Here are just five bad habits which you may have inadvertently adopted.

Changing eating habits just for the short term

The word "dieting" should probably be banished from the weight loss dictionary, considering how it implies that you only really need to alter your eating habits temporarily.

In fact, you should be picking up healthy habits to permanently incorporate them into your everyday life. This is how you not only shift weight but also keep it off. Sticking instead to temporary "dieting" could result in yo-yo dieting, TODAY cautions.

Believing that all calories are equal

While you may consider diligently counting calories in your bid to lose weight, keep in mind that calories can surprisingly vary in the extent of their ability to adversely affect your waistline.

You might be continuing to consider a specific number of calories under which you are eager for your daily tally to fall. However, calories from the likes of biscuits and jelly beans could hamper your weight-shifting efforts more than calories from, say, turkey and avocado.

Always opting for low-fat foods

When casually browsing your local supermarket, you might notice how particular foods are prominently advertised as "low-fat" or "reduced fat" options. So, they would be the best choices for a waistline-friendly diet plan... right? Actually, not quite...

When manufacturers strip fat from their foods, they will often put in more sugar and additives to help preserve the flavour. This leaves standard peanut butter, paradoxically, a better bet than the low-fat variety, the sugar content of which you should check before you buy the product.

Also often choosing "fat-burning" foods

On a similar note, you probably shouldn't necessarily rush to stock up on foods which, on the basis of research findings, the press has declared "fat-burning".

Foods which have been linked to a boosted metabolism include grapefruit, coffee, ginger, pepper and green tea. However, in an Express article, University of Warwick obesity expert Dr Thomas Barber says that positive findings about such foods are typically too small to warrant consideration by people trying to lose weight.

Obsessing about exact bodyweight

Do you, every morning, get onto the scales and closely watch for the weight reading to pop up? If so, it's worth considering that that little number can't wholly measure your body's health.

This is because, in working out extensively and eating more healthily, you could be developing muscle. That muscle could add to your weight, but also make your body healthier. Therefore, it's worth disregarding those scales if that muscle really is the contributing factor.

Fortunately, joining one of our boot camps holidays can help you build muscle in a fun way.