Three Things to Avoid on Your Weight Loss Journey

There will be times in your weight loss journey when it could seem that it has come to a screeching halt. Days or weeks may go by without seeing any positive results on the scale, and quite frankly it is frustrating. After working with thousands of clients, I’ve noticed that there are certain patterns that can actually bring your weight loss to a halt. Here are the 3 most common patterns.

1) Eating more than you think you are.

Something that is great about certain dieting systems is that they have one undeniable benefit to them – they define how calories that we should consume within a certain day. A lot of us underestimate how much food we take in each day. The consequence to this is that we also underestimate how many calories we take in as well.

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The key is to fix in your head what a serving size or “portion” of food looks like. Also it is really important to ask yourself if you are full or not. I know it sounds silly but usually you can stop overeating habits by just asking yourself this question. You want to be at the point just before full, I would recommend that if you seem like you are getting full that you stop eating and finish up with a glass of water. I would like to reiterate that you want to be just before full though.

Two good rules of thumb:

A portion of meat (3 oz.) is the size of a deck of cards.

A portion of carbohydrates (1 cup) is the size of a tennis ball.

Please remember to fill up on non-starchy vegetables – they are full of nutrients, have very little impact on blood sugar, and contain little in the way of calories.

2) Not eating frequently enough.

It is a social custom to eat “three square meals” a day. Although this might be fine for social proposes, for weight loss you want to eat 4-6 small meals a day. I know I had a problem with this at first as those 4-6 small meals a day became 4-6 big meals. What I want to stress here is that it is very important not to overfill yourself, and to stop eating when you are just about full. When you eat more throughout the day your body will get the signal that food is a plenty and that there is no need to conserve energy.

Frequent feedings will maximize your metabolism, as your body is constantly busy, burning calories by digesting your meals. If you where to eat about every two and a half hours between meals, you will be stabilizing your blood sugar levels since they never really get the chance to drop. When your blood sugar levels are stable, your hunger is minimized, decreasing the chance that you will be tempted to overeat.

3) Choosing to drink your calories instead of eating them.

This is a very common problem among those attempting weight loss, due to the abundance of “healthy” diet smoothies, protein concoctions, and weight loss shakes. There are two things you want to remember when relying on liquid meal replacements. Firstly you want to make sure that your “shake” or “smoothie” doesn’t have a ton of sugar in it.  If you do drink one of these drinks it can cause an immediate surge of energy followed with a huge crash due to release of insulin to control the blood sugar spike. When you have such a dramatic shift in your blood hormone levels it is not healthy and should be avoided.

Secondly, most weight loss shakes are devoid of fiber. Fiber is one of your most precious allies when you are dieting. It will help you feel full and will calm down the rise of insulin levels, while some fruit smoothies do contain some fiber in them. It is actually better to just eat the actual fruits that are within that particular smoothie.

Lastly, the amount of calories that are within these shakes or smoothies will be a lot more then the equivalent volume of the actual food. A 16 oz fruit smoothie may contain as much as 600 calories, on top of that you will not be full on the other hand, eating 600 calories of fruit will prove to be much more than the typical person can manage in a single sitting after all could you eat more than two pounds of bananas for breakfast?

Think about it- when making major dietary changes, you want to get the most out of your calories. Wouldn’t you rather fill up on something solid, rather than drink something and be hungry again soon after?

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