Losing weight can provide you with numerous health benefits. Apart from making you look better and feel younger, by shedding your extra pounds, you will improve your mood, increase your energy, enhance your memory, and protect yourself against many chronic diseases, including diabetes, heart disease, as well as certain types of cancer.
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Mistakes That Prevent You from Losing Weight
Nevertheless, the weight loss process is usually extremely challenging since it requires a lot of time, patience, and commitment.
Sometimes, you may feel like you are doing everything right, but you still cannot notice any results. In such case, some misguided advice might be responsible for hindering your progress.
Here are 4 common mistakes that can prevent you from losing weight.
1. Making a drastic change in your diet
A radical diet change is not only unnecessary for losing weight but also dangerous for your health. A low-calorie diet can help you to lose weight.
But, this will increase your hunger and reduce your muscle mass and metabolism, which will make you regain the lost pounds later.
Instead of making an extreme alteration in your diet, you should cut back only a few hundred calories a day. Eat smaller portions, but increase the number of meals you are having throughout the day.
Make sure that your meals are healthy, well-balanced, and rich in all the essential nutrients.
2. Relying only on exercising
Working out is extremely effective in managing your weight once you have reached your desired goal. However, exercising alone is not very helpful in shedding your extra pounds.
In order to successfully lose weight, you need to monitor your calorie intake. By focusing on the calories, the portion sizes, and the kinds of foods you consume, you will be able to reduce your excess weight.
3. Losing weight quickly
A rapid weight loss can be responsible for causing numerous side effects, such as muscle loss, loose skin, digestive issues, metabolic disorders, hair loss, gallstones, and liver problems.
Apart from harming your health, this can also make you regain your weight afterward. A safe, healthy, and long-term way to reduce your weight is to try losing 1 to 2 pounds per week.
If you cut back 500 calories on a daily basis, you will lose 1 pound a week, and if you cut back only 250 calories a day, you will lose 2 pounds a month.
Losing weight at a slow and steady pace will reduce your risk of many unwanted health problems, and it will provide you with long-lasting results.
4. Taking weight loss supplements
The intake of weight loss supplements is not helpful in promoting weight loss since they burn more muscle than fat.
And, you will gain back more fat than muscle when you finish taking them. This will make the situation worse than if you had never started to take them in the first place.