The 3 Big “Don’ts” of Healthy Weight Loss

Losing weight is about more than cutting calories or eating enough fruits and veggies. It’s important to not only build healthy habits, but also to avoid common pitfalls. The following is a short list of some of the biggest mistakes you can make when attempting to lose weight.

1. Don’t Skip Meals

While skipping a meal occasionally can be good for you, doing it regularly causes more harm than good. There are several reasons for this. First, skipping meals means your body has a harder time producing everything it needs to function. If the body is not able to produce enough hormones like insulin, or maintain a healthy blood pressure, you will be at greater risk for diseases like diabetes.

Skipping meals also can lead to a greater appetite for junk food. Research shows that we tend to make poorer meal choices, honing in on foods heavy in salt and sugar, when we are very hungry. Lastly, the low blood sugar caused by skipping meals can make it difficult to exercise, even though exercise is an essential part of a healthy diet.

2. Don’t Forget to Exercise

Speaking of exercise, healthy weight loss is very difficult to achieve without it. However, it can be tempting to skip this step when we look at the numbers. A three mile run only burns 300 hundred calories? How is that worth it?

The truth is, regular exercise not only burns individual calories, it also builds muscle mass, which means you will burn more calories overall, even when you are at rest. Not only that, exercise improves our mental state and trains us to be self-disciplined. These two benefits cannot be overemphasized when it comes to long term weight loss.

3. Don’t Lose Too Much, Too Fast

Getting less than 1,050-2000 calories per day can be damaging to your weight loss goals. When you don’t get enough calories to function, you will start to not only lose fat, but also to lose muscle. And as we mentioned above, that muscle loss can be detrimental to your metabolism.

Losing weight too fast can also encourage eventual weight gain. If your body thinks that it is starving, it will hold onto calories and work to get you back to your original weight. There have been many studies that have shown extreme weight loss is often followed by heavy weight gain in the next few years.
We hope these guidelines have been helpful to you. To learn more about losing weight the healthy way, schedule a consultation.