Losing weight is hard. It can be intimidating, overwhelming, and confusing. Between the newspaper articles, TV commercials, advertisements, your friends’ opinions… how are you supposed to know where to start? How do you know what’s right and what’s wrong? To get you started, here’s a list of FIVE things you absolutely should NOT do while trying to lose weight.
- Don’t use light weights and high repetitions: When you’re trying to lose weight, gaining strength increases your metabolic rate. To gain strength / lean muscle tissue, you need to do lower repetitions with heavier weights. This strategy will also help you build lean muscle – which is extremely effective at burning fat! The more muscle you have, the more fat you will burn, not just during exercise but while your body is resting too.
- Don’t skip meals: Cutting back on meals is often the first thing people do when trying to lose weight. This actually cripples your body’s ability to burn fat. Think of your body like a car engine… a car needs gas to burn so it can drive. If it has no gas, it won’t go anywhere. Your body is the same… if it has no fuel to burn, it’s most definitely not going to spend its energy burning fat. It will actually conserve the fat to make sure it’s able to perform the functions you need to survive.
- Don’t stuff yourself: Rather than eating until you are completely full, eat slowly. When you feel you could be full, wait a little bit and see how you feel. If you’re still hungry, THEN eat some more. You’re likely to find you’re actually not THAT hungry after all. It takes time for your stomach to tell your brain you are full.
- Don’t walk on the treadmill as a form of “cardio”: Not only is it time consuming, it’s ineffective for weight loss. Instead of just walking and being bored, do some form of metabolic conditioning that will spike your heart rate then allow it to recover (metabolic circuit and Tabata sets work really well!). Walking on a treadmill is better than sitting on the couch, however, walking on the street or a trail will challenge your body more since the ground below you is not moving by itself (like a treadmill). More explosive cardio exercise over a shorter period of time can produce more caloric expenditure, thus assisting in weigh loss.
- Don’t drink juices, sodas, or other sugary drinks: While it’s pretty obvious that you should avoid sodas, drinks like orange juice, apple juice, Vitamin water, Gatorade, and energy drinks are absolutely loaded with sugar. These amounts of sugar cause your blood sugar to spike, then plummet, making you feel hungry when you actually aren’t. Drinking limited quantities of pure fruit juices (without added sugar) is beneficial but still loads your body with sugars that must be burned off. Chances are, you don’t drink enough water… drinking juice does NOT count. Rule of thumb – consume half your body weight in ounces of water (120 lb person should drink at least 60 oz of water per day)
Need help losing weight? Contact the experts at Genesis Performance and Fitness and hire a personal trainer in Thousand Oaks to help you learn how to Live Your Live Without Limitation!
