If
I had a £1 for each time I am asked why despite a healthy diet someone is
unable to lose weight, I would be sunning myself somewhere exotic writing my
blog! It’s a question that pops up so
often, I thought I would share with you a few of the most common reasons.
- How healthy
is your diet?
Quite often, when we dig a little deeper, it’s
not very healthy at all. Lots of low
fat, high hidden sugar foods that have the blood sugar up and down like a
roller coaster. Remember, to make a food
taste good, if you take out the fat, you have to replace it with something
which in most cases will be some form of sugar. Taking in all this sugar can
get us locked into a cycle of craving more and more. Balancing your blood sugar level is key to
achieving long term weight loss – sugar is the enemy, not fat! Check out some of the foods labelled as
“healthy” in your cupboards, particularly breakfast cereals/muesli’s, low fat
yoghurts, no surprises if sugar is up in the top 3 in the list of ingredients.
- Not eating enough calories
Yes, you read that right, while eating too
many calories is the obvious answer, eating too little is very common if
someone is trying to shift weight quickly.
Often people cut their food intake to very low
levels thinking less is better. This is counter productive as all that happens
is your body slows down its metabolism (the amount of calories we burn at rest)
and holds onto the fat that it thinks it may need later. This will cause your
body to make less energy and produce less heat so that you will end up feeling
tired and cold. You will also feel hungry, making it harder to continue losing
fat. It is very difficult to keep the
weight off if you lose it too quickly.
Rapid weight loss is short term weight loss.
- Alcohol
Aside from providing empty calories, alcohol
will make achieving a slimmer body more of a struggle. This is because alcohol contains several
toxins that the liver will want to get rid of or metabolise as quickly as
possible. The problem is that your liver
cannot metabolise alcohol and fat or carbohydrates at the same time so if its
busy metabolising the alcohol, guess what’s happening to the fats and
carbohydrates. Yep they will be stored
as fat, for men usually the “beer belly” and for women around the hips and
thighs. So if you are drinking more than
once a week be aware that you will be slowing down your metabolism making your
weight loss efforts much more difficult.
- No Excuses
A tricky one, I know, because we are all very
busy these days. However health and
fitness need to become a priority. If
you are too busy to exercise (I would say this is the most common excuse I hear),
you will have to accept the fact that you will never lose those excess
pounds. Think about all of the things
which take up 30 minutes of your day – television, face book, ebay, reading the
papers etc and then ask yourself if investing
that time in your body, your current and future health and wellbeing would be
worth the trade off. I have never worked
with anyone who can’t find a way to fit some exercise into their weekly
routine.
- Dieting v
lifestyle change
All diets work for a while as long as you
stick to them. But who wants to be on a
diet forever? Food is one of the great
pleasures in life. It supplies us with
energy, lifts our mood, balances our hormones and keeps our immune system
healthy. If you view it in this way and choose healthy foods that are good for
you, not only will the weight drop off but you will feel great. It’s when you think of food as “bad” that you
get stuck in that never ending cycle of deprivation and reward. Inevitably the “reward “ ends up being a blow out on sugary, fatty foods that give you
a quick buzz followed by those feelings of sluggishness, guilt and self hatred, so starting the
vicious cycle again.
Its time to adopt some healthy lifestyle changes and ditch
the diet for good!
So there are my top 5 reasons that might be hampering your
weight loss efforts, do they apply to you?
Let me know.
Have a Happy, healthy week
Marie x
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