Sorry for the tongue-in-cheek title, I couldn’t resist! But truly, this 3 minute article will give you the little-known fat loss mistakes most people simply don’t know… yet… which probably ruined their dieting efforts because they made one (or more) of them.
Mistake 1: Believing everything the scales tell you
Yup. It’s a strange one, but, just because the scales are going down rapidly doesn’t mean things are going good. In fact, they could be going catastrophically wrong!
Let me explain…
When you eat less calories (or portions, whichever you count) and begin losing fat, depending upon how low you take the amounts you are eating, you could be losing lots of muscle mass as opposed to lots of fat.
Now, why is losing muscle mass bad for your fat loss efforts?
It’s bad because, having a lot of muscle mass – the more the better – helps to keep your body’s metabolism working quickly. When you lose muscle mass, the bodies metabolism slows, and this is a disaster for you – because it then holds on to fat, making fat loss a much more difficult task.
Without doubt, the best way to avoid this mistake is to avoid rapid weight loss. Rapid wait loss signals you are losing more than simply fat. I’d aim for a calorie deficit of 3,500 a week, which equates to an entire lb of fat. Maybe take it to 1 3/4 of a lb of weight lost a week at the most.
Try to maintain this level of fat loss throughout your dieting, along with regular exercise (particularly weight training, and especially leg training) to keep your metabolism up, and to keep the muscle from disappearing.
(And, if you aren’t sure 1lb of fat is enough for you… I assure you, it is – because it’s an entire mug / cup full. So, even in 2 months at this rate you are talking 8 mugs of fat gone from your body!)
Mistake 2: Skipping breakfast
You know about the metabolism and how important it is to fat loss; the faster it goes, the faster you lose fat. Well, the number one thing you can do for your bodies metabolism to boost it for the entire day, is to have breakfast.
Get some carbs and protein in your system, and have a cup of coffee, which will help to suppress your appetite. The carbs will help to give you energy, while the protein provides your body with a substitute fuel for your muscles – i.e. your body has a tendency to try burning your muscles for protein when you are trying to lose fat, but, by giving the body some ready protein, it will spare the muscle protein and burn the protein you’ve eaten instead.
Mistake 3: Believing you can choose which body part to burn fat on. (I.e.: Believing a few stomach crunches will burn fat on the abs, etc.)
And butt squeezes for burning butt fat, etc. etc. It’s all a load of nonsense, and the only people who continue to perpetuate the myth that this can be done are the ones who have crappy magazines or other useless fitness products to sell.
Remember this next sentence, it’s the most important you’ll ever hear:
When you put on fat, you don’t get to choose which part of the body the fat goes on, and, you are equally powerless to decide where you are going to burn the fat. The body decides that automatically, and you can’t do a thing about it.
Your job is to simply keep losing fat by doing the optimum amount of dieting, and, the optimum amount of exercise (at least 3 hours a week of cycling, jogging, swimming, or whatever you like.) And, the body will decide for itself where to lose the fat, but, I’ll give you a rough idea of how it usually works: arms, legs, neck and face first, chest, then hips, butt, and stomach last.
It works this way because the closer the fat is to the centre of the body, the less energy it takes the body to carry it. So, the body likes to hold onto it’s ‘midsection’ reserves to the very last.
Mistake 4: Misspelling ‘Lose’ as ‘Loose’
This common mistake means you miss out on a ton of information on losing fat. ‘Lose’ is to become dispossessed, while ‘loose’ is what Jared Fogle’s old trousers would be on him now if he tried to wear them again.
Thanks for reading the article, I hope you found it useful.