How To Sabotage Your Weight Loss Efforts

Are You Making These Common Mistakes?…

In my role as a fitness consultant I have discovered that a number of my clients who are struggling to lose weight were make the same mistakes. These mistakes were preventing these people from achieving their weight loss goals.

If you can avoid these mistakes then you’ll greatly increase your chances of weight loss success.

Are you making any of these mistakes?...

Mistake #1

You do not take the time to plan and prepare your meals and snacks or your exercise time.

This is the BIG mistake most people make and once corrected you will notice a vast improvement in your weight loss efforts.

I’ll emphasise the point by way of an example…

You left for work without bringing your lunch or knowing where you can obtain a healthy lunch. You find yourself rushing at lunch and nip into KFC or McDonalds and quickly consume 50 grams of fat!

You also failed to bring a healthy snack for a mid afternoon so you end up getting a bar of chocolate bar or bag of crisps from the shop or vending machine. You are starving by the time you get your dinner at 7:00 and because of this you have much less control over what and how much you eat. You therefore end up stuffing your face with foods that are probably not the healthiest choice.


Mistake #2

You do not exercise every day.

To boost your weight loss results make sure you do some type of aerobic exercise (e.g. walking, swimming, jogging, stationary cycling, aerobic dancing, etc) on a DAILY basis (preferably first thing in the morning) for at least 20 minutes but aim for 30 to 60 minutes.

Aerobic exercise elevates a number of your body’s hormones that tell your body to burn more fat. It also decreases the hormones that tell your body to store fat. Exercise also helps to boost your metabolism which in simple terms means that your body burns more calories.

When you are sedentary your body loves to store as much fat as it can. Conversely when you are active your body loves to burn fat. Get out and become more active and your fat will go.


Mistake #3

Not weight training consistently.

Forget your fears of becoming too bulky. It rarely happens with women and only in genetically gifted specimens who train for a living.

Weight training gives your muscles tone and shape and is your best ally in fat burning. Here's why: Most of your calories are burned in your muscle cells. The more muscle you have, the more of fat you will burn.

Resistance training (i.e. using weights) supercharges your metabolism and will also help reduce your blood pressure, burn fat, relieves stress, prevents osteoporosis, prevents lower-back pain, and gastrointestinal transit time, which is associated with diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.)


Mistake #4

Not including “intervals” in your aerobic exercise.

Intervals are brief periods (usually 30-60 seconds) of more intense exercise mixed with normal paced cardio workouts. This is an ideal way to add variety, challenge, extra intensity and additional calorie burning to your regular routine. You can do this at any level of fitness training.

For example, if you're walking, speed up the pace to as fast as you can handle for anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes, then return to your normal cruising pace. You can easily insert high-intensity intervals into stair climbing, treadmill and stationary bicycling routines as well.

You will normally start with a warm up for 5 minutes and then you would do your first interval for 30-60 seconds at an intensity level of 7 out of 10. At the end of that interval you will be a little out of breath and will return to your normal exercise speed which equates to an intensity level of 4 out of 10. You do this speed for a minute before doing another interval. You repeat this cycle for 4 or 5 intervals and then do a cool down for 5 minutes at an intensity level of 3 out of 10.

The benefits you will get from interval training are:

a)Intervals can help kick start your weight loss efforts if you have reached a plateau.

b)Intervals increase your aerobic fitness levels because your body becomes conditioned to more intense exercise.

c)They increase your level of fitness which means that exercising at a given level feels easier which in turn means that you will be able to exercise at a higher intensity. The end result of this means that you will burn extra calories.

d)You will have more “energy” throughout the day due to your increased level of fitness so you will feel less tired from your daily activities.

e) Your basal metabolic rate (BMR) will increase which means that your body will burn more calories per day even when you are sitting watching tv.

f)You burn more calories during your exercise session and for several hours afterwards.

g)Intervals can tone your working muscles more than regular cardio exercise would.

h)Intervals are less boring than normal cardio workouts and help pass the time quicker.

Mistake #5
Believing that you should exercise in the “fat-burning zone”.

You’ve probably read or may have even been told that you have to exercise in the “fat-burning zone” to burn more fat. It is generally believed that you should exercise at a lower intensity to burn more fat.

Guess what… The fat-burning zone is a myth!

Your body always burns a mixture of carbohydrates and fats for fuel. This mixture always contains slightly more fat during lower intensity exercise and slightly less fat during higher intensity exercise. Someone took this to mean that a lower intensity workout is best for losing weight.

Unfortunately this is not the case.

Ultimately it does not matter if you are burning a little more fat or a little more carbohydrate at any particular time. The important thing to ensure is that you are burning as many calories as you can.

Exercising at a moderate intensity will result in you burning more calories in a given time period. For example, you might burn 200 calories during a 30 minute low intensity exercise session and 300 calories during a 30 minute moderate intensity exercise session.

Conclusion?

Burning more calories is better for weight loss.

So how do you work out how intense your exercise sessions are? Your heart rate is an excellent gauge of exercise intensity. The faster your heart beat during your workout, the harder your exercise intensity.

The most accurate way to determine what your heart rate range should be while you exercise is to use a formula called the Karvonen Equation:

Step 1: Determine your theoretical maximum heart rate (Max HR) by subtracting your age from 220.

Step 2: Determine your resting heart rate (Rest HR) by measuring it first thing in the morning in a seated position.

Step 3: Determine the lower end and higher end of your target heart rate range:

(Max HR – Rest HR) x 0.60 + Rest HR = lower end
(Max HR – Rest HR) x 0.80 + Rest HR = higher end

For example, if you are 35 years old with a resting heart rate of 54 beats per minute (bpm) your lower and upper end ranges would be calculated as follows:

Step 1: MHR = 220 – 35 = 185 bpm

Step 2: RHR = 54 bpm

Step 3: (185 – 54) x 0.60 + 54 = 132 (lower end)
(185 – 54) x 0.80 + 54 = 158 (higher end)

So in this example, your “target heart rate zone” would be 132 to 158 beats per minute. This means that your goal should be to keep your heart rate in this zone during your exercise session.

If you are just starting an exercise program you should aim to keep your heart rate at the lower end of the range.

You can move up the range as you become fitter.

Avoid these five mistakes and you will be well on your way to achieving your weight loss and fitness goals.