Many people experiment with various diets and regimens in hopes of achieving sustainable weight loss. Regretfully, almost 85% of individuals who lose weight eventually gain it back within a year. The top 10 reasons for long-term, sustained weight loss are shown below.
To reduce weight long-term, it is best to lose fat while maintaining or even increasing your muscle mass. Any principle that deviates from this guideline will lead to erroneous weight reduction, which is neither healthy nor sustainable. This main guideline is the foundation of healthy weight loss.
1. Steer clear of starvation diets
Any diet that calls for you to go without food or starve yourself will not be sustainable over time. Diets that include drastically reducing food consumption and calories are categorized as starvation diets.
These diets go against the main rule because they make you lose muscle rather than fat. By inducing the starving reaction, you will acquire weight again more quickly on the rebound.
2. Dieting without exercise
This obviously breaks the above rule because muscle loss can account for nearly half of the weight loss on a diet without activity. Read more about the 5 best forms of exercise for fat loss.
3. Ignoring Weight Resistance Exercises
Over time, these exercises promote muscular growth and fat burning. Building muscle is an extremely energy intense process and a lot of these calories come from the fat reserves in your body. Women need not worry about building excessive muscles as they lack the hormones to do so.
4. Put too much emphasis on cardiovascular activities
These are workouts that need consistent effort. Walking, cycling, jogging, and swimming are a few examples of this. These exercises shouldn’t be the primary form of exercise; rather, they should be used in conjunction with a weight resistance training regimen.
These workouts help you burn calories, but they break the main rule because they don’t increase your muscle mass. As a result, fat will quickly accumulate on someone who must abruptly cease doing cardiovascular exercises for whatever reason. You might be interested: Why Too Much Cardio Can Ruin Your Six-Pack.
5. Not viewing fitness and weight loss as a lifestyle
Many people revert to the same lifestyles that initially caused them to gain weight once they reach their ideal weight. Additionally, other, more urgent issues soon take precedence over exercise time. Fitness and weight loss are lifetime pursuits rather than quick fixes. Achieving their weight loss objective is often the apex and, in reality, the beginning of their weight regain.
6. Weekend overeating
A lot of people work really hard to lose weight, but on the weekends they wind up gaining back all the weight they have lost. When people go about their daily lives, Monday through Friday, they are usually more disciplined. On the weekends, when they spend time with friends and family, people typically indulge.
People are generally considerably more disciplined on weekends during the early stages of the weight loss campaign, before the target weight goal is reached. Exercise during the week won’t be able to make up for a weekend binge.
7. Fast weight loss methods
Many people love the idea of losing weight fast without much effort, like exercising or strict dieting. Often, these quick ways to lose weight just remove water from the body. This can be as simple as sitting in a sauna or as extreme as taking water-loss pills. But the weight that goes away is just water, not fat.
When the body gets water back, it not only replaces what was lost but might also store extra water. This happens because the body thinks it needs to save up water for any future shortage, just to be safe.
8. Not waiting long enough to change your body’s weight “comfort zone”
Your body likes to keep your weight the same and will resist changes. Some experts say it’s tough to change this natural weight level, but I don’t think that’s true.
If you can keep your new weight for about six months, your body will get used to it and start to see it as the new target weight to stay at.
9. Drinking too much alcohol
Having too much alcohol can really slow down your progress in losing fat. When you drink a lot, your body’s stress hormone, cortisol, goes up.
Once you’ve managed to stabilize your weight at your new set-point, having a drink now and then is okay. But if you overindulge, you might see the weight start to creep back on quickly. Here are 5 Ways Alcohol Ruins Your Muscle Building Efforts and Makes You Fat.
You might be interested: The Ultimate List of Fat-Burning Tips : 60 Tips to Help You Lose Body-Fat
