It’s a little uncomfortable and sometimes downright hard to make changes to enable weight loss. Despite the hard parts about weight loss most people experience very positive benefits as well.
Things like feeling better, having more energy, feeling less bloated are typically enjoyed when actively engaged in weight management.
If you’re not enjoying those positive feelings, you might be trying to lose weight the wrong way. Here are 5 wrong ways to lose weight:
1. You’ve lost your life.
Dining out is not allowed. You’re advised to avoid all friends who are overweight, underweight, and healthy weight because they may encourage you to eat. Giving up your friends or favorite avtivites in order to lose weight is the wrong way to lose weight.
“Get back! Stay away from me! You’re going to try to make me eat something!”
2. You lost foods or food groups.
All processed foods are forbidden; no dairy; no wheat (not even whole wheat); no fried foods, may be some of the foods you are not able to eat on your diet. Your diet may insist you only eat raw foods. Basically any food plan that restricts what you can eat is not a good plan. Eliminating or forbidding foods is not the same as restricting frequency or serving size. Forbidden foods is the wrong way to lose weight.
3. Easy! Easy! No fuss, no mess, just zap and eat.
Yes, it’s understandable that prepackaged meals and snacks make losing weight easy. Some even taste pretty good. The problem with all that convenience is eventually boredom sets in. You’ll want to eat something that you need to prepare yourself or order a meal off a menu and you won’t have the tools to do that in the context of your weight loss plan. To further complicate things you may find that once you stray from the prepackaged meals you don’t want to go back to eating them again. Convenience is fine, but depending entirely on pre-portioned, pre-packaged diet foods is the wrong way to lose weight.
4. Too much or too little exercise.
Programs that combine excessive exercise with calorie reduction are hard to stick to and a good way to hurt yourself. There is a healthy threshold for exercise. To exercise beyond that isn’t advised except for athletes in training and people who are working with trainers. The average person seeking weight loss needs to make a moderate increase in exercise. Plans that don’t encourage any exercise at all, however, aren’t good either. That means that the calorie deficit necessary to lose weight is completely reliant on eating a lot less. Cutting back is okay but cutting back too much leads to the final wrong way to lose weight.
5. Being hungry and irritable all the time and maybe even a little headachy and nauseated.
It’s expected that when you reduce the amount of food you have been eating you may feel a little hungry until you adjust. If your diet leaves you in a constant state of hunger, that’s a sign that the calories your body requires for fuel are far from being met. A little deficit allows for some body fat to be burned for energy. That’s the point of eating less. Too big a deficit is stressful to your body and can even increase the levels of stress hormones in your body. Being hungry isn’t a good thing and it’s not a sign you’re doing well on your diet. If you feel sick and are grumpy and irritable you are losing weight the wrong way!
Losing weight should make you feel happy and energized, not tired, hungry and irritable.
