Eating right is a foolproof way to maintain a healthy weight. Recommended diets and exercise vary from person to person, but many people fall for the same mistakes that sabotage their weight loss attempts. Luckily, you can prevent missteps if you know what to watch out for. Here’s five of the most common dieting mistakes to avoid. (h/t to Healthline.com)

Neglecting portion control

Dieting requires strictly monitoring your food consumption. However, most people seem to forget that foods, no matter how nutritious, contain calories. Just because the food you eat is healthy doesn’t mean you can eat as much as you want. Eating big portions of healthy foods, like fruits and veggies, can affect your weight.

You should always be mindful of portion size especially in restaurants. By keeping track of the calories in your food and being aware of portion size, you can avoid eating too much or even too little.

Starving yourself

Skipping meals entirely is arguably one of the more dangerous dieting mistakes on this list. Weight loss is a long and slow process, so you shouldn’t expect to shed pounds overnight. Attempts to speed up this process are only bound to cause side effects.

Unfortunately, many people skip breakfast hoping to induce weight loss faster. After all, if you don’t eat, then you don’t put on weight, right?

However, drastic steps like skipping meals will not bode well for you in the long run. For instance, skipping breakfast only deprives your body of the energy it needs to function for the day. Going too long without eating also makes you vulnerable to impulsive snacking and excessive eating later in the day. If you don’t want to eat a heavy meal in the morning, you can opt to snack on light but protein-rich foods like eggs, berries and nuts to keep you energized.

Cheating your diet

Dieting doesn’t mean you should completely get rid of foods that are high in fat or sugar. In fact, eating these foods in moderation can help balance out your diet. Some people like to think of this as cheat meals.

While acceptable in moderation, cheat meals are often abused. Many people use cheat meals – or cheat days – to reward themselves for sticking to their diet or training regimen. However, cheat meals often only lead to an upset stomach, regret and additional calories to burn. Cheat meals can also make it difficult to follow portion control and diet restrictions, so it would be best to steer clear of them.

Repeating exercises

A diet plan without proper exercise won’t give you the body you’re hoping for. If you restrict your calorie intake without working on your muscles, you risk losing more muscle mass than fat, which can leave you weak. A study published in European Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that improving muscle strength helps boost metabolic rate. The higher your metabolic rate, the more calories you burn, which translates to more weight lost.

However, building muscle strength requires changing your exercise routine regularly. Ideally, you should gradually increase your exercise load to maintain your metabolic rate. Otherwise, your routine will eventually feel too easy and your body will stop making progress. Setting realistic exercise goals and keeping track of your regimen can help you avoid this mistake.

Over-exercising

Many people try to cheat weight loss by doubling down on their exercise regimen. They either exercise on consecutive days of the week or exercise for an extended period of time. However, this can lead to an increase in hunger as your body tries to compensate for the lost calories.

Moreover, over-exercising often induces chronic fatigue and burnout in individuals. Hence, forcing your body to burn calories in this way is just as unhealthy as eating huge portions of healthy foods. A study published in Journal of Novel Physiotherapies revealed that extreme stress from over-exercising has been linked to problems in the production of adrenaline, the hormone that helps regulate stress response. In more extreme cases, over-exercising can deplete adrenaline levels.

Unsurprisingly, over-exercising is often a short-lived activity because of the problems it causes. For instance, individuals who over-exercise are more prone to bouts of muscle spasm and body pain. This is because over-exercising does not give the body enough time to properly repair worn down muscles. In order to avoid over-exercising, you can plot out days for exercise and the physical activities you plan to include in your regimen.

Weight loss is a process best taken slowly to ensure you remain healthy even as you lose weight. If you want to maintain your target weight long-term, the best approach you can take is to gradually change your lifestyle choices like food and exercise.

Sources:

Healthline.com

Nature.com

NCBI.NLM.NIH.gov