Some Common Weight-Loss Mistakes

We all want to get into that favourite dress or show off those perfect abs at the beach, but if your diet is not helping you lose any weight, you may just be committing some of the following weight loss mistakes.
Using sweeteners instead of sugar
This is a common practice, and the aggressive ‘no sugar’ advertisement campaigns run by these products don’t help us poor dieters. However, it’s worth remembering that most sugar-free sweeteners have contain HFSC, which confuse your digestive system and cheat you into having more cravings. Whatever little calories you skip by using a sweetener, you will more than make up for in other foods. It’s better, therefore, to stick to the real thing instead.
Juices and smoothies
We sometimes make the mistake of thinking that all fruit-related things are good for us, so we binge on fruit juices and smoothies. But in reality they’re packed with calories, and they can easily pile on the fat if consumed indiscriminately. The best way is to stick to perhaps one small glass a day, and if possible, eliminate it altogether and opt for the fruit instead, which contains more nutrients.
 Skipping breakfast
This is an old one, but common among dieters, so it’s worth repeating. Eating a good breakfast sends your body all the right signals, that you’re not going to ignore it and that you’re going to feed it nicely. It gets encouraged to start burning accumulated fat and to get your metabolism going. Otherwise it goes into ‘starvation mode’ and stashes away everything you give it.
 Not getting enough sleep
It may be hard to believe, but sleep is related to weight gain. Have you ever noticed that all those people who sleep well happen to have their weight under control? Studies have proven than when you don’t sleep well, you’re losing more muscle than fat. Also, sleep deprivation confuses your body’s hormones and throws them off their game, so don’t be surprised if your nocturnal lifestyle begins to take its toll and shows itself around your hips and under your arms. The best way to tackle this is to be disciplined and force your body into a nice daily rhythm where it sleeps like a baby.
Obsessing about counting calories
We’ve all done it when we try to lose weight: we sub-consciously ‘measure’ each portion of our food and count the number of calories it contains. While this is not a bad practice, developing this into an obsession can only be bad because it may sometimes result in a total disregard for nutrition. Calorie counting is great, but only when your diet is balanced, because it’s much easier to get your body to behave in a certain way when you give it all that it needs to function. Otherwise it’s just a losing battle.