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In the world we live in today we want instant results, the media promises them to us, even our friends on social networks promise the same.
Here are some of the mistakes I see people making when they want to drop fat.
1. Starving Yourself
People drop their calories to a ridiculously low level, it’s great at first, through dehydration their ‘weight’ drops but their energy levels also plummet, in doing this they can’t work out as hard and their muscle mass dips too the repercussion of this is that their metabolic rate goes down so their body burns fewer calories, not fun!
What I suggest to people is to first off find out by tracking their food consistently the number of calories they take in on average per day over a week.
Along with this track their weight at the start and at the end, has it gone down, stayed the same or increase.
If it’s stayed the same or increased then you’re probably eating too much, drop the calories by around 300-500 and try again, you want to aim for a consistent drop of 2-4lb per week ideally, this will help you stick to the plan and not pile it straight back on afterward.
2. Switching the training up too much
When you’re looking to ‘cut’ people seem to think, I’ll burn more calories by lowering the weight and increasing the reps.
No, this will just mean your muscles aren’t put under as much tension, stress and reason to stay what happens from there is that the muscles will adapt by dropping in mass, therefore this will also mean that you may even put on fat when getting ‘lighter’ and also you’ll burn fewer calories longer term too and simply put won’t be able to eat as much food.
3. Not enough cardio
We see a lot of people on social media kind of ‘bragging’ about not doing any cardio, good for them, lucky people, or are they?
When you are training hard your body will not be getting the same responses to weight training as it does to cardiovascular training, your pulse may raise when squatting and you get out of breath but the adaptations are not as healthy as when you do cardio (want to tell me different then get at me @OJayPT, we can discuss this!)
Simply put cardio will allow you to burn calories and not put the stress on your body that the weight training will do, yes you could train 7 times a week but your body will eventually fight back at you so 5, maybe 6 times tops for weight training 4-5 cardio sessions whether steady state or high-intensity interval, see what fits your diary the best and go from there.
4. You don’t find a diet YOU like
People go with the trends, their mates do something and they work a 9-5 but you, you work shifts, work through the night, you may have a family to provide for and look after.
You may not want to have a mouthful of chicken and chuck a lump of butter in your coffee in the morning (honestly, I still see no point in that FOOD, give me FOOD – or milkshake if I want to drink that amount of calories at once!)
Find a diet you like and follow that, it may take longer than some of the diets but one of the biggest reasons that people who have put their weight (and more) back on after they ‘finish’ reply when asked ‘I couldn’t stick to it’. Ask yourself this, ‘In a year or so will I still be able to follow this diet?’ if the answer is no then you need to try something else.
These are four of the biggest mistakes I see people making when trying to lose the fat, not only will they waste time and money but also your mental energy at the same time.
If you’d like to get more tips on weight loss feel free to contact me directly and let’s talk!