6 Mistakes You’re Making Right Now That is Slowing Your Weight Loss Progress
By: Jeremy Colon
Tags: Self Improvement, Diet, Fitness, Fitness Tips, Weight Loss

Photo Credit: Pexels

1. Blindly Increasing Your Activity Levels

One of the fastest ways for your metabolism to hit a wall is increasing your activity level blindly in the gym while on a weight loss diet plan. This is because your body has several mechanisms in place to try to maintain its current state. When you push too hard (e.g., cardio twice a day) during a hypocaloric diet, the body fights back and adapts by lowering your energy expenditure. This means a depressed metabolism and sluggish central nervous system output, which means less fat burned overall.

A great way to fix this is to start your weight loss efforts gradually, then increase duration, difficulty, and frequency as your body plateaus. It’s more beneficial to add more than it is to start too fast and wreak havoc on your metabolism.

2. Reducing Carbs to None

Studies have shown that dietary carbohydrates are an important factor in the levels of T3, a thyroid hormone that controls metabolism. Studies where subjects consumed zero carbohydrates for two weeks resulted in a 47% decline in their metabolism. In addition, performance in the gym can and will be negatively impacted because glycogen is part of what’s used in the production of ATP (adenosine triphosphate), the energy currency of the body. Along the same lines, 120–130g of carbohydrates per day has been shown to help maintain a healthy amount of T3s. The lowest amount of carbohydrates that has been shown to cause little change in the levels of T3 was shown to be 50g.

A great way to avoid this is not to jump on a carb-crash diet. Studies show that two lower-carb days per week (less than 100g) is more beneficial for fat loss. Try two consecutive days per week, never going lower than 50g

3. Not Getting Enough Meals

The higher your body fat levels, the more circulating leptins in your body. A significant part of leptin’s job is informing the brain (via the hypothalamus) how much energy the body has stored (body fat) and coming in (calories, specifically carbohydrates). If leptin levels are low, your brain signals the body to lower your energy expenditure. One of the mechanisms through which it does this is through lowering your metabolism. Leptin levels can drop by 50% after a week of dieting, which slows your metabolism.

A great way to fix this is by scheduling a refeed day consisting of low-fat, high-carb meals that raises leptins back up to normal levels which will raise metabolism back up. The leaner you get, the more frequent the refeeds should be scheduled.

4. Not Enough Food Choices

There isn’t any one food that can be considered best or better than another. Each food has an array of beneficial micronutrients that others may not have. Therefore, when you stopgap yourself to consuming only one food group — such as all chicken or fish — you highlight the micro-nutrient deficiency that is inherent in that food group.

A great way to fix this is take in a variety of clean, high-quality food sources such as poultry, beef, pork and fish, grains, legumes, seeds, fruits and vegetables. Try to avoid eating the same thing after a while because you will get bored and this will impact your weight loss journey.

5. Dismissing Calcium

During a fat-loss diet, people usually increase protein while decreasing carbs and fats. Prolonged high-protein/low-carbohydrate diets without calcium supplementation can result in a negative calcium balance. This is because the body’s acid-alkaline balance is now more acidic, thus calcium is leached from your bones. In addition, this can lead to kidney stones.

Remember to stock up on supplements and get calcium plus vitamin D3 which helps with absorption of calcium to prevent bone loss.

6. Keeping it Light

Most people have the mindset at the gym that using heavy weight will gain muscle and using lighter weights to lose fat or “tone” up. However, this train of thought is false when viewed from the perspective of your body. A calorie deficit represents a threat to your body status quo, or equilibrium. Thus its primary objective is to sustain what is needed and muscle isn’t a necessity.

Bear in mind that, in order to maintain as much muscle as possible, you must continue to lift heavy loads. The same pathways that cause the increase of muscle will be activated and used to maintain your previous gains. The deal broker is not to utilize the same volume you used to gain. To be specific, during a fat-loss phase, total volume should be cut by about a third and loads should be around 75–85% of your one-rep max. This, of course, is in addition to your usual cardio and active lifestyle.

Hope this helps as you are on your journey to self-improvement.