Top 4 Things You Should Never Do When Trying to Lose Weight
If your Body Mass Index is higher than the norm (use a BMI calculator to check), trying to lose weight is the right thing to do. Considering the health risks of being overweight, burning some fat is an essential step in disease prevention. However, many weight loss programs today call for outright unhealthy practices. Understanding which things you should never do to shed those excess pounds is vital if you want to achieve the desired result without endangering your health.
4 Things Not to Do When You Are Trying to Lose Weight
1. Skipping meals (breakfast in particular)
It’s true that there is not much difference between eating three big or 5-6 small meals a day (CNN). You can lose weight either way because it’s the total number of calories that matters. However, skipping meals entirely is a very bad idea.
Running on two meals a day will make jumps in blood sugar levels inevitable. And this will actually slow down or even stop the fat burning process. Skipping breakfast is particularly dangerous because this will rob you of energy. The result will be fatigue, dizziness, and a high risk of accidents. You also need to understand that skipping meals, especially at irregular intervals, is extremely bad for the stomach. This greatly increases the risk of ulcer.
2. Cutting calories too low
You have to consume fewer calories when trying to lose weight. However, cutting them too much will lead to the fatigue, dizziness, and anemia mentioned above. Poor planning of your meals can also cause nutritional deficiencies. Those are a major health hazard and actually work against effective weight loss.
If you want to achieve the best weight loss results, you should consult a professional nutritionist. They will be able to help you design a diet that fits your lifestyle perfectly. Then make sure that your meals include effective appetite suppressants. These foods will allow you to reduce cravings and reduce the risk of you breaking the diet. This means there will be no guilt that can push you to skip a meal or a craving that will motivate you to eat something fattening and unhealthy.
You need to understand that an effective weight loss program is the one that has you burning more calories than you consume. However, you have to consume enough calories to stay healthy. This means that you’ll need to up your exercise quota to burn more calories in a day.
3. Not getting enough sleep
The dangers of sleep deprivation are every bit as horrific as health risks of obesity (Business Insider). In fact, developing obesity and other metabolic issues is one of the health problems that appear due to a lack of sleep. Note that irregular sleep is just as bad.
To keep your body at its optimum health, you have to provide it with sufficient rest (7-8 hours) at the same time every day. As a side benefit, this will boost the efficiency of your weight loss program.
4. Extreme body cleansing/detoxing
Detox, also called cleansing, diets are extremely popular today. They are also completely uselesssays science. And if done badly (which is usually the case) they become dangerous.
The problem with detox programs is that the majority of them are extreme. They advocate very low-calorie diets that exclude entire food groups. While a human body can survive this kind of abuse for some time, it will do serious damage if you try to maintain the ‘diet’ for over a week. The quality of detox supplements usually included in those plans is also dubious.
The human body is a magnificent bio-machine. It can very effectively cleanse itself, so there is no need for you to detox. The only thing you have to do to make sure no toxins poison you from within is to maintain a healthy well-balanced diet.
