When you are trying to reduce weight naturally, there are so many temptations and it is important to discipline yourself and avoid the wrong food choices. There are 5 common mistakes that most of us make that prevent or slow down our weight loss. These range from eating junk, comfort eating, lack of portion control, starving ourselves and too much sugar and alcohol. In this article, we will look at the most common mistakes and how to avoid them.
Junk food
One major mistake that makes us pile on the pounds is junk food. It is essential to avoid sugary treats like sweets, chocolate, cakes and biscuits and also fatty foods like chips, burgers and other processed foods. These foods are calorie laden and have little nutritional value. Most of the calories end up on your hips, stomach and thighs.
But if is too difficult to eliminate junk and fatty foods completely from your diet, you can allow yourself the occasional treat so you won’t feel so deprived. If you over indulge on any given day, don’t beat yourself up over it, just go back to healthy eating the next day.
Comfort eating
Comfort eating is another well known mistake that many people make and will hinder their efforts to reduce weight naturally. People often use food for comfort eating instead of satisfying hunger. If you resort to eating when you feel stressed or upset, it is not hard to unlearn this behaviourpattern by adopting a healthier relationaship with food. You need to relearn to associate food with providing your body with the nutrition it requires and satisfying your hunger rather than eating for comfort.
Portion control
Many people have no idea about what a normal portion should be. Most of us pile up our plates and feel we have to finish up everything because we are brought up to think it is wasteful to leave food on our plates. In order to reduce weight naturally, it is important to learn proper portion control and leave the leftovers for the next day’s lunch. One useful idea to fool your brain and eat less is to have a smaller plate.
Starvation
It is amazing how some people’s idea of weight loss is actually starving themselves. This is the worst thing you can do because your body thinks it is going into starvation mode and so reduces your metabolic rate in order to hang on to every calorie. Instead swap the high calorie foods for low calorie wholesome foods and eat small regular meals throughtout the day. Regular meals stave off hunger and cravings.
Alcohol
Alcohol is another mistake that people make, it’s only a liquid, right? But alcohol turns to sugar in your body and if those calories of sugar are not used up, guess what? They are stored as fat around your middle! So, if you are trying to lose weight, it is best to keep away from alcohol completely, or at the very least keep it to the absolute minimum.
Knowing how to reduce weight naturally and avoiding the common mistakes discussed will enable you to reach your ideal weight. Success is really around the corner if you make sensible food choices, avoid comfort eating, reduce the amount of food you eat, take regular meals and avoid alcohol. In addition, make sure you take regular exercise to burn calories, even if is just going out for a walk. As time passes, you will soon start to notice the difference which will encourage you to continue. Before you know it, you’ll be at your target weight and not only will you look better, be able to wear what you want but you’ll be healthier too.