The desire to stave off extra pounds and calories is a universal wish amongst all women and most men who care about their appearance. Staying in shape is not only appealing to the eye, but enables you to live a long and healthy life.
Dieting however is an ambiguous trench filled with quicksand that you have to tread carefully over because it is extremely easy to get caught up in and sink into all of the confusing ‘advice’ and methods that we are exposed to today.
You would do well to understand that dieting is not rocket science, which is why all you need to do in order to have a successful diet regime is approach your meals with common sense and practicality. Here are some common mistakes everybody makes when they are on a diet:
Crash Dieting
Crash dieting is a quick-fix approach towards dieting which never works out in the long run. It’s like super-gluing a crystal vase together, which may hold up temporarily but will eventually shatter into pieces.
Crash diets don’t work because they make your body believe that it is starving, which makes it automatically shut off and go into starvation mode. This makes your body desperately cling onto every last ounce of food that it gets, converting it into stores of fat which is the last thing you want when you are trying to lose weight.
This is why most starvation diets and cleanses only work for a few days because the moment you start eating again, your body starts gobbling up all of the food reserves to restock the ones you deprived it of, making the entire effort redundant.
Calories are Clever and Deceptive
The smallest, most innocent looking foods are the ones most likely to leave you with stomach rolls and giant thighs in the end. Many people pass over a brown bread sandwich over a small packet of plain biscuits because size has more of an impact on the human mind than rationalizing, which is a secondary instinct.
This is the reason why most people are surprised to hear that skipping their bowl of breakfast cereal over the iced coffee they grab from Starbucks on their way to work is the reason why they have trouble shedding any weight. This is known as a calorie blind spot. A simple watered down iced coffee is a five hundred calorie blunder which would mean two extra hours on the treadmill at the gym before you can work it off.
Forgetting About Water
Dieting leaves us preoccupied with thoughts of what to and what not to eat which means that the importance of drinking water is often pushed aside. However this is one of the biggest mistakes dieters make because they do not stay well hydrated and this hampers their metabolism from run smoothly. Water is also essential for keeping extra pounds at bay as drinking more water will not let you feel like your stomach is empty, which is why when you eat, you will consume less food.
Allan enjoys discussing health issues especially when related to eating habits. Allan regularly contributes to various online publications and blogs.
Top 3 Most Common Diet Mistakes
