7 WEIGHT-LOSS MISTAKES YOU SHOULD AVOID!

7 WEIGHT-LOSS MISTAKES YOU SHOULD AVOID!

You got weight loss goals and can’t seem to get results. Well, the good news is that you are not alone! Almost 80% of folks who want to lose weight either don’t get there or do lose some weight and put it all on back again. If you take only those people who lost weight and put it back on again within two years is even higher at 90%. That is quite a dramatic number.

I am an Integrative Nutrition Health Coach qualified from the Institute of Integrative Nutrition in the US. By profession, I am a Coaching Psychologist and I went through a self-healing health transformation a few years ago. I coach people to lead healthy and vibrant lives, with my six-month Integrative Living program. Because I am a psychologist, for Health Coaching I focus on the mind-body, Heart and Soul of my clients. Each client is on his or her own journey and the coaching helps achieve many milestones along the say.

When you start your weight loss journey, you begin with all good intentions, right? Nobody goes dieting without actually wanting to lose weight, but if you knew the success rate is as low as 80%, would you actually start the diet? Let’s take a scenario of booking a train ticket, if you knew that the train is already full and there is only a 20% chance of getting yourself a ticket, would you make the effort at all?

Today I am going to talk about why people do not succeed at weight loss, the mistakes we make and how to go about avoiding these.

Mistake #1: Counting Calories. Generally recommended calorie intake by NHS in the UK is 2,000 calories per day for women and 2,500 for men, depending upon how many calories you burn, your age, your size and your lifestyle. Most dieticians and weight loss experts assume that if you burn more calories than you consume, you will lose weight. Right? Does that mean I can consume  2,000 or less calories worth of cookies and coffee, or salad and fruit, and lose weight if I burn more than that? Unfortunately, it’s the most difficult myth to bust because it is so deeply rooted in our subconscious that if we eat less, we lose weight. What actually happens is that  you starve your body of the energy it needs by reducing your calorie intake, in the hope that you will “burn fat” for energy, your body reacts by trying to maintain homoeostasis… or status quo. So, you can keep starving yourself slowly and lose weight, but the first opportunity, your mind and body will lose the ability to stay hungry and you bounce back like a yoyo.

New scientific research now proves that it is what you eat and not how much you eat that matters. The “Calories in- Calories Out”. You could actually consume more calories than you burn off, but if these are in the form of a balanced whole food nutritious diet, eaten at the right regularity, it will gradually encourage your body to find its own balance and achieve the weight it was meant to be according to your frame and metabolism. When you consume the right diet, the cells in your body actually release the stored fat into the blood stream and it melts away on its own without your having to burn it off. And if you stay on the healthy and nutritious balanced whole food diet, you keep the weight off.

Believe me, this is true and if you sign up for a session with me, I can explain the science behind this phenomenon. My six-month Health Coaching program actually partners with you to achieve this. I was THE biggest foodie, and if I could do it without starving myself or sleeping hungry, you can do it too.

Mistake #2: Piece-meal approach to eating healthy. It is very often that you see women or men and women discussing food and weight loss. Every dinner, lunch and social occasion you go to, a central point of discussion is food and health. We exchange practices about what we do to stay healthy, how we exercise, what we eat, how we are giving up fat and oil consumption, or how little oil we consume, how we do not eat any fried foods, and how we deny ourselves so many food items, and what we do when we are confronted with a buffet.

This fills us with guilt and a competitive process sets in and we land up adopting small new practices without changing the fundamentals of what we eat. So many folks are heard saying “I am doing so many things to lose weight, but look at me, I am getting nowhere!” or “I think I get fat if I smell food and drink water!” or “Every bit of food I put in my mouth goes in with guilt, even if it is healthy.” Or, “I had such a good helping of salad that I think I have earned this huge plate of biryani!”

The fact is that piecemeal approach to adopting small practices achieves nothing, even if it is a lot of good practices put together. What is needed is a complete transformation and everything changes. You cannot add on new things to old things and expect a change. You have to change everything. That is why it’s called a “Transformation” and not a diet program or meal plan.

In my six-month Health Coaching Program I follow a scientific approach to a total transformation of food intake and weight loss and diabetes reversal. One that enables you to get the results you want in irreversible ways.

Mistake #3: Starting exercise and dieting together. That’s a big mistake. It’s like, I just decided to lose weight and made a New Year Resolution today. The next day, I eat less fried and junk food and consume less calories than normal, and I take membership of the gym and start working out very hard. Most folks do this, and why not take the bull by the horns and attack the problem of weight-loss from all sides. But when you look at it really, it actually is too much to take on. Often times the excess weight is about inflammation, higher percentage of visceral fat, or subcutaneous fat. Where the fat tends to accumulate is important too…. Exercising with inflammation leads to being tired and overworn and the joy of working out is lost.

In my six-month health coaching, first, we bring your body weight to a balanced level with a customised diet where you never go without a meal. During this initial phase which can last up to three to four months, the body focuses on healing and finding balance, and weight loss happens. During this phase we do work on exercises that encourage healing and relaxing. It is only in the third month or sometimes later depending on the progress, that I explore exercise routines that work for you in your context.

Mistake #4: Not eating until hungry. So many dieticians ask you to eat only when hungry…. So you land up not eating anything for as long as you can. Sometimes this is called intermittent fasting. You wake up and stay without food for as long as you can, perhaps until lunchtime. Or you eat in an 8 hour window and you are allowed to eat all you want within this time frame.

Can you see the focus on healing the body is missing? Can you see that the focus on nutrition is healing? Can you see there is no balance in energy intake for the body?

I do believe that it is important to have energy re-fuel before your tank runs empty. In my six-month Health Coaching program, there is a strong emphasis on a daily regular intake of balanced and nutritious meals three times a day, along with appropriate snacks. The quality of these meals and snacks determines how you are to heal your body and achieve weight loss.

Mistake #5: Eating 5 times a day. Why do so many dieticians recommend 5 small meals a day? Or, why keep snacking or eating bit-by-bit throughout the day without eating a proper meal? If your digestive system has not finished digesting the first meal, or what you ate a little while ago is still in your stomach, when you add more food there, what does it do? Your earlier meal mingles with your next meal and produces a lot of gas. I tried to do this at the behest of one dietician whom I paid a lot of money. All I got was tons of burps and more bloated feeling and more inflammation and water retention. It was like a huge traffic jam in my intestines.

Three meals a day. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. That is what I try to get you to eat and experience the well and light feeling that comes from a great meal without elements that add to your sense of bloatedness, in my six-month Health Coaching program.

Mistake #6: Adopting someone else’s diet plan. One man’s diet is another man’s poison. You are unique and special in every way. What worked for somebody else will not necessarily work for you. Your journey is different from every other individual on this planet. So, why should another person’s diet plan work for you? Why should you sign up for any weight-loss or diabetes reversal program that prescribes you a fixed protocol? Some programs provide one size diet plans that are prescribed to tens of thousands of people. Don’t fall for their testimonials which say how many people were taken off medicines, or reversed their diabetes or lost weight. Ask, how many came back to taking medicines and diabetes came back and weight loss also reversed?

A tailor-made plan that is created by you for you is what works for you. A plan that evolves with you and grows with you over the years beyond the six-month Health Coaching program.

Mistake #7: Not seeking support of a Health Coach. Why do it alone? Find a Health Coach who understands and does not judge. Find a Health Coach who listens more and speaks less. Find a Health Coach who does not prescribe you protocols that do not give you results. Find a Health Coach who supports your journey to good health. Find a Health Coach who transforms you deeply. Find a Health Coach who empowers you to start a journey of self-healing that goes beyond the six-month program so that you can take charge of your own health on your own terms.