It's abundantly clear that from the poor results achieved in gyms and dieting that there are some key misconceptions about fat loss. These arise partly due to ignorance in people who are actually very intelligent but fall for clever marketing when it comes to fat loss, and partly due to simply being misled by immoral and even more ignorant magazines and 'health and fitness' resources. Here are the ten biggest mistakes when trying to lose body fat (in no particular order):
1) Not understanding the importance of nutrition
If I could shout at you through your screen and hit you over the head with a rubber mallet until you got the following message into your head, I would. "You cannot lose substantial amounts of body fat without paying careful attention to nutrition". Far too many people get fitter by going to the gym but remain frustrated by their muffin top and beer belly. I often see people who could be and actually deserve to be, much leaner and better looking physically! They're not simply because they're too lazy when it comes to food preparation. A tough one hour workout (and I mean tough) might shift 500-600 calories. However, a post workouts sugar-shake disguised as a performance-drink, can put at least half of that back in within 1-2 minutes.
This is often followed by "I'm starving" when you get in from the gym. You reach for a quick peanut butter snack whilst your main meal of white pasta and steroid/chemical infused non-Organic chicken is cooking. Once the pasta's ready, you caress it with a dollop of sweetener-infested Dolmio sauces and scoff it down. Congratulations, you've just eaten about 3 times as many calories as you burnt in the first place. The truth is that healthy eating can be a hard adjustment at first which is why many people avoid it. However, after the first week or so you will be flying in terms of fat loss, energy levels and workout performance. The best thing is to go 'cold turkey' straight away rather than phasing things in. Eliminate caffeine, alcohol, processed foods, gluten and dairy for 2 weeks without compromise and you'll amaze yourself.
2) Quantity over quality
This could also be titled "activity over achievement". Since the dawn of the health club, there seems to have grown a new breed of fitness enthusiast who believes that more is better. It isn't uncommon for people to do upwards of 8-9 classes a week including pointless ones like BodyPump and 3-high-knee-repeater twisting aerobics. Fat loss (and most other elements of fitness bar long-duration endurance events) is best achieved through consistency of intensity of training (combined with nutrition as mentioned above). If you can last more than 45 minutes, sorry, you're just not working hard enough. Also, there are numerous studies showing that after 45 minutes of hard exercise, the body begins to break down muscle. Less muscle means lower metabolic rate which means less fat burning. Shorten your sessions and increase the intensity. A full body physique enhancing session might include a heavy strength exercise like squats and deadlifts, some dynamic sets of lunges and upper body exercises and a tough conditioning circuit to finish!
3) Underestimating the social factor
If your mate is fat, don't listen to ANYTHING they have to say on anything to do with health and fitness. I don't care what they read. Be acutely aware of what you surround yourself with. Training in a group setting with others who want to push themselves will do wonders for your results.
4) Thinking you need carbs
The only time you need carb-rich foods is when you're competing in a long-duration endurance event. Even then it's all about timing around training and competition. If you're trying to shed body fat and you sit on your backside all day at work, eating porridge, muesli, sandwiches and pasta dishes especially if it's not after a tough training session, is the fastest way to failure.
5) Not super-hydrating
The human body is 70% water give or take. Every single cell depends on water for structure and function and it is essentially these cells which burn calories and help you drop fat. Also, when you're in a state of dehydration (even minor), your body goes into 'survival mode' which also involves clinging on to body fat. Aim for 1 litre of pure, bottled, ionized, oxgenated water for every 20-25kg of bodyweight. So for an 6okg lady that's 3 litres of the stuff. Aside from the aid to fat loss itself, when losing weight you often release lots of toxins stored in fat cells from times gone by. This can make you feel awful at first so drinking lots of water will help flush these toxins out. If your body senses high levels of toxins it will effectively shut down the release of fat from cells, putting the brakes on your attempts to get lean!
Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating
6) Fearing fats
Fats don't make you fat. Too many processed carbohydrates at the wrong times, too much stress, not enough hard exercise and not enough clean food and water make you fat. Fats from natural sources such as nuts, avocados, oils especially extra virgin olive oil and coconut oil and olives are a great source of calories which will increase your metabolic rate, increase testosterone levels for great weight training sessions and improve your immune function for better training and living. All of which are conducive to rapid fat loss! Also, fish oils are known to improve fat metabolism and reduce inflammation.
7) Short-termism
Short-termism is a killer of many physique transformation efforts. This can be due to people believing that immediate sweat and effort is more important than stimulating metabolic changes all week long. After intense weight training, the body has many repair jobs to do which elevates the need for oxygen in your body more than with cardio-only training. This increases your metabolic rate thus burning more calories whilst your asleep or sat at your desk! Another form of short-termism is the good ol' fad diet. Think about all those ladies in your office always talking about 'diets' - few of them are that slim and those that are probably look like the Grim Reaper due to poor health. Build your health first whilst shedding body fat at a steady rate and over a year you'll likely lose 4-5 times more body fat and lead a much happier, healthier, energetic life! If you want a lean figure like an athlete, don't try to get there before putting in the groundwork of consistent training, solid goals and DAILY clean nutrition.
8) Not understanding recovery
Understand that your body doesn't improve whilst you train. In fact it gets worse because by the end of an effective session you have less energy, less strength and you've just broken down lots of muscle fibres! When you then take time to chill out, relax, recover, eat good food and sleep, THAT is when growth hormone levels rise and muscle is rebuilt. Trying to just train harder and harder will eventually lead to a crash leaving you permanently tired and having to drag yourself to the gym and body fat is going nowhere! Take time for physical regeneration and you'll see huge improvements in body composition and energy levels.
9) Believing that you must always enjoy exercise
This is one of those ideas used by government agencies desperately trying to cajole ever-increasing numbers of obese people into getting their backsides off the couch. The reason many of these people don't want to exercise is that from their vantage point, the effort:benefit ratio is too high. The truth is that for the best results, you simply have to do stuff sometimes that hurts, makes you sweat, makes you swear and generally makes life uncomfortable for a short period of time. The results will be phenomenal!
10) Following the mainstream
Whatever 'they' do, do the opposite because 'they' are usually fat, unhealthy, injured, diabetic or on a crash course with a heart problem. The following activities eventually just lead to frustration at lack of results or worse, poor health, illness and injury.
- BodyPump
- Aerobics
- Fixed machine use in gyms
- Zumba and all other 'latest variations' of ineffective gym practices that just induce some sweat
- Sugar-filled supplements
- High protein diets
- Seeking solace in those who are also too lazy to stick to the nutrition plan
- Running every 10k race under the sun rather than peaking for one or two
- Bootcamps that do little but make you run around a park for an hour chasing each other playing kiss-chase
Start thinking about what you're doing and why, and stop making the same mistakes over and over again.
Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating
Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?The-10-Biggest-Fat-Loss-Mistakes&id=3893575] The 10 Biggest Fat Loss Mistakes
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