3 Mistakes Which Are Stopping You From Losing Weight

When you're trying to lose weight, not seeing results can be very frustrating. These three fitness mistakes are making you gain weight.

1. Using food replacement supplements

We've all been tempted by them at one time in our lives. There are so many on the market, from Slim Fast to Herbalife, it seems like there's a quick fix and we want to take it. However, food replacement supplements are the worst thing you can take in your efforts to lose weight. Not only are they bad for your bank balance, they're bad for your waist line. Food replacement supplements work on the logic that if you are restricting your calories, you will lose weight. While this is completely true, the shakes and bars that you consume on these diets are full of sugar and lack essential nutrients which will leave you feeling tired, moody, and can even give you bad skin. 

It is always better to get your calories and nutrients from real food, only taking supplements if you really need to on top of an already balanced diet. By reducing your calories from real food, you can easily lose weight without suffering from mood swings and having to buy expensive supplements. 

2. Not tracking your food intake

We can all be guilty of being 'secret eaters'. At the end of each day, if you were to try to remember every single thing you ate that day it would be almost impossible. There will always be one biscuit or cake that slips through the net that you forget about. It's also easy to make excuses for yourself in order to eat more than you realise, such as "I have a cold" or "it was my co-worker's birthday". Your portions may be a lot bigger than you realise unless you weigh your food. By tracking your food as you eat it and weighing your food, you are taking the guess work out of losing weight and you are far more likely to succeed.

Let's take oven chips (french fries) as an example. Next time you put your favourite oven chips onto the tray, weigh them before they go into the oven. Chances are, it'll be two or even three times as much as is recommended. This happens easily and frequently and is definitely a reason you're not losing weight. Weighing your food may seem a bit neurotic and take a lot of effort, but it doesn't take long and will be worth it in the long run. Below is what 200 calories of oven chips looks like on a small plate. It's not much! And these are fairly skinny fries, if you enjoy those big chunky oven chips you'll end up with only around 10 on your plate!

3. Drinking too much alcohol at the weekend

For a lot of people, being healthy ends on Friday. We want to relax after a long week at work and rightly so! We go out for dinner and drinks and forget about all our stresses, but this is when you'll end up undoing all your hard work from the week. Alcoholic drinks are full of sugar and calories and by knocking back a few glasses of wine, pints of beer, and pitchers of cocktails, you will be consuming a lot more calories and sugar than you realise.

You probably wouldn't eat 3 cheeseburgers in one sitting, but you wouldn't think twice about drinking 6 beers on a night out. Try to limit how much you drink on the weekend, and limit dining out and takeaways to just one per weekend. This may seem stingy, but if you are truly committed to losing weight and getting healthier, it's a compromise you'll be willing to make.