If you've been following all of the diet rules without any success losing weight, consider that one or more of these three factors may be what's keeping you from the weight loss. One thing is for sure: You are eating more calories than you are burning! So let's find out how to eat fewer calories and burn more and get to the weight you want to be.
1. Exercising for weight loss: Of course, we all wish we were burning thousands of calories a day, but if you happen to be female, short, older than 35, and not very active, the fact is you are likely burning less than 1800 calories a day. That doesn't leave room to eat very much. So burning more calories can be a big help in starting the scale on the downward trend. You might be exercising and hoping you are melting away the fat, but it takes a lot of moving to burn just a few hundred calories. If you are doing yoga, pilates, or walking for exercise, you might be burning just 200 to 300 calories an hour. This means you will have to do 18 hours of exercise to lose one pound--almost three hours a day for one pound a week! What can you do? Bump up the speed and move faster. Yoga and pilates are great exercises for tone and flexibility; but for calorie burning you should aim to walk at least three miles an hour and keep it up for an hour. Doing 30 minutes a day is not enough to help you lose more weight than a pound in the next month. If you are physically able to jog, that's even better. But even a jogger is only going to lose one pound a week, jogging for a full hour every single day. Counting on exercise alone to lose weight is going to be very frustrating. DO use exercise to help the scale move down, keep you in great shape, and prevent the weight gain once it's off. It is essential for your health and improves mood in most people--it's just not enough to lose weight as quickly as you want to in most cases.
2. Rationalizing 'treating' yourself: We've all done it. "I was so good on my diet all day, I can reward myself with this dessert". Thinking that we are entitled to a treat is a major downfall of many dieters. There are so many calories in the types of food we reward ourselves with--candy bars, restaurant meals, ice cream, cake, pie--we can be busting our diet so badly we might gain weightat the end of the week! Try to stick to the plan at least six days a week, and take note of how many times you have a 'special occasion' in a special journal. These once-in-a-while foods can really be sabotaging the efforts to lose weight that you are making for almost every other hour of your days.
3. Assuming a food is low calorie: All the restaurants and food manufacturers know that a lot of us are watching our weight. They take advantage of this and advertise their products to be 'good for you' in some way. Just because a menu offers a fish dish, a 'lite lunch', or something that is 'baked' does not mean you should assume it is low in calories. Likewise, the packaged products that have an ad on the front of the label such as "fat free" or "only 50 calories per serving" are only telling you half the story. Fat free products can have a tremendous number of calories from carbohydrates; and you must check the back of the label to see what they are calling a 'serving size'. One bottle of tea I bought the other day announced there were only "60 calories per serving", which I thought was great for a 16 ounce bottle: When I read the serving size I found there were two servings in the bottle, according to their calculations--not as sweet a deal anymore.
So, get out those food diaries and start writing down what you eat and how often you exercise so you know what you're really eating, and stop fooling yourself! You need to do something active every day you can, and for about an hour if you're serious about losing weight. You need to start treating yourself with things that are good for you other than food if you're really ready for weight loss. And you need to be accountable for knowing what is in the foods you eat. (You can find the calorie content of practically any food now, with the help of the internet.) Best success to you in your weight loss endeavors!
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