Beach body workouts, the HCG diet, Paleo, PiYo diet plans; you’ve done them all, all the top fitness programs you can think of and nothing is working. That may be the very reason it’s not working. Trying out all diets, eating plans, workouts and top fitness programs could be working against you instead of for you. Sound crazy? Probably. You’d think if you can stick to one of these hard core top fitness programs, you should lose weight right? Well, think about it…are you sticking to one? Or are you flip flopping being all different ones and just confusing your body? Let’s look at a few things you might be doing wrong.
Flip Flopping
Since this one was already mentioned, we’ll start here. Flip flopping goes like this:
- Monday: Today starts Paleo diet! So excited to get healthy!
- Tuesday: I screwed up yesterday on Paleo but the Atkins allows for what I ate so I guess today I’m doing Atkins!
- Wednesday: Paleo and Atkins are just too difficult, I’m just going to try that clean eating list of foods I saw on Pinterest and do an Insanity workout.
- Thursday: I don’t think McDonald’s is allowed in any diet but Weight Watcher’s has that point system, maybe I can just implement that and then count my steps…
- Friday and Saturday: I didn’t follow my eating plan at all but I worked out like crazy! That should make up for it, right?
- Sunday: Well, tomorrow’s a new week, I’ll try again then- so today, we feast!
Okay, so maybe not every week is like that, and this may be an extreme example but it’s just to show you that you can’t just sub in whatever you want to make your diet easier. Dieting is not easy. It’s hard and you have to stick to one way of eating. At this point, it doesn’t matter what you choose whether it be counting calories, adhering to a points system, cutting out carbs; whatever you decide, I challenge you to stick to it for just three months and see if you don’t notice a change just by doing that.
Not Enough Water
This is common. People get so focused on diet and exercise that they forget about water. Or worse, they purposely don’t drink water because they don’t want to retain it. However, the truth is, the less water you drink, the more your body retains it. If you drink the right amount for your weight every day, then your body will get used to the fact that it is constantly going to be cycling water and will only take what it needs and allow the rest to be flushed. But, if you don’t drink enough, your body will cling to the water it does get, not knowing when more is coming to replace it. This is when you gain water weight.
Working Out Without Eating Right
Losing weight is 80 percent what you eat and 20 percent how you work out. So, if you can only focus on one thing, focus on your eating habits. If you are working out and then eating terribly, you are voiding out your entire work out. It’s easy to do because some people find it easier to ‘work off the calories.’ However, it doesn’t really work like that, unfortunately. You have to balance your work out with your diet and make sure they are working together. Diet, cardio and strength training are a triangle and you can’t do one without the other.
If you have been having a hard time keeping up even though you feel like you’re hardly eating and sticking to the top fitness programs, maybe you need to slow down and stop trying to do everything at once. Try upping your water intake, lowering your sugar intake and working out two or three times a week to start. Once you have mastered that, then you can take it up a notch and work slowly towards your goals. You aren’t going to be able to lose weight over night, nor should you, but slow weight loss will last a lot longer than a fad diet. Fad diets will make you yo-yo which will make it difficult to lose weight in the long run.
