5 Things People Get Wrong When Trying to Lose Weight

We asked our friends at Mindful Chef their thoughts on the common mistakes people make when trying to lose weight. Mindful Chef specialise in delivery boxes of healthy meal prep ingredients that give you all the fresh, well sourced products to create meals that are free of gluten, refined sugars and refined carbohydrates.

They believe you should avoid the 5 easy mistakes below:

Stop changing everything at once

People think it's easy to go from no training at all, to training 3 times a week or completely overhauling their diet. Try making smaller changes to your daily habits and implement more over time.

It could be something as simple as during your first week making sure you eat healthy meals every evening. The second week you introduce a healthy breakfast as well. By introducing new ideas slowly they become more realistic, achievable and you are more likely to stick to them long term.

You aren't eating enough protein

Protein helps your body recover from daily tasks and helps the maintenance and growth of lean muscle. Muscle is more metabolically active than fat - meaning it will burn more calories. Muscle is also denser than fat meaning it takes up less space.

So the more muscle you have the more firmer/toned you are going to look. Support the maintenance and growth of lean muscle by ensuring you're eating enough protein. If you aren’t getting enough from your diet, or need to boost your intake based on your exercise levels, you can look to Neat for supplementation

You think you're working harder than you really are

If you're going to the gym, doing a couple of reps and then checking your phone between every set you probably aren't working as hard as you really could be. Losing weight doesn't have to be difficult.

Make sure your diet is good and train with a good level of intensity and you'll be hitting your goals in no time at all. Try Tom Kemp's workout.

Healthy foods may actually be holding you back

Avocados have a whole list of health benefits BUT they are also high in fat and calories. Foods like avocados, coconut milk, nuts, nut butters and yoghurts can all have quite a lot of calories in them.

Losing weight is all about energy balance (food going in and energy expended by the body) and it's very easy to upset this balance by eating 'healthy' foods that hide lots of calories. Just make sure you are aware of what you are putting into your body.

You aren't getting enough sleep

Like protein, sleep actually helps you recover and recharge for the following day. Not only does sleep support brain function it allows your body to perform lots of essential functions it needs to to recover from daily activities and stress. Try and increase your sleep to at least 8 hours tonight and see the benefits this has on helping you lose weight. Also, check out Dr. Nick's blog on sleep here.

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Content written by mindfulchef.com: The Healthy Recipe Box Company.