The 5 Mistakes We All Make When Trying To Lose Weight

You are going to allow me to start this article with a call to sanity: if you need to lose weight, go for a consultation with a dietitian-nutritionist you trust. Do not look for magic solutions on the internet, or in “miracle” methods, or in elixirs.

Look for a long-term change that improves your health, that suits you, your needs and your medical history and circumstances. The only thing that we know for sure that serves to lose weight and maintain the loss in the long term is adherence (being able to maintain changes over time).

The most common mistakes when trying to lose weight (and how to fix them)

This paragraph should have actually been the last, the one that closed the post by way of conclusion. However, there is so much misinformation and so many people doing business with the weight of others that I preferred to put it first, just in case the text bores you and you don’t get to the last line.

1. Forget about miracle diets

Therefore, the first big mistake when it comes to wanting to lose weight is precisely that: looking for a miracle or a short-term result, falling into absurd diets or, worse still, spending our money on products and methods that can harm us.

This would be the main mistake and it should definitely come first. Those that follow are not in order of importance, it is rather a list of common nonsense.

2. Don’t focus on a specific nutrient

The second mistake is to focus on a specific nutrient, for example not consuming or reducing carbohydrates a lot (Dukan), or consuming especially proteins (pronokal). Or to reduce fat to the maximum (the starch solution).

Yes, the fact that there are so many “final fixes” that contradict each other should no longer leave us too calm about these methods. Let’s stop looking at nutrients to look at food.

3. Don’t trust light foods

In third place I will place the strategy of basing our diet on “light”, “light” or “0’0%” products. All these products are by definition ultra- processed , otherwise they would not have a label on which to stamp those legends. They are products that by definition should not have weight in a healthy diet.

The use of the term “light”, according to European Regulation 1924/2006, requires that the product entails at least a caloric reduction of 30% compared to the non-light version of the same. That does not make a product that is not healthy.

For example, some “light” potato chips will continue to carry an excess of salt and poor quality fat that we cannot find in a baked or cooked potato. Or a “light” soft drink will have replaced sugar with sweeteners, which are far from being safe, and in no way will it equate to water, which is what we should be drinking instead.

On the other hand, 0% products also tend to have a locked cat. It is most common to find a 0% fat yogurt, instead loaded with sugar, when fat was not the problem in that product. Or some cookies with 0% added sugars, made from refined flours and with hydrogenated palm fat, plus, again, sweeteners.

4. Don’t substitute food for bars or shakes

Occupying fourth place in this messy ranking we have the mistake of pretending to lose weight with meal replacement bars or shakes.

They are products whose first ingredient is usually, oh surprise! sugar. They do not improve our diet at any point, nor do they contribute to improving our health in the long term with healthier choices, which are expensive and, furthermore, their caloric intake is not far from that of a well-planned salad.

In comparing the value and nutritional quality of, for example, a salad with a handful of chickpeas and a substitute bar, I don’t go in, because it would be an insult to the former.

5. Assume that you will not lose 10 kg in 5 days

I’m going to leave fifth position to desperate solutions : I’m going to the beach in a week and have a michelin, or it’s ten days before my cousin’s wedding and my dress is tight.

Breeding broth for semi-fasts like the maple syrup diet, take only smoothies, spend the day with a green tea and an apple, spend the whole week eating pineapple and any other similar solution that you can think of. This type of madness only manages to destroy our metabolism, make us lose water and muscle mass, and that we regain the weight as soon as we stop doing atrocities. That at least.

Sustaining these types of attitudes with food in the long term can cause us more important deficiencies or be a good breeding ground for developing an eating disorder.

And closing the circle I am going to go back to the beginning, do you really think these types of solutions are more sensible than letting a qualified professional advise you, teach you to maintain a healthy diet in the long term, give you tools, make you self-sufficient to manage your diet in any circumstance and help you improve not only your appearance, but also your health? Let me not understand.