Why you could be sabotaging your diet

If you are always on a diet but never seem to lose any weight, perhaps you are falling into one of these well known traps.....

'I exercise, so surely I must be burning off calories?'
Yes, exercise burns calories but not as many as you think and not to the point that you can eat what you like. How much you burn during any type of exercise varies according to your weight,length of time you work out, plus how hard you work out.
Yet most people unconsciously think exercise allows them to eat whatever they like, thus filling up the deficit they have just created, plus some!
Solution: Don't even think about exercise as a way of helping you lose weight. Think instead of changing your diet and you WILL succeed. Less calories in means less weight. And if you're thinking why bother exercising, don't forget that exercise boosts your metabolism and builds muscle to ensure your body looks good. There's no point looking slim if you can't get into a bikini because your body doesn't look good. Plus never underestimate the feel good factor that exists with exercise which is better than any other high, legal or not!


Drinks don't count, right?
And no, we're not even talking alcohol here. It's those drinks you take on board without even thinking about. The type where you get to the end of the day and if someone asked you to write down what you'd had, you wouldn't even mention because you've forget ten them or think that liquid can't possibly cause weight gain - or prevent weight loss. Think again.
A glass of orange juice, 200cals, a small semi skimmed latte, 100calories, a yoghurt fruit smoothie, 300 calories.
'So what?', you might think but if your aim is to cut 500 calories a day, one of these could contribute to half of that. Besides it's not just the calorie effect of that one drink that can have an affect.
If you keep not just that. drinking things that are sweet, you will always crave sweet. Fruit juices send your blood sugars soaring, then will leave you feeling tired so you reach for yet more sugary fixes.
Solution: Drink water and get used to it. Lots of people say they don't like water but it is because your taste buds are hardwired for the 'sweet tastes' of lactose in milk, sugars in fruit juices. When you get used to water everything else takes mega sweet.

Every magazine feature I read says olive oil is good for me
This is true as it is a fantastic source of essential fatty acids. But what's good for one person is not good for another if your aim is weightloss. Just one teeny, tiny teaspoon of olive oil is 42calories. Next time you cook with it,or use it in a dressing measure out how much you use. Oil has the amazing capacity to look like hardly anything when you put it in a pan but it's usually about a tablespoon or more. That's around 130calories right there.
Solution: Try different dressings that don't use oil such as yoghurt and mustard with lemon juice. Use different cooking methods, such as poaching or steaming. Even assuming you only cook with olive oil once a day that still saves you 910 calories a week. Do that for 6 months and that could equate to half a stone weight loss.

I'm doing exactly what the diet says
So, you're following the diet to the letter. Exactly. Not one foot wrong. And still you're not losing weight. Why? More often than not it's down to portion size. Just because something is healthy, too much of anything whether it's fruit, rice cakes or WeightWatcher's bars can scupper a diet.
Solution: Weighing things out is a pain in the butt but it is the only way to 'get your eye in' as it were. Weigh out the things you have most often, whether it's quinoa, oats, whatever and that will probably be the only time you need to do it. Or, if you know that hunger in the morning tends to make you pour out a big portion of muesli, weigh out seven portions and bag them ready for the week ahead.

here a nibble, there a nibble everywhere a nibble, nibble
You can do brilliantly eating the right portions and exactly the right meals. Then you fall down by over snacking.
Eating a few mini snack meals through the day is good but only if they are the right type of snacks. Two oat cakes with cottage cheese, apple with yoghurt. These are all great slow release GI foods mixed with protein that are high in satiety. When you go wrong is suddenly having a few too many nibbles of nuts, or those two oat cakes or rice cakes turn into five or more. The average oat cake has 50 calories, so that's a 250 calorie snack but the likelihood is you've discounted it in your mind and not even considered it food. Think about only taking out snacks pre-packaged in the exact amounts. If you're at home, then pre-package your snacks for the day and then get put the rest on a top shelf which requires you to stand on a ladder to get to them. AT least then if you eat them you are conscious of your snacking not just doing it habitually.