Personal Training For Professionals Who Want To Lose Fat And Get Healthy

11 WORST WAYS TO LOSE WEIGHT

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By Noelle Walker at New Fitness

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Usually I talk about the best ways to lose weight but in this blog post I am going to discuss the worst ways to lose weight. I see it around me all the time. There are people choosing the worst ways to lose weight and there are better and healthier ways out there. 

First I will discuss the worst way and then how to correct that and turn it into a best way. Read on..

CRASH DIETING

If you have read my blog before you already knew I was going to mention crash dieting. This is the worst way to lose weight. Sure, it’s a quick way to lose weight but it is not sustainable. You won’t be able to do these kinds of diets for too long. You will get hungry and if you keep restricting calories and resist the urge to eat, you will binge. It’s a guarantee. What are these kinds of crash diets? I am talking about Keto, Intermittent Fasting, Paleo, etc. Any kind of diet that restricts or eliminates entire food groups like Carbohydrates, Protein, Dairy, Fruits, Vegetables and Fats. The better way to lose weight through eating is to consume from all the food groups in moderation and eat consistently throughout the day.  

WORKOUTS THAT ARE LENGTHY

Another worst way to lose weight is by doing workouts that are way too long. You don’t need to be in the gym for two hours(or longer)! The max time for a workout should be one hour including stretch. You are doing all that extra work for nothing. The gains that you make post one hour are negligible. There was a study done on overweight sedentary women to see if longer durations of an exercise session had an effect on weight loss and it turns out that it didn’t despite all of the women losing significant amounts of weight. It also stated that 150 to 200 minutes per week was sufficient. That works out to be about 30-40 mins of exercise a few times per week.
Ref: https://www.bewegenismedicijn.nl/files/downloads/full_text_jakicic_2003_duration__intensity_on_weight_loss.pdf
 
So what does that tell you? That the better more efficient way to lose weight in regards to workouts is to exercise 30-40 mins per day 3-4 times per week. If you are exercising more times per week then less than 30 mins a day is optimal.

DETOXES

There are so many detoxes out there and so many people telling you to do this detox and that detox. You don’t need to do ANY detoxes. Your body already does this naturally. It does this everyday. If you don’t believe me, maybe you will believe a registered dietitian? This is an entire page telling you exactly how your body naturally detoxes itself. Read it and then you will know you don’t need a 7 day juice cleanse or a detox tea. 

Instead of doing a detox just drink water and eat lots of nutrition vegetables and fruits.

NO WORKOUTS

There’s a pervasive myth going on out there in the world and the internet that you don’t need exercise to lose weight and fat. Just reduce your calories and tada you will drop weight. This can happen but the likelihood of it happening over time is extremely low. You need diet and exercise to drop fat. Period. If you focus too much on the food part and ignore and avoid exercise, you will not see the results that you are looking for.There are numerous studies to prove this and here is just one of them>>https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110414141449.htm

CARDIO ONLY

Don’t get me wrong, cardio will help you lose weight but it’s not the only factor. A good nutrition plan as well as resistance training is the best way to lose weight. So why is just focusing on cardio one of the worst ways to lose weight? Because the more you lose weight from this method only, the harder you will need to work to keep losing the weight or keep it off. It is not an efficient way to lose weight. The better way is to do some cardio, resistance training and incorporate a good eating plan that is balanced with protein, healthy fats, vegetables, fruits and grains.

WEIGHT TRAINING ONLY

There is an overwhelming amount of articles and Youtube videos telling people that they don’t need to do cardio at all to lose weight. They are telling people to just weight train and train with heavy weight with no cardio. In my experience as a personal trainer of 20 odd years, weight training is a great way to get in shape and get lean BUT everyone who has a significant amount of weight to lose needs to do cardio as well as have a focus on nutrition. What happens when you just do weight training and you are overweight is you build muscle under the layers of fat. The fat just doesn’t miraculously go away because you weight train. It’s been proven time and time again in studies that cardio is the way to burn calories and drop weight. People will try to argue this point but science proves that weight training on it’s own will not yield as good weight loss results as cardio will. 

Reference: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3544497/

WEIGHT LOSS GIMMICKS AND TRICKS

What am I talking about when I say weight loss gimmicks and tricks? I am talking about creams, fat burners in the form of pills and shakes, waist trainers, ab rollers, etc. All of these things don’t work! The problem is, is that people are searching for quick ways to lose weight. They are looking for a way to drop 10 pounds in a week and “marketers” know this and market these schemes and products to them knowing they will buy into it. Don’t do it. Even I fell for it once. This was before I was a personal trainer. I bought Hydroxycut. It is touted as a fat burner and has Ephedra as it’s main ingredient that is now banned. No only did it not work, it made me feel really hyper. My heart rate was through the roof and I felt supremely dehydrated. 

Here is Canada’s stance on Ephedra if you’re interested. There have been extensive studies to prove that fat burners like these are dangerous..http://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2017/mdn-dnd/D2-516-2016-eng.pdf

Instead of gimmicks and gadgets and pills and potions, the better way to lose weight is to just adopt a healthier lifestyle. Is it going to take longer? Yes but you will feel good, be healthy and keep the weight off.

SWEATING THE WEIGHT OFF

This is another worst way to attempt at losing weight. If you see that you have dropped pounds after going to the sauna or sweating heavily during your workout, I can guarantee that it’s water you have lost and you will absolutely gain the weight back within a very short amount of time. 

There are no shortcuts to weight loss. You will not lose real weight or fat sweating it out. 

TOO MUCH FOCUS ON ABS

Do you want to lose weight in one area like the abs, arms or maybe back. Well that’s not going to happen. Weight loss never happens in just one area like the abs. So what is the worst way to lose weight that I am talking about? It’s doing exercises that focus on one body part thinking you are going to drop fat. Examples of this are doing endless Crunches or Arm Circles and Tricep Extensions. None of these exercises will drop fat in that one area. Fat loss does not work that way. So stop doing 100 crunches a day or following that Youtuber who says you can lose arm fat with this exercise or that exercise. It’s simply not true. The reality is you will lose fat overall  when you start your weight loss journey. Sure, there will be some areas on your body that will lose fat faster than other areas but there is no such thing as spot reduction of fat.

IS IT HEALTHY OR IS IT LOWER CALORIE

Lots of people fall into this trap of thinking if it’s deemed healthy they can eat all they want. It’s not true. There are some foods out there that can be considered healthy but have so many calories that they might just make up your entire days worth of calories. Foods like Caesar salad. People will order or make a Caesar salad thinking that this choice will be ideal for their weight  loss goals. But it’s quite the opposite. A typical Caesar salad has 500 calories, maybe even more. So while it doesn’t make up the entire days of calories, it’s a good chunk. Stick to house salads. Make sure you always get the nutrient information about a certain food that you think is healthy. It may be healthy but that doesn’t mean it will be low calorie. And in the end it is always a formula of calories in and calories out when losing weight. 

DOING THE SAME THING AND EXPECTING A DIFFERENT RESULT

You cannot do what you are currently doing to begin losing weight. You absolutely must do something different. If you are active at your job it doesn’t mean you will start losing weight all of a sudden. If you walk your dog everyday, the same applies. Your body is completely used to doing all of those daily activities you do so it’s not going to change. You need to incorporate actual additional workouts to your already active life in order to illicit change. If you are already going to the gym and have been for a while and you have not seen results, it means you need to change up your workout. There’s an acronym called the FITT Principle. This is a good guideline in order to change up your workout to begin losing weight or any fitness goal for that matter. Change up your workouts every four to six weeks, sometimes less. Here is some information on the FITT principle. I will need to write a blog on that one day! 

There are many ways to lose weight and some of them are good and most that people use are bad. Stop expecting a quick fix. It didn’t take you a week to gain all your weight and it won’t take a week to lose it. It is going to take time and patience and hard work. But all that hard work and perseverance is going to pay off. Eat healthy and workout consistently and you will get the weight loss results you are looking for. 

Let me know what you have tried to lose weight and if it worked for you. Did you keep the weight off? Comment below.

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