You’ve reached a weight-loss plateau, don’t worry. These common weight loss mistakes can easily be fixed to help you reach your goals.
Losing weight is difficult, but it’s a goal that you can achieve if you put your heart into it. A YMCA membership can help you lose weight, but there are mistakes that a lot of our members make that stops them from reaching their goals.
The mistakes that plague a lot of our YMCA fitness members are:
Weight fluctuates. You can weigh yourself in the morning and gain weight by lunch time. A lot of the weight that you see as weight loss is going to be water weight. The nightly fast, when you’re asleep, has a way of skewing numbers.
But when you walk on to the scale too often, it can be detrimental to your success.
If you find yourself disappointed with the scale every day, weigh yourself once a week. Try and weigh yourself at the same time so that you have a better understanding of what you weigh week-to-week.
And remember, weight is just a number. Other ways to track success that may be more helpful than the number on the scale are photos, measurements, and how your clothing fits.
Your goals can only be reached if you make routine changes to your strategy. If you’re not losing weight, sit back and try to determine what’s going on that’s stopping you from reaching your goals.
You may not lose weight for a few reasons:
Excess calories
Too little exercise
Too little sleep
Miscalculations
Learn what’s working and not working for you. Sometimes, you’ll find that you’re consuming more calories than you think or not adapting faster than your body is adapting. Adjust your strategy when it’s not working for you.
Most people that fail at their diet do so because they’re not eating enough of the right kinds of food. If you’re dropping your calories to 700 per day and starving every second of the day, you need to add more calories into your diet. Furthermore, if you are meeting your set calorie goal by eating candy bars or high fat fast food, then you are not giving your body the nutrients it needs to thrive.
Diet distress occurs when you don’t feel satisfied by food and simply give up.
Aim to lose a pound or two a week at the most. You can do this by removing 500 calories from your diet per day and adding in exercise. Starving your body isn’t fun and won’t help you stick to your weight loss strategy.
How many calories you burn during a workout isn’t the only reason to exercise. The goal of exercising is to improve your fitness levels. A fit body will work more efficiently and burn more calories (and fat!) than a less fit body. If you want to lose weight, you need to be honest and informed.
Activates that improve fitness and burn calories include:
Running
Cycling
Rowing
High Intensity Interval Training
Water Fitness
Group Fitness classes
Weight training
Stagnation when people are utilizing their YMCA fitness center is often because people aren’t mixing it up. Your body is miraculous at adaptation, so it’s important to keep your body guessing by:
Changing session times and tempos
Vary your exercises and cardio
Trying new things routinely
If you’re not reaching your goals, you’ll need to change up what you’re doing. The exercises and classes you take should be fun so that you continue losing weight.