6 Weight Loss Mistakes

Do you feel like you’re doing everything within your power to lose weight, but you’re just not seeing any results? At its core, losing weight is relatively simple: you have to burn more calories than you take in. Simple doesn’t mean easy, though, and even if you track each and every calorie that goes into and out of your body, you may still not be seeing the results you hoped for. (Plus, counting calories is tedious, and you may simply not be happy doing it.)What kind of calories are best? What sort of exercise fits in with your lifestyle? Is all this work really worth it? The questions are endless, and when you answer some of them, they just seem to bring up brand new questions.The bottom line is that losing weight can be extremely difficult. If you’ve plateaued after losing a certain amount of weight, or you’ve tried to start losing but can’t seem to get the scale to budge, you may be making a common, easy-to-fix mistake.Here are six common mistakes that a lot of people make when trying to lose weight. By figuring out what you’re doing wrong, you can take the steps to fix the problem and, hopefully, get back on track to reaching your goal weight.

1. Scale Management

The scale can be a relatively good tool for measuring your weight loss progress, but it also has major drawbacks. For starters, if you don’t love the number you see, you could easily get discouraged and fall off the wagon.If you weigh yourself daily, or even weekly, you can get so wrapped up in the number you see that you’ll miss all of the other progress you’re making. For example, if you’re working out while sticking to a healthy diet, you may be gaining muscle, which means the scale won’t change as much as you may want, but you’re still losing plenty of fat and inches.There are several factors that go into how much you weigh, including normal, daily fluctuations that can change the number by as much as four pounds. Even retaining water can show up on the scale as more weight, when really all you need to do is lose that water weight, which isn’t very difficult.In addition to weighing yourself, it’s good to have other ways to track your progress. Try on the same pants every week to see if they feel different. Measure your thighs, hips, waist and arms to see if they’re going down in size.Next