Bella Adams
Despite hard discipline and a strong will, there is still nothing happening on the scales? This may be due to the following eight habits that inhibit weight loss.
It doesn’t have to be a strict diet to shed a few pounds from your hips or stomach.
It is often enough if you rethink and change simple, everyday habits – from the length of sleep to the choice of training.
The following points definitely encourage rethinking – with the aim of losing weight in the long term and permanently.
Long-term sleep deprivation
The sleep duration and the sleep intensity are decisive for the acceptance success as well as the performance in training. Why?
Sleeping too little (less than 7 hours) produces more ghrelin, a hormone responsible for controlling hunger and satiety. In addition, it slows down the energy turnover and thus prevents the fat stores from being broken down overnight.
Therefore, it is advisable to establish a solid sleep routine and allow yourself seven to eight hours of sleep per night.
Stress in the morning
Absolute fan of the snooze function on the alarm clock? But after you’ve turned over in bed once or twice, the stress comes and that’s how it happens that you start the day off right.
You should rethink this habit as soon as possible, because stress in the morning is one reason for the increased release of cortisol. Only with a permanently increased cortisol production can it cause acute damage to the body.
The stress hormone interferes with the body’s ability to build proteins, among other things.
Worse still, it instead pulls proteins from the muscles to convert them into glucose and give the body the energy it needs.
Conversely, this means that muscles are broken down that were previously fought for in hard training.
How do you recognize the elevated cortisol level in yourself? Restlessness, you stand a bit beside yourself, you are quickly annoyed and have food cravings throughout the day.
Better to get up a little earlier then.
Coffee right after getting up
After a good night’s rest, the body is usually completely dehydrated, even if you wake up in between and drink a few sips of water. And that makes for a good appetite.
But anyone who immediately reaches for a cup of coffee or tea is not doing themselves any good. Because drinks with caffeine and theine in particular lead to the release of cortisol, even though the body is producing adrenaline all by itself.
Makes more sense: After getting up, drink a large glass of lukewarm water or lemon water, which makes you fit and boosts your metabolism at the same time.
Skip the lunch break
If you skip your lunch and work through the break, you are not doing yourself, your body and your head any good.
If you skip one meal a day, the body automatically reduces its energy consumption and slows down fat burning.
The consequences: performance and concentration drop sharply, mistakes happen. The biggest evil: food cravings in the evening.
So better: Eat something for lunch and your body will thank you.
Too few steps a day
Taking the escalator or driving short distances in the car – these little things in everyday life ensure that you don’t reach the basic level of movement.
Ideally, everyone should take 10,000 steps a day, according to the WHO recommendation. Taking the stairs on the subway, at work and at home, walking around the block during a break, or leaving the car in the garage every few days can help to achieve this.
Also ideal: get off the bus one stop earlier and walk home. These little things make a big difference.
Focus exclusively on cardio training
The myth: the kilos only tumble through intensive endurance sports. Far from it, because strength training is the key to success. By building muscle mass, the body also works at rest and thus promotes fat metabolism.
In other words, the more muscle you have, the more fat you burn. Eventually, when the body uses more energy than it takes in from food, it is forced to go to its fat stores.
Sugar as a reward
A week of hard training and a new, healthy diet plan successfully completed – and now you would like to reward yourself.
No problem, but at best you should avoid eating too much sugary foods and drinks, and instead reward yourself with sweet things without white sugar – like sugar-free chocolate bars or dried apple rings.
Calorie-free aroma drops can also be an alternative so that you don’t have to do without taste: With aromas such as shortbread or raspberry-vanilla you can easily refine food and drinks without sugar.
Not enough healthy fats
Many eat too little healthy fats, and they can promote weight loss.
At best, 30 percent of your daily food intake should consist of healthy fats. With a height of 170 cm and a daily requirement of 1900 calories, that is approx. 63 grams of fat (570 calories) per day.
Fats control hormone levels and keep hormones in balance. Testosterone production in particular is promoted by healthy fats such as omega-3. This in turn has an enormously positive effect on muscle building. And the more muscle mass there is, the more calories are burned at rest.
Foods such as avocado, almonds, almond butter, walnuts, linseed oil, olive oil, linseed, chia seeds and fatty fish such as salmon, mackerel, tuna and herring, all of which contain omega-3, are recommended.
You should avoid trans fats and too much saturated fats, which are found in sausage, meat and cheese, butter and lard, palm and coconut oil, baked goods and sweets, for example.
In short: Without healthy fats, the two goals of losing weight and building muscle cannot be achieved.
