More Mistakes to Avoid When Losing Fat and Getting Fit
Mistakes to Avoid When Losing
Fat and Getting Fit
Here are more crucial mistakes I see people make when trying to lose fat and shape up—mistakes that can easily be avoided using the solutions offered.
Skipping meals, depriving yourself, starving yourself.
These are big mistakes, all but sure recipes for triggering overeating, and worse, overeating high-calorie, nutritionally empty junk foods, which is usually what happens. You eat the first thing you come upon, which is almost always junk—the pastry at work, the food vending machine, the food kiosk, etc.
This is particularly true of breakfast. Like a lot of people, I used to be guilty of skipping a healthy breakfast. Then I got hungry and would go for a coffee and a junk pastry. Wrong choices. Instead of skipping meals, eat balanced, healthy meals well before you get to the point of being famished.
Skipping exercise days, or otherwise doing exercise haphazardly.
Bad strategy all around, particularly your aerobic exercise. I recommend you get high quality aerobic exercise seven days a week. High-octane, brisk walking can’t be beat, a minimum of 20 minutes a session. Work out every day, like elite athletes. If not daily, shoot for six days a week. The absolute minimum is five days a week of moderately high intensity aerobic exercise.
Why? Because we all have a 24-hour metabolism cycle. To burn fat more effectively 24 hours a day, we want to exercise—heat up—our bodies on a daily basis to permanently change our metabolism. Exercising less than 5 times a week won’t do enough to change our metabolism and really burn fat. We have to get good aerobic exercise daily, or a minimum of five days a week, to see dramatic, permanent fat loss. Gotta keep the fire going. Don’t let it go out by missing exercise.
Having junk food choices around.
This one is simple but so powerful. Put another way, out of sight is out of mind and out of temptation. This mistake includes eating too many junk carbohydrates, which make up a huge part of the typical American diet today. They’re junk food choices. Just don’t buy them, and don’t have them around, period.
Not meditating.
Surprised this one’s on the list? Now you know. Meditation is huge.
You may resist meditating with all your might. But the bottom line is that fat loss and fitness—like everything in life—is a mental game. And if you’re not meditating regularly—that is, daily—you’re not in top shape mentally.
Your outer appearance is a mirror reflection of your inner—or mental—shape, it’s as simple as that. Shoot for 20 minutes of inner quiet time in the morning. Get up earlier if you need to. Repeat in the evening; it’s the best 40-minute investment you can make. The list of benefits of meditating is impressive, but for purposes of losing fat and getting fit, it’s hard to beat this one: meditating regularly gives you control over which thoughts you choose to act on. If you’re at the mercy of every thought that pops into your mind, you’re in trouble. If you’re in the habit of meditating and enjoy its benefits, when the idea of a hot fudge sundae hits you, you’re not at the mercy of that temptation. With your calm, relaxed mind, you can simply say “I’ll pass,” and do so without blowing a craving fuse.
These common mistakes and suggested remedies are by no means comprehensive. But by comprehensively addressing these errors, you’ll move toward achieving your weight loss and fitness goals.
Jerome Kellner is the author of The Maui Diet, and an educator specializing in healthy, permanent fat loss. To get the free Maui Diet Short Course or to contact Jerome, e-mail him at jerome.kellner@gmail.com.
