What if I told you that despite all your effort, there are 3 key things that you do that simply ruin your progress?

And if you simply change the way you look at these 3 points, your entire progress and overall feeling will change for the better.

Sounds interesting? Let’s being:

1. You Only Focus On The Scale

So you have started your life-changing journey and you weigh yourself to begin monitoring your progress.

A week later your weight has increased despite the hard work you put in. “What’s going on?” you think while feeling disappointed and discouraged, wondering whether it’s worth it to continue.

Now here is the thing..

Your body weight fluctuates.. Even up to 2-4% on a daily basis due to many factors.

Your menstrual cycle could affect it, the amount of salt vs. water consumption could affect it, and even exercise intensity or sleep! That’s why we recommend our clients to weigh themselves daily in the morning after they wake up and used the bathroom.

Gather the daily data and calculate a weekly average (or a 7-day rolling average) to really see how your weight is changing. When you weigh weekly and you see a sudden spike in weight, it’s highly likely that one of those weigh-ins was actually an outlier and not a true reflection of your average weight.

Secondly, if you’ve just adopted strength training into your exercise regimen as we preach, it’s highly likely you’ll be seeing some increase in muscle mass from the new stimulus.

2. You Eat Too Little

Fat loss is not about drastically cutting calories, carbs, and stop eating dinners.

Most people approach this based on what they’ve seen on social media or heard from friends. A classic strategy is “don’t eat carbs and do cardio 7 days per week”

Firstly, this is a recipe for disaster in most cases as you’ve most definitely cut out a huge chunk of your caloric intake for the day putting you in a deficit much larger than necessary. What happens if you’re not only going to be losing fat but precious lean muscle mass along with it.

Like we mentioned before, how lean you look is determined by the ratio of lean mass to fat mass. To optimize fat loss and lean mass retention you want to put yourself at a caloric deficit of about 10-20% of your maintenance and be aiming to lose approximately 0.50-1.00% of your body weight weekly. Usually, this will be your bodyweight in lbs multiplied by 11.

Secondly, you likely also have no idea how much protein you are having daily as you aren’t really tracking anything. Unless all you eat is lean sources of meat and vegetables, you’re going to be having sub-optimal levels of protein required not only to build muscle but recover from strenuous workouts. Protein is muscle sparing so if you aren’t having enough, again you aren’t going to be optimizing your lean mass retention.

Start putting more thought into your fat loss approach and use food tracking tools or a well thought out diet plan to adhere to. 

Remember, It’s about health and the long game – not quick fixes.

3. You Are Not Reading The Nutrition Labels

To lose fat you are going to have to expend more energy (calories) than you intake. An avocado easily packs 300+ calories and if you’re topping your toast with that along with a few eggs and some seeds/nuts, it’s going to amount to a pretty caloric meal.

Therefore, You must use food labels to help you make healthy, educated choices every time.