3 Ways You Could Be Sabotaging Your Weight Loss

Are you eating healthy and exercising but not losing any weight? You might feel like you are doing EVERYTHING right but the scale just won’t budge?! If this sounds like you maybe it could be the simple things that are sabotaging your weight loss goals.

Here are three reasons why you might not be getting the results you’re working so hard for!

Picking at your kid's food.
This one comes hand in hand with tasting while cooking your meal or mindlessly eating. All of those little bites here and there add up over time. We often don’t count these in our calorie counts for the day because it is just one bite or just the end of your child’s sandwich. But 50 calories here and 20 calories there all add up and stop you from being in a calorie deficit, which means you won’t be losing weight and will probably be wondering what is happening! It’s important to be mindful of this because sometimes it’s just out of habit.
One reason why you might pick at your kid’s food is that you let yourself get too hungry throughout the day. This can lead to you being ‘hangry’ - which is being hungry and angry! Along with being hangry, you might possibly get light-headed, and you’re also less likely to make healthier decisions when presented with food. So it’s important to set yourself up for success by ensuring you eat every 2-3 hours, and start your day off strong with a good breakfast. The SLIM MAMA SHAKE is a perfect start to your day as it’s full of protein to keep you full, collagen to support hair, skin, and nail health, vitamins and minerals for overall wellbeing, and 7g fibre per serving to help keep you regular! Head to slimmamaco.com to check out our range of products!

Your fitness tracker is overestimating calories burned.
Using a fitness tracker, i.e Fitbit or Apple Watch, is a great way to keep track of your steps, activity, and even sleep. It also keeps us accountable for how many steps we AREN’T doing, which usually motivates people to get moving. However, the technology used on these devices is not 100% accurate and is known to overestimate the number of calories burnt during exercise. Due to this over-reporting of calorie expenditure, people think they can consume more calories throughout their day - because their fitness tracker said so! Over time this leads to excess weight gain and a lot of discouraged people trying their best to lose weight.
There are two ways to combat this. The first is when plugging your details into your fitness tracker, put your weight at 5-10kg lighter than you actually are. This is because a lighter version of you will burn fewer calories doing the same thing, and because these trackers tend to overestimate, putting your weight in as lighter makes up for the overestimation. The second is figuring out just how much it overestimates by tracking your weight and food intake over a couple of weeks - if the fitness tracker says you are burning more than you are eating but you are maintaining your weight, then you can see just how many calories a day it overestimates.
The good thing about these trackers is that they are consistently inconsistent, so once you get your sweet spot of calories you need for your goal, use that as a target for you to reach on your fitness tracker and continue to do that.

You’re not drinking enough water.
I know you’ve heard this many times but it is SO important that here it is again! Water is imperative when it comes to weight loss. Water assists in several bodily processes including nutrient absorption, energy expenditure, and fat loss. Without enough water, you’re actually slowing down the body's processors and making your body work harder than it needs to. It can also make you feel hungry, when in fact you are just thirsty. When you’ve finished eating and you get the feeling you want something more, reach for a glass of water first. Another way to keep your water intake high without feeling overwhelmed is by having one glass (250ml) of water at each meal throughout the day. By doing this you will have 4-6 glasses of water already in the bank plus you are staying hydrated throughout the whole day - without it getting to 8pm and you realise you haven’t had any water so you need to drink a 2L bottle before bed. And no one likes getting up to pee every hour during the night!