There are times on your weight loss journey when progress can come to a halt. After working with thousands of clients, I’ve noticed certain patterns that can cause this weight loss stoppage.
1) Eating more than you think you are.
Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Zone Delivery Service, and other diet systems have one undeniable benefit to them – they define for the average person how large an actual “serving” is. Most of us underestimate the volume of food we eat (and consequently, underestimate the number of calories we consume in a day).
By fixing in your head what a serving size or “portion” of food looks like, we can better estimate (and consequently, calibrate and evaluate) the amount of food we eat at each meal. Keep in mind, when it comes to weight loss, you need to take in less calories than you burn each day.
Two good rules of thumb:
Please remember to fill up on non-starchy vegetables – they are full of nutrients, have very little impact on blood sugar, and contain little in the way of calories.
A portion of meat (3 oz.) is the size of a deck of cards.
A portion of carbohydrates (1 cup) is the size of a tennis ball.
2) Not eating frequently enough.
It is a social custom to eat “three square meals” a day. While this may do for social purposes, for weight loss, you will want to aim for more frequent feedings.
Additionally, frequent feedings maximize your metabolism, as your body is constantly busy, burning calories by digesting your meals. By not letting too much time pass between meals, you stabilize blood sugar levels since they never really get the chance to drop. By keeping your blood sugar stable, your hunger levels are minimized, decreasing the chances that you will be tempted to overeat at your next meal.
3) Choosing to drink your calories instead of eating them.
The amount of calories that can be concentrated into a shake or smoothie is far greater than the equivalent volume of actual food. A 16 oz fruit smoothie may contain as many as 600 calories and will not fill you up all that much! On the other hand, eating 600 calories of fruit will prove to be much more than the typical person can manage in a single sitting (at least, I personally don’t know anyone that can eat more than 2 pounds of bananas at a single sitting!).
Many of the liquid diet shakes on all fruit and the market smoothies have an abundance of sugar in them. This causes an immediate surge in energy followed by a huge crash due to the release of insulin to control the blood sugar rise. This dramatic shift in blood hormone levels (particularly insulin levels) is something you want to avoid, both for health reasons and for weight loss.
Most weight loss shakes are devoid of fiber.
There are times on your weight loss journey when progress can come to a halt. After working with thousands of clients, I’ve noticed certain patterns that can cause this weight loss stoppage. While this may do for social purposes, for weight loss, you will want to aim for more frequent feedings. This dramatic shift in blood hormone levels (particularly insulin levels) is something you want to avoid, both for health reasons and for weight loss.
Think about it- when making major dietary changes, you want to get the most out of your calories. Wouldn’t you rather fill up, rather than drink something and be hungry again soon after?
Most weight loss shakes are devoid of fiber. While fruit smoothies do contain some of the fiber from the pulp of the fruit, a better strategy would be to eat the actual fruits contained in the smoothie.
This is a very common problem among those attempting weight loss, due to the abundance of “healthy” diet smoothies, protein concoctions, and weight loss shakes. When relying on these liquid meal replacements, there are 2 factors to keep in mind.
