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4 Reasons You Can't Lose Weight
You already eat less and exercise more, so why isn't your weight going down? To reach a healthy figure, you must avoid mistaken methods during weight loss. Stop trying these 4 mistaken methods!
1. Overly Strict Dieting
Dieting is a method many people trying to lose weight adopt. Besides cutting calories at each meal, they avoid high-sugar, high-fat foods such as sweets and fried food. But for people just starting a diet, restrictions that are too harsh make it easy to binge by accident, and they cannot keep up the diet plan over the long term.
2. The Myth of Eating Small, Frequent Meals
Does eating small, frequent meals really make it harder to gain weight? Most research reports show that when eating small, frequent meals, most people find it hard to truly keep portions "small," and the higher eating frequency keeps blood sugar elevated and raises insulin secretion, making fat accumulation more likely and backfiring.
3. Skipping Breakfast on an Empty Stomach
Do you also think skipping breakfast, or combining breakfast and lunch into brunch, cuts one meal's worth of calories? An Australian research report points out that people who are always on an empty stomach in the morning are more likely to accumulate fat around the stomach, which raises cholesterol and increases the risk of heart disease and diabetes.
4. Overestimating the Fat-Burning Effect of Exercise
Have you tried high-intensity fat-burning exercise, sweated buckets, and felt you burned a lot of calories today? Exercise can effectively boost metabolism, but most people overestimate its fat-burning effect, and some even eat a pork chop bento box out of hunger after working out, taking in more calories than they burned. This kind of "mistaken expectation" is the real culprit behind weight gain.
To lose weight effectively, building muscle while losing fat is the method people trying to lose weight should try first!
The Most Effective Way to Lose Weight: Build Muscle and Lose Fat
Building muscle and losing fat are 2 different fitness goals, but they are often discussed together because they conflict with each other. Building muscle and losing fat at the same time, or losing weight without losing muscle, is quite difficult.
Building muscle means increasing muscle mass, which requires planned weight training and a high-protein diet. To gain muscle mass, your calorie intake must exceed what you burn in a day; weight training then repeatedly breaks down the muscle, and you wait for it to repair itself. Only day after day of this will muscle mass increase steadily.
Losing fat means reducing body fat, which requires controlling your diet and doing aerobic exercise. To reduce fat mass, your calorie intake must be less than what you burn in a day, and aerobic exercise such as running, swimming, and cycling burns calories. Only day after day of this will fat mass decrease steadily.
Should I Build Muscle First or Lose Fat First? One Chart Makes It Easy to Tell
Building muscle requires taking in more calories, which inevitably increases fat intake. For people with higher body fat, we recommend losing fat first and then building muscle; otherwise fat covers the shape of the muscles, and no matter how hard you train, the muscle definition will not be obvious. How do you know whether you need to lose fat first? One chart will tell you!
Look at your body composition analysis chart and observe the lengths of 3 indicators: body weight, skeletal muscle mass, and body fat mass. When the three are connected, the outline resembles the letters C, I, or D, and body types can likewise be divided into C, I, and D.
C-shape: This body type has high body weight and body fat mass but low muscle mass. We recommend losing fat first and then building muscle. If you build muscle first, the thick fat layer will keep muscle definition from showing.
I-shape: This is a normal body type, with body weight, muscle mass, and body fat mass in balance. We recommend working toward building muscle; as muscle mass increases, you will gradually move toward the D-shape.
D-shape: This is the best body type, with sufficient muscle mass and relatively low body fat. It is the ideal standard for fitness training.
Learn about building muscle: Build Muscle and Lose Fat in One Go! Easily "Lie Back" to Perfect Abs
Learn about fat loss: Easily eliminate stubborn fat and sculpt your ideal figure!
This article is for general information only. Results vary from person to person; please consult a doctor in person before deciding on any treatment.
