You may be exercising and watching what you eat to reach your health goals. Unfortunately, you may not see the expected results, leaving you confused and frustrated. You could be making mistakes with your workout routine and diet that are hindering your progress.
Getting in shape and managing your weight seem easy when you can pick from one of the many exercise programs, diets, and apps. However, there isn’t one program that fits all, so you have to monitor your progress and adjust your efforts as you go. Let’s look at some typical workout and diet mistakes that can make reaching your goals harder.
Exercising Inconsistently
The CDC recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate or 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity weekly. On two or more of those days, you should engage in muscle-strengthening activities with major muscle groups. When you first start out or start over, forget those recommendations and focus on doing any amount of exercise.
However, a common workout mistake is not exercising enough. If you don’t exercise most days of the week, your progress will stall. You should slowly try to increase how much and often you exercise to establish a consistent workout routine. As a result, you will increase your chances of achieving your fitness goals.
Exercising Every Day
Exercising every day sounds like a good thing, so why is it a mistake? While it’s great that you’re exercising consistently, you could be missing signals from your body to rest. Without proper rest, you won’t be able to recover from vigorous workouts.
Rest days can be days without exercise, or you can do a rest day workout. Don’t force yourself to exercise every day because you think you’ll reach your goals faster. In fact, it will have the opposite effect and leave you tired, frustrated, and possibly injured. You won’t lose any progress by taking a day or two off from exercising. Therefore, listen to your body and take rest days when needed instead.
Repeating Workouts
You could have a favorite activity, such as walking, running, riding a bike, or strength training, that you consistently do most days of the week with rest days in between. So, why would doing your favorite workouts be a mistake? Unfortunately, you may miss out by doing the same exercise, intensity, or duration every time.
Your body will adjust to your workout, and your progress will plateau. When you do the same workout over and over again, you increase your chances of an injury by working the same muscles, creating imbalances in your body. For example, if you only run, you’re not doing any flexibility or strength training. Conversely, if you only do strength training, you’re not doing any aerobic activity. Incorporating aerobic, flexibility, and strength training into your routine provides the variety your body and mind need to break through any plateau.
Undereating
If your goal is to lose weight, you may be making a mistake by significantly reducing your caloric intake. While reducing the number of calories consumed is essential to losing weight, skipping meals or cutting too many calories can hinder your progress. In fact, extreme calorie reduction should only be followed under your doctor’s supervision.
Without proper nutrition, your exercise performance will suffer. Your body won’t have the nutrients it needs to recover and build muscle. Even worse, when there aren’t enough carbohydrates or fats available, your body starts to break down your muscles for energy. You can avoid this mistake by eating a balanced diet consisting of a variety of foods. You can still reduce your overall caloric intake, but you may reach your ideal weight without muscle loss by simply substituting foods in your diet instead of counting calories.
Failing To Adjust Your Diet
Consistent exercise can help you lose weight and get in shape. However, your progress may plateau if you don’t adjust your diet to fuel your body properly. Your performance will suffer if you eat a poor diet with processed foods and empty-calorie snacks.
Instead, adjust your diet by substituting snacks and highly processed foods with homecooked meals that include nutrition-dense foods. For example, small changes like black coffee instead of cream and sugar, drinking water instead of soda, and eating fruit over candy can provide the variety of nutrients your body needs. That doesn’t mean you can’t ever have a soda, candy bar, or caffè latte. Instead of having them every day, you’ll enjoy them in moderation occasionally.
Overemphasizing Supplements
A balanced diet and regular exercise are the foundations of your health. While supplements can augment your diet and nutritional needs, over-reliance on them can derail your diet and exercise goals. Supplements are meant to supplement, not replace, a balanced diet. By relying on supplements, it can lead to a lack of essential nutrients found in certain foods.
Unfortunately, the supplement market is very competitive, and companies may exaggerate, setting expectations for quick results. Furthermore, supplements can be expensive and may interact with certain medications or cause other side effects.
Instead, avoid supplements and adjust your diet to meet your nutritional needs. Review your diet by keeping a journal and make adjustments to ensure proper nutrition to support your fitness and weight goals. If you still need help, speak with a nutritionist. They can help craft an ideal plan that includes your favorite treats.
Unrealistic Expectations
Running a marathon or losing 50 lbs (roughly 23 kg) are reasonable goals. However, it’s not realistic to do either in a month. When your progress doesn’t match your expectations, you’ll become frustrated and give up or double down and injure yourself. Like most New Year’s resolutions, it’s easy to make lofty goals and not properly plan.
To avoid this mistake regarding your diet and workouts, create SMART goals to ensure you have a specific goal that’s relevant and achievable within a specific time. If your goal seems too big, break it into smaller chunks. For example, your goal may be to lose 50 lbs. Instead, focus on losing 1 lb or 1 kg first. Then, focus on the next one, and so on, until you reach your goal.
Not Tracking Your Progress
Even though you may feel like you have your diet and workouts in hand, it’s a mistake not to track your progress. Unfortunately, you can’t remember every detail about your workouts or meals.
How do you know if you’re making progress? Tracking your workouts and weight will help you achieve your fitness goals. It lets you know where you were and where you are now, which is essential for making better decisions. You can find patterns to help you adjust your behavior to keep you moving toward your goals instead of away. It’s hard to know what’s working and not working unless you track and monitor yourself.
The Takeaway
Making mistakes that hamper your progress is easy unless you’re paying close attention. By creating clear and achievable goals, you can establish your ideal workout routine and diet to support your nutritional needs. Monitoring your workouts and diet will help you track your progress and make adjustments as needed. Always stay mindful of how you feel. Take a day or two off to recover whenever you’re feeling rundown or injured, and don’t forget to enjoy your favorite foods occasionally.
FitTrend’s mission is to help you along your self-improvement journey, promote an active lifestyle, and help you achieve your goals. Our journal can help you track your workouts, weight, mood, calories, and more. Also, FitTrend allows you to connect supported gadgets to your account to make it easier for you to update your journal automatically. Create your account today and start using FitTrend for free!
Disclaimer: No content on this site should ever be used as a substitute for direct medical advice from your doctor or other qualified clinician.
